HIS LIFE, POEMS AND SPEECHES.
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tricts, who have never been instructed in the first principles of religion and morality, and hardly know how to bless themselves."
To this intemperate onslaught O'Reilly replied:
A good deal of this is true, we are sorry to say; no one ever denied it. A good deal of it is untrue; and the remainder is discreditable to Doctor Brownson. First, "our poetical friend of the Pilot" never said that "the truest and best Irishmen going are Protestants"; but he did say, not once but often, and he says it again, that a great many of the best Irishmen—the men whose memories are respected by their countrymen the world over, were Protestants. Dr. Brownson knows enough about Ireland to pick out from the end of the last century the names of four Protestants who loved their country. Perhaps he thinks there were no more. We, being Irish and knowing something about the subject, take the liberty of presenting the doctor with a list of twenty times four Protestant Irishmen from the same period of Ireland's history, whose names will be revered by millions of Catholics when Dr. Brownson and his Review are forgotten:
Church of England Protestants.—Thomas A. Emmet, barrister; Arthur O'Connor, barrister; Eoger O'Connor, barrister; Thomas Russel, John Chambers, Mathew Dowling, Edward Hudson, Hugh Wilson William Dowdall, Robert Hunter, Matthew Keogh, Joseph Holt, Thomas Corbett, William Corbett, Hon. Simon Butler, A. H. Rowan, James Napper Tandy, Lord Edw. Fitzgerald, Henry Sheares, barrister; John Sheares, barrister; Oliver Bond, Leonard McNally, B. B. Harvey, barrister; William Weir, John Allen,[1] Thomas Bacon, Anthony Perry, Theobald Wolf Tone, Barthol Tone, Thomas Wright, Wm. Livingstone Webb, William Hamilton, Richard Kernan, James Reynolds, M.D., Deane Swift, barrister; Robert Emmet.
Presbyterians.—William Tennant, M.D., Robert Simms, Samuel Nellson, George Cumming, Rev. Mr. Warwick, Joseph Cuthbert, Rev. W. Steele Dickson, William Drennan, M.D., William Orr, Samuel Orr, William Putnam McCabe, Rev. William Porter, Henry Monroe, James Dickey, attorney; Henry Haslett, William Sampson, barrister; Henry Joy McCracken, Rev. Mr. Barber, William Sinclair, J. Sinclair, Rev. Mr. Mahon, James Hope, Robert McGee, M.D., Gilbert Mcllvain, Robert Byers, Henry Byers, Rev. Mr. Birch, Rev. Mr. Warde, S. Kennedy, Robert Hunter, Robert Orr, Rev. Mr. Smith, Rev. Mr. Sinclair,- ↑ Here O'Reilly makes a curious lapse, according to the testimony of a relative of his own, and, like himself, a direct descendant of Patrick Allen; of whom the John Allen above mentioned was the grandson and a steadfast Catholic; in fact, the Colonel Allen of Napoleon's army, referred to in Chapter I. of this biography.
