MY LORD, SEVERAL Protestant friends, who wish well to the political claims of their Catholic fellow subjects, have informed me, that your Lordship's late Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, has made a deep impression on the minds of many persons, and has even induced them to oppose the same claims to which, before the perusal of that publication, they had been favourable. I have been assured also, that means are taking to disperse that Charge throughout the whole United Kingdom, in order to excite a spirit of general opposition. Your Lordship therefore will not be surprised, if a Catholic Clergyman, who not only thinks that those claims are founded upon justice, but that the determination of the Legislature concerning them is intimately connected with the welfare of the British Empire, should attempt to refute a statement which he conceives to be inaccurate in itself, and likely to be very pernicious in its consequences. Yet I take up the pen with reluctance. The cause which I support is unpopular. The reputation which your Lordship enjoys, and the authority which you possess, are sufficient to give weight and currency to opinions less plausible and less conformable to the bias of the public mind, than those which are the subject of your late Charge. An obscure individual, who ventures to cope with such an adversary, enters the lists with visible disadvantage. But this is neither the only nor the principal reason of my unwillingness to take an active part in this dispute. I hate controversy. It may originate in a love of truth, and perhaps in a very sincere desire to propagate it: but it calls up many a bad passion in its progress, it too often confounds the person with the opinion, and it not unfrequently terminates in abuse and malignity. Does the history of religious controversy or of political debate afford one single instance of either of the parties having acknowledged his error, and submitted to the better arguments of his antagonist? In fact, victory, not truth, becomes the object of the contest; a powerful argument, or a satisfactory answer, wounds the A 2