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Letters to the Right Reverend John Hughes and Bishop Hughes Confuted
Letters to the Right Reverend John Hughes and Bishop Hughes Confuted Author:Nicholas Murray General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1849 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: LETTER VI. Npery has defraded Ireland -- Evidences of iu degradation -- AbsenUeimi -- Sub-letting -- TithB -- The priest-s cry for money. My Dear Sir, -- In my last letter, in which I sought to illustrate that the influence of Popery is to make the masses superstitious, and -the intelligent, infidels, in all the countries where it predominates, 1 made the following assertion: " it has rendered our noble-hearted, noble-minded, impulsive countrymen, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, in all the countries to which they emigrate. The degradation of Ireland which has made it a by-word, I charge upon Popery." To some of the evidences of the truth of these assertions I wish to call your attention in the present letter. Perhaps the present state of feeling in our country towards famine- stricken Ireland may secure for what I shall say to you some attention. That Ireland is a degraded country, as to its masses, with all our pride of country, neither you nor I can deny. Its general poverty, its pervading ignorance, its mud hovels, its innumerable beggars, its insubordination, are the sad and tangible proofs of its degradation. They lie upon the surface of the country, where every traveller can behold them. A. nd the untravelled American has the evidences ofthis degradation brought to his own door. He sees it in the perfect ignorance of his Irish servant -- in the squalid appearance of the Irish beggar -- in the deep-rooted superstition of the Irish papist -- in the Irish brawls in low tippling-houses -- in the furious passions of an Irish mob -- in the large proportion of Irish convicts in our priso...« less