FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. V.	B E T H A N Y, VA., DECEMBER, 1848.	NO. XII.

      My Dear Clarinda--IRELAND is as prolific of men as of ideas. Its population at home, before the famine and the pestilence, it seems, was almost eight millions. Its population abroad was also very great. A captain that had almost circumnavigated the globe, once observed--'I have been in almost all the great cities and marts of commerce in the world, and much in the interior of nations and empires. I have been in towns and cities where I could not find an Englishman, a Scotchman, or a Frenchman, but I never was in any place where I could not find an Irishman.'--Col. Cass, it is said, when exploring the head of the Missouri, some where between the summit of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, about forty years ago, found a solitary white man amongst the Indians, trading in some trinkets, and upon inquiry, found that he was an Irishman that had lost himself in the forests of America!

      In my notes on Ireland, I have said that nothing so impressed my mind, as the testimony in favor of Protestantism, given by the North, or the province of Ulster, in bold contrast with Romanism, as developed in its influences upon the other three provinces of Munster, Leinster, and Connaught. The richest soil, and the most delightful portion of Ireland has always been in possession of the Romanists. Yet the wretchedness of the people and the country stands in fearful and ominous contrast with that of the North. The rapacity of the priesthood, and the superstitious reverence and submission of the laity, has converted the fairest portion of the richest and most beautiful Island in Europe into the most impoverished, wretched, and dreary country one can easily imagine. Its poverty, its abject [671] beggary, its immorality, profanity, and social wretchedness, in most parts, can hardly be exaggerated. I passed through much of it, forty years ago; and I learned, from many sources, that it is forty years worse now than then. During the famine and pestilence of 1847, the North suffered very little more than in some other years. It exported some six or seven millions sterling worth of produce to England during that year, while we were sending money and bread from America, to relieve the south and the west of the Island! What a comment on the tendencies of these two systems! Roman Catholicism enervates, while Protestantism energizes and invigorates the minds of the people. Free discussion, free thinking, free reading, and most of all, freedom of action, expand and corroborate the human mind. Popery dethrones reason, inhibits inquisitiveness, anathematizes thinking for oneself, denounces the Protestant Reformation, and condemns to eternal perdition, all beyond the precincts of her communion. Listen to two of her most admired champions of the present century; the one damning Protestantism, the other giving Protestants, all beyond the pale of her communion, to satan. The one, the great and liberal O'Connel! The other, the great admired present incumbent of the chair of St. Peter:--

      A ROMISH FATHER'S OPINION OF THE REFORMATION.--In a funeral oration on the late Mr. O'Connel, delivered in Rome, Father Ventura eulogises the (so-called) Liberator of Ireland, for his championship of Popery on a certain occasion, in the following terms:--"Never was placed in a more conspicuous light the shameful origin of the Reformation, the beastly nature of its author, the dissoluteness of its apostles, the blasphemies and contradictions of its doctrines, the baseness of its manoeuvres, the hypocrisy of its promises, the turpitude of its motives, the iniquity of its spoliation, the cruelty of its massacres, the horror of its sacrileges, and the mighty misfortunes which it has brought down upon the loveliest countries of Europe." He likewise exultingly states, that, "O'Connell, by having emancipated the Catholic Church in England, has given to English Protestantism a blow from which it can never recover. That horrible scandal of the sovereignty of Christianity, that monstrous offspring of the spirit of impurity, combined with the spirit of covetousness and pride, is on the point of expiring."

      VARIED LIBERALITY OF THE POPE.--This most enlightened man of the present age, as some would have him to be, has recently delivered himself in Consistory, of the following sentiments:--"From the measures which, in certain affairs, relating to the civil government of the Pontifical States, we thought fit to adopt, it seems those men have desired to infer that we think so benevolently concerning every class of mankind as to suppose, that not only the sons of the Church, but the rest also, however alienated from Catholic unity they may remain, are alike in the way of salvation, and may arrive [672] at eternal life. We are at a loss from horror to find words to express our detestation at this new and atrocious injustice that is done us."

      So speaks this great Roman idol and Protestant Reformer, and so speaks the still more admired Pope Pius IX, the present Pontiff of the present Roman church, at whose shrine our government and that of England are, amongst the most striking signs of the times, doing abject homage. If, as the people say, my recollections do not deceive me, O'Connell's heart is securely interred in Rome, and his body in Ireland. If my vote had the power to do it, I would redeem his soul out of purgatory, and his body out of Ireland, and send them, under a cohort of sufficient strength, to Rome, to the care of the present Pope Pius the LIBERAL, and thus deliver purgatory and Ireland from any farther trouble with him.

      Protestant Ireland is as loyal to queen Victoria as England herself. Catholic Ireland will never be reconciled to the English government until the present dynasty and the Protestant religion are both buried in the depths of the sea, without the hope of a resurrection. Nothing but the sword and the cannon of the British government can keep Protestantism from being annihilated, as far as these liberal Popes of the nineteenth century can accomplish it. He is a child in ecclesiastics, in politics, and in history, who can, for a momoment, either imagine that popery can be reformed, or that it would tolerate Protestantism or republicanism any where within its control. I speak advisedly on this subject, and cannot but smile at the childish good nature of our fond aspirants to popular favor, who offered so much incense at the shrine of the present Pope and his liberal oracles, the O'Connell's of Ireland. They may be wily politicians, but as enlightened men and patriots, they are neither to be admired nor flattered. They are making a great noise about their growing influence in England and the United States. This is wily enough. Our political aspirants, editors, and rulers, will do them homage, and buy their suffrage by many a poetic puff and high-wrought eulogy.

      For my part, I ask no favors, expect none, and therefore shall never be disappointed. Towards Roman Catholics, as men, I cultivate and cherish benevolence, and would not hurt a hair of their heads, were I sovereign of Europe and America; but I could no more wink at their idolatries, and superstitions, and formularies, and mummeries, and pay court to their smiles for their suffrage, than I could contribute to a gun-powder fund to blow up the British Parliament, arsenals and navy, or the American Congress and our military ettablishments, in the hopes of a consequent millennium. [673]

      But I must leave the Emerald Isle of the ocean, and its destiny, and hasten, via Liverpool and the Cambria, to my adopted country and home.

      On Tuesday, October 5th, about 4 o'clock P M., the Cambria was to sail according to appointment. This was a busy and an exciting day with us. We had much to do, and the anticipated adieu to so many brothers and sisters from England and Scotland, waiting to see us off, lay heavy upon us during all my preparations, and became more and more oppressive as the hour drew nigh. The thought of never again seeing on earth many brethren and sisters, to whom we must soon bid a final farewell, how solemn and oppressive! These are scenes which, although often occurring, never become light or familiar to a sensitive mind. But this was one superlatively interesting and exciting to us all. We had formed a very pleasing acquaintance, and were consequently much attached to one another, and could have no reasonable hope of meeting again.

      The steamer was removed from the dock and was laying at anchor in the river. A boat load of brethren and sisters had gone aboard an hour or two before the time appointed, and were waiting our arrival. Soon as the mail boat, with its immense cargo of letters and messages across the Atlantic, appeared, what a rush to get aboard and to hasten to the ship! In a few minutes the mail was aboard with our travelling equipage, and the first signal was given. Some thirty or more brothers and sisters had then to take with us the parting hand, and commend each other to the care and keeping of the great and good Shepherd of Israel.

      It was a solemn and primitive sort of parting. The very heavens were weeping over us as we extended the valedictory hand, and the final farewell, with its solemn eloquence, moistened every eye and subdued every heart. The steam-boat hied off to the shore, and the steam-ship to the ocean. Thus, stern to stern, we soon were out of sight; but, till the showers from above and the mists from the sea had intercepted our vision, the waving handkerchiefs gave signs of affection and benediction which no language can express.

      Brother Henshall and myself sought refuge from the emotions that almost prostrated our energies, in setting our berths in order. Although we had, through brother John Davis, paid our passage more than a month before, such was the popularity of this best of steam-ships, that a hundred berths between decks had been located and secured before ours. Being more exposed to the winds and the sea than most of our company, we had one of the most healthy, because one of the most airy, berths in the ship, and enjoyed our [674] location as much as we could have enjoyed any berth between decks.

      Until the English ship America entered the Cunard line; the Cambria was the strongest and best steam-ship on the ocean. Such was her fame under the command of Captain Judkins, one of the ablest Captains in the English service, that she had on the October voyage 130 passengers, at 200 dollars each, besides considerable freight, making her voyage from Liverpool to Halifax in less than twelve days, and from Liverpool to Boston in just 13½ days; for which the owners received some 27,000 dollars--more than 2000 per day.

      We spent 12 hours in Boston, and from thence to Bethany we passed by steam and 100 miles staging, in about three days and a half--making our whole passage from Liverpool to Bethany in seventeen days, resting also on the way from Boston a considerable part of three nights.

      Our sojourn aboard the Cambria was in the main pleasant and comfortable. The ship was well furnished with the greatest abundance of every thing necessary derived from the earth, the air, and the sea. Fish, flesh, and fowl, always fresh and abundant, with all the products of the East and the West, the North and the South, were crowded on our table some three or four times per day. We wanted nothing, asked for nothing that was not forthcoming on demand. The only complaint seemed to be that we fared too sumptuously every day. Indeed, the accommodations on these ships are unnecessarily expensive. Our fellow-passengers were generally of the best classes of society, European and American, and as far as we could enjoy a mixed society, we enjoyed ours. I had my fresh milk and my porridge in the morning--as much conversation as I desired, and as much reading and writing as I had taste for.

      We had the pleasure, too, of enjoying a few fine gales at sea. This is usually my lot. Having formerly been twice shipwrecked, and in perils often on rivers, lakes, and seas, I have learned something of the dangers of crossing the great deep, and also of the face of the sky, especially when portentous of storms and tempests. I am, therefore, seldom taken by surprise.

      We had a good beginning and ending to our voyage. These are the great desiderata of sailors and sea-faring men. We got out of the English Channel with a most prosperous breeze, and in twenty-four hours were safely riding on the beautiful billows of the Atlantic. The three subsequent days there was a serene sky over our heads and a gently swelling sea beneath our feet, with a favorable [675] breeze. But a change in the sky on Friday indicated that we should have a change in the sea: and 60 it came to pass. It became squally. Shower after shower, in a sort of celestial climax, made some faint hearts begin to quail, and some stomachs to indicate corresponding emotions; while a more stiff and haughty north-wester gave admonition to prepare for something yet more fearful. Finally, a gale, as sailors call it, arose; and during Saturday and the Lord's day made the sea "with mighty waves aloft to swell and rise." It continued to increase till after midnight, and mighty waves washed over our lofty deck, and made the Cambria give signs of being overmatched by more stately mountain billows. One tremendous surge sprung her bowsprit bursting a band of iron thicker than human arm and broader than human thigh, and, with a noise loud as a cannon's roar, gave fearful note of danger to all who heard it. For my part, I had gone to repose, and felt so secure of harm that I did not awaken till Monday morning. One of the strongest planks on the starboard bow also simultaneously gave way, and the sea washed over her forecastle, and bade all hands to do their duty and to take good heed to their goings. Towards noon it gradually abated, but for two or three days we had rather a rough sea and winds less propitious than before. Still we were making headway--sometimes through lofty billows crested with wreaths of snow-white foam, and culminating in haughty peaks, as though they disdainfully sought to look down upon us.

      On an appeal to the log-book, it was evident that the Captain himself regarded this as one of the severest storms; and from various sources and authorities, it was agreed by a number of passengers that the Great Western, in her great hazard, had not to contend with a sturdier tempest than that which fell upon us. But after this we had fair sailing and pleasant weather to the end of the voyage.

      We arrived in Halifax on the second Lord's day after our departure, and lay there some five hours. On the first Lord's day at sea, though we had five so called "clergymen" on board, and one of these a respectable Episcopalian, Captain Judkins did himself attend upon the usual Church of England service, and read us a sermon for the day. Had he been a religious man, we should not have thought so strangely of it; but he was a loyal Churchman, and true to the head of the church, he acted his part as well as most young actors on their first appearance on the stage. It did not, however, give general satisfaction. The Captain either took the hint or changed his plan, and called the Episcopalian Parson to perform the service on [676] the second Sabbath, and gave us a decent catholic address, pleasing to all, but not edifying to any one.

      Glad to place our foot once more on terra firma, and especially upon any part of the American continent, we went ashore for a couple of hours in Halifax. On walking up to the top of the hill on which its fortress stands, we met crowds of worshippers returning from their respective churches, carrying with them their households of boys and girls, with their Bibles and Psalm-Books in their hands. Nothing in Halifax pleased me more. To see the houses of business closed and the citizens en masse returning to their homes from their respective sanctuaries on a Lord's day, is always to me a most pleasing and acceptable sight. A city or a town without a sanctuary or a Sabbath, is, of all sights, to me the most desolate and depressing; and, I think, to every one of common sense and common humanity, who has read with consideration the Bible history of the origin and destiny of man.

      About sunset we left the wharf, and turned our faces once more to the ocean. We passed a pleasant night, retired at an early hour, and enjoyed a delightful repose while wending our way along the American coast.

      On Monday morning, rising very early and enjoying an almost solitary walk on the deck, often casting my eye to the West, I had many pleasing reflections and emotions on retrospecting the past and in anticipating the future. The goodness and merciful care of the Father of mercies in first directing my path across the vast ocean, the scenes and transactions of almost forty years since first I approached the American coast, in turn passed and repassed before my mind, with many an emotion and feeling to which I cannot give utterance. But thoughts of "home, sweet home," which I dare not cherish nor even entertain while so far from it, and the tens of thousands of brethren and friends dear to me, from whom I had been, as it then appeared to me, a long, long time separated, now found an easy access and a grateful admission into my heart.

      I had, when worn down with labor, at different times in my tour, almost concluded that I would never return to those whom I had left behind me. But now a bright hope animated me, and the thought that I should within twenty-four hours from that time be in Boston, and once more tread the soil of the United States of America, now to me the dearest and most precious land on the face of the earth, awoke within me so many pleasing and grateful emotions, that, for a time, I seemed lost to every thing around me, and to be [677] wholly absorbed in admiration of the divine goodness, in wonder, gratitude, and praise.

      The relative position of the United States, the numerous and various privileges and honors of an American citizen, now appeared to me so ineffably beyond comparison with those of any nation or people on earth, of the present or of any past age, that I would not sell my political rights and privileges of American citizenship for all the honors and emoluments that cluster around the stateliest and most aristocratic subject of any European or Asiatic crown now worn on earth.

      I have frequently given it as my opinion, but now I affirm it as a stubborn and invincible fact, that few, if any native born American citizens, who have never travelled abroad, either did or could fully appreciate the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of an American citizen.

      To feel oneself a lord, a prince, a potentate, clothed with a little brief authority--to feel oneself decorated with hereditary honors, titles, and privileges, of which some are possessed without any virtue, and from which others are debarred by birth without any vice, of their own, may, indeed, minister some gratification to the pride and selfishness of fallen humanity; but to feel oneself a man--endowed with reason, conscience, and moral feeling, invested by a constitutional provision of paramount human authority, with liberty of thought, liberty of speech, and liberty of action--knowing no one superior in rank to a man--a well educated, moral, and religious man--as the noblest, greatest, and best work of God on earth, is the greatest and best nobility to which any human being, can rationally, morally, or religiously aspire. And with all these honors, immunities, and privileges, is every American citizen invested, and of which he never can be divested by any superior on earth, so long as he conducts himself in harmony with reason, morality, and religion.

      We can desire for ourselves no better political or temporal birthrights or inheritance than we now possess, and we can pray for no greater honors and privileges of this world for any living people greater or better than those guarantied by our institutions to every American citizen. May we act worthily of them! May they be long continued as the inheritance of our posterity, and may they soon be bestowed on all the kindreds, tongues, and people of earth, until there shall ascend from every dwelling on the spacious earth one grateful song of praise to Him that hath redeemed man from the tyranny of man, and invested the human race with equal laws, 679 equal institutions, and equal national and political birthrights, leaving it to every human being under the government and providence of God to be the architect of his own fortune--the creator of his own personal rank, dignity, and honor!

      We arrived in Boston early in the morning of the 19th October. Soon after my landing, and while in the custom-house passing my baggage, I received from a gentleman unknown to me a letter from home, informing me of the sudden and unexpected death of my dear WICKLIFFE, around whom clustered so many bright hopes of long life and great moral excellency and usefulness. My emotions may be by a few more easily imagined than I could express them. But God's ways cannot be traced. As it was when he led Israel out of Egypt, so is it still, concerning which the Psalmist of Israel has said, "Thy way was in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps were not perceived." Ps. lxxvii. 19. But for this affliction, my travels abroad as well as my travels at home would long be remembered with pleasure. On all other occasions, during many years, and my frequent and long journeys, the good hand of the Lord has been always around my family. I was never afraid of evil tidings. But in this case he thought good to take to himself the choicest lamb from my flock, and has not revealed to me the reason why. But he is too wise to err, and too kind causelessly to afflict the children of men. May our affections never be unduly placed on any thing on earth; but as those we love both in the flesh and in the Lord are taken to himself, may our affections be more placed on things above and less on things on the earth!

      I am aware of the many imperfections necessarily incident to these letters, sketched as they have been in galloping haste, and in the midst of daily and hourly interruptions. I would desire (as many seem to think I ought) to revise and improve them, to enlarge upon some items and incidents too hastily passed over, and to add others wholly omitted, and to present them together in a neat duodecimo volume. But this must depend on two or three conditions:--First, whether my health and time will permit; secondly, whether a sufficient number of copies might be desired to authorize a new and improved edition of them: These matters, like all things human, must await the developments of the future.

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 5 (December 1848): 671-679.]