IRELAND.
The Lord-Lieutenant departed from Dublin on Sunday evening for London. A few minutes before the steamer started, Lord Clancarty, Lord Castlemainc, and Lord Crofter, went on board. It was supposed that all four Peers were going over to vote on the Succession-Duties Bill. The Lords Justices were sworn in on Monday.
The Dublin Evening Mail of Wednesday announced that the Arch- bishop of Dublin, Mr. Blackburne, and Baron Greene, have resigned their seats at the Board of National Education.
At a meeting of the clergy of the diocese of Dublin, on Wednesday, Archbishop Whately is stated to have said that he was no longer a mem- ber of the National Board, as he had received a letter which he could re- gard in no other light than as a dismissal by the Government from the office which he had filled for twenty years. 'The clergymen present were surprised, some indignant ; and it was resolved, subsequently, to condemn the whole proceeding, in a memorial to the House of Lords.
The first meeting of a "Society for Protecting the Rights of Conscience" was held on Monday, in the Infant School, Kingston. The Archbishop of Dublin presided, and gave the following explanation of the scope of the Society. " We are entirely unconnected with conversions, except so far as converts may be exposed to persecutions, for conscience' sake. We enter into no connexion with any society for diffusing religious knowledge of any kind. By rights, we understand not necessarily that every one is right in the re- ligion that he adopts, but that his neighbours have no right to interfere with him. We merely maintain that a man has a right, not necessarily a moral right, nor a right in point of judgment, but a civil right, to worship God according to his own conscience, without suffering any hardships at the hands of his neighbours for so doing. We limit ourselves entirely to those descriptions of persecution in which the law can give no relief. As for assaults and violence of any kind, where the law provides and holds out a remedy, we leave all persons to seek that remedy for themselves; and we do not undertake to guard, or to remunerate, or to compensate any persons who are exposed to obloquy, to curses, denunciations of Divine vengeance uttered by men, to ridicule, or to any sort of an- noyance of that kind. They should be taught to bear it and to support it with joy and satisfaction through Divine help, and rejoicing that they are counted worthy to suffer in the good cause. But when attempts are made to compel men to conform to what they do not conscientiously believe, by the fear of starvation, by turning them out of employment when they are honest and industrious labourers, by refusing to buy and sell or hold any intercourse with them, then I think it is, and then only, that a society like this ought to come forward, and that all persons, whatever religion they may be of, or whether they are of any religion at all or not, in a feeling of humanity and justice, ought to look with a favourable eye on such a so- ciety as yours, provided it keep itself within its own proper bounds."
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