Instead of doing so, he should have confessed with shame and
humiliation, that his own countrymen, for a long series of years, did
everything in their power to destroy the image of God in the native
Irish, by driving them like beasts of chase into the mountains, and
bogs, and fastnesses, and over the Shannon. Our people suffered these
things and much more for conscience sake; inflicted, as they were, by
Mr. Dickens's countrymen, in the name of religion; in the name of
conscience; in advancing, as they pretended, the sacred cause of the
right of private judgment. _He_ makes Popery responsible for the
results.
Those who held that Popery was the real cause of the potato-rot were
influential, if not by their numbers, at least by their wealth; so they
set about removing the fatal evil energetically. Large sums of money
were collected, and a very active agency was established throughout the
West of Ireland for this purpose; with, it would seem, very
considerable success. But whilst those engaged in, the work, maintained,
that the conversions were the result of instruction and enlightened
investigation, others believed that most of the converts were like the
poor woman mentioned by the late Dr.
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