of the work; and his attempts to discover | He rests his credit with the world as a material errors in the remainder have man of labour-and he turns out to be uniformly failed in every particular. If it a careless inspector of proofs, and an might be assumed that there existed in the historical sloven. The species of talent book no faults, besides those which the scrutinising eye of Mr. Rose has discovered, which he pretends to is humble-and He has not done it might be justly deemed the most perfect he possesses it not. work that ever came from the press; for not that which all men may do, and which a single deviation from the strictest duty of every man ought to do, who rebukes an historian has been pointed out; while his superiors for not doing it. His instances of candour and impartiality pre-claims, too, it should be remembered, sent themselves in almost every page; and to these every-day qualities are by no Mr. Rose himself has acknowledged and means enforced with gentleness and applauded many of them."- (pp. 422-424.) humility. He is a braggadocio of minuteness-a swaggering chronologer; a man bristling up with small factsprurient with dateswantoning in obsolete evidence-loftily dull, and haughty in his drudgery; - and yet all this is pretence. Drawing is no very unusual power in animals; but he cannot draw:- he is not even the ox which he is so fond of being. In attempting to vilify Mr. Fox, he has only shown us that there was no labour from which that great man shrunk, and that no object connected with his history was too minute for his investigation. He has thoroughly convinced us that Mr. Fox was as industrious, and as accurate, as if these were the only qualities upon which he had ever rested his hope of fortune or of fame. Such, indeed, are the customary results when little people sit down to debase the characters of great men, and to exalt themselves upon the ruins of what they have pulled down. They only provoke a spirit of inquiry, which places every thing in its true light and magnitudeshows those who appear little to be still less, and displays new and unexpected excellence in others who were before known to excel. These are the usual consequences of such attacks. The fame of Mr. Fox has stood this, and will stand much ruder shocks.

These extracts from both books are sufficient to show the nature of Serjeant Heywood's examination of Mr. Rosethe boldness of this latter gentleman's assertions and the extreme inaccuracy of the researches upon which these assertions are founded. If any credit could be gained from such a book as Mr. Rose has published, it could be gained from accuracy alone. Whatever the execution of his book had been, the world would have remembered the infinite disparity of the two authors, and the long political opposition in which they lived-if that, indeed, can be called opposition, where the thunderbolt strikes, and the clay yields. They would have remembered also that Hector was dead; and that every cowardly Grecian could now thrust his spear into the hero's body. But still, if Mr. Rose had really succeeded in exposing the inaccuracy of Mr. Fox-if he could have fairly shown that authorities were overlooked, or slightly examined, or wilfully perverted-the incipient feel ings to which such a controversy had given birth must have yielded to the evidence of facts; and Mr. Fox, however qualified in other particulars, must have appeared totally defective in that laborious industry and scrupulous good faith so indispensable to every historian. But he absolutely comes out of the contest not worse even in a single tooth or nail-unvilified even by a wrong date— without one misnomer proved upon him -immaculate in his years and days of the month blameless to the most musty and limited pedant that ever yellowed himself amidst rolls and records.

But how fares it with his critic?

Non hiemes illam, non flabra neque imbres

Convellunt; immota manet, multosque per

annos

Multa virum volvens durando sæcula

vincit.

EISHOP OF LINCOLN'S

CHARGE.*

(E. REVIEW, 1813.)

▲ Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, at the Triennial Visitation of that Diocese in May, June, and July, 1812. By George Tomline, D.D. F.B.S. Lord Bishop of Lincoln. London. Cadell and Co. 4to.

England. No man can be fairly said to be permitted to enjoy his own worship who is punished for exercising that worship. His Lordship seems to have no other idea of punishment than lodging a man in the Poultry Compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or fining him a sum of money; - just as if incapacitating a man from enjoying the dignities and emoluments to which faith, may fairly aspire, was not fremen of similar condition, and other quently the most severe and galling of all punishments.

This limited idea of

ments in some branches of our law.

Ir is a melancholy thing to see a man clothed in soft raiment, lodged in a public palace, endowed with a rich portion of the product of other men's industry, the nature of punishment is the more using all the influence of his splendid extraordinary, as incapacitation is acsituation, however conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and inflame the tually one of the most common punishfary of his fellow creatures. These are the miserable results of that policy which The sentence of a court-martial frehas been so frequently pursued for thesequently purports that a man is rendered for ever incapable of serving his fifty years past, of placing men of mean or middling abilities in high ecclesias-Majesty, &c. &c.; and a person not in In ordinary times, it is holy orders, who performs the functions of a clergyman, is rendered for ever incapable of holding any prefer

tical stations.

of less importance who fills them; but when the bitter period arrives, in which the people must give up some of their darling absurdities;-when the senseless clamour, which has been carefully handed dora from father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged;-when it is of incaleulable importance to turn the people to a better way of thinking; the greatest impediments to all amelioration are too often found among those to whose counCols, at such periods, the country ought to look for wisdom and peuce. We will suppress, however, the feelings of indignation which such productions, from such men, naturally occasion. We will give the Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly sincere ;—we will sup. pose, that every argument he uses has not been used and refuted ten thousand times before; and we will sit down as patiently to defend the religions liberties of mankind, as the Reverend Prelate has done to abridge

them.

We must begin with denying the main position upon which the Bishop of Lincoln has built his reasoning The Catholic religion is not tolerated in

It is impossible to conceive the mischief hich this mean and cunning prelate did at tis period.

ment in the Church. There are indeed many species of offence for which no punishment more apposite and judicious could be devised. It would be rather extraordinary, however, if the Court, in passing such a sentence, incapacitation was not by them consiwere to assure the culprit, "that such dered as a punishment; that it was all governments, of determining who only exercising a right inherent in should be eligible for office and who toleration complete, because he sees a ineligible." His Lordship thinks the ercise of the Roman Catholic.worship. permission in the statutes for the exHe sees the permission but he does not choose to see the consequences to which they are exposed who avail themselves of this permission. It is the liberality of a father who says to a follow your own inclination. Judge son, "Do as you please, my dear boy; for yourself, you are free as air. But will cut you off with a shilling." We remember, if you marry that lady, I and frivolous statement, than the Bihave scarcely ever read a more solemn shop of Lincoln's antithetical distinction between persecution and the denial of political power.

"It is sometimes said, that Papists, being excluded from power, are consequently persecuted; as if exclusion from power and religious persecution were convertible terms. But surely this is to confound things totally distinct in their nature. Persecution inflicts positive punishment upon persons who hold certain religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish the renunciation and extinction of those tenets by forcible means: exclusion from power is entirely negative in its ope

tion, is more a controversy of words than things. That they are subject to some restraints, the Bishop will admit: the important question is, whether or not these restraints are necessary? For his Lordship will of course allow, that every restraint upon human liberty is an evil in itself; and can only be justified by the superior good which it can be shown to produce. My Lord's fears upon the subject of Catholic emancipation are conveyed in the following paragraph :

ration it only declares that those who hold certain opinions shall not fill certain situations; but it acknowledges men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. Per- "It is a principle of our constitution that secution compels men to adopt a prescribed the King should have advisers in the dis faith, or to suffer the loss of liberty, pro- charge of every part of his royal functions; perty, or even life: exclusion from power and is it to be imagined, that Papists prescribes no faith; it allows men to think would advise measures in support of the and believe as they please, without molest-cause of Protestantism? A similar observaation or interference. Persecution requires men to worship God in one and in no other way exclusion from power neither commands nor forbids any mode of Divine worship-it leaves the business of religion where it ought to be left, to every man's judgment and conscience. Persecution proceeds from a bigoted and sanguinary spirit of Intolerance; exclusion from power

is founded in the natural and rational principle of self-protection and self-preservation, equally applicable to nations and to individuals. History informs us of the mischievous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the expediency and necessity of the other."-(pp. 16, 17.)

tion may be applied to the two Houses of Parliament: would Popish peers, or Popish members of the House of Commons, enact laws for the security of the Protestant government? Would they not rather repeal the whole Protestant code, and make Popery again the established religion of the country?"-(p. 14.)

And these are the apprehensions which the clergy of the diocese have prayed my Lord to make public.

Kind Providence never sends an evil without a remedy:-and arithmetic is the natural cure for the passion of fear. If a coward can be made to We will venture to say, there is no count his enemies, his terrors may be one sentence in this extract which does reasoned with, and he may think of not contain either a contradiction, or ways and means of counteraction. Now, a mis-statement. For how can that might it not have been expedient that law acknowledge men to be perfectly the Reverend Prelate, before he had free to hold an opinion, which excludes alarmed his Country Clergy with the from desirable situations all who do idea of so large a measure as the repeal hold that opinion? How can that law of Protestantism, should have counted be said neither to molest nor inter- up the probable number of Catholics fere, which meets a man in every who would be seated in both Houses of branch of industry and occupation, to Parliament ? Does he believe that institute an inquisition into his reli- there would be ten Catholic Peers, and gious opinions? And how is the busi-thirty Catholic Commoners? ness of religion left to every man's admit double that number (and more. judgment and conscience, where so Dr. Duigenan himself would not ask,) powerful a bonus is given to one set of will the Bishop of Lincoln seriously religious opinions, and such a mark of assert, that he thinks the whole Proinfamy and degradation fixed upon all testant code in danger of repeal from other modes of belief? But this is such an admixture of Catholic legis. comparatively a very idle part of the lators as this? Does he forget, amid question. Whether the present condi- the innumerable answers which may tion of the Catholics is or is not to be be made to such sort of apprehensions, denominated a perfect state of tolera- what a picture he is drawing of the

But,

weakness and versatility of Protestant | then treating of them as if they deprinciples? that a handful of Catho- served the active and present attention lics, in the bosom of a Protestant legis- of serious men. But if no measure is lature, are to overpower the ancient to be carried into execution, and if no jealousies, the fixed opinions, the in- provision is safe in which the minute veterate habits of twelve millions of inspection of an ingenious man cannot people?—that the King is to apostatise, find the possibility of danger, then all the Clergy to be silent, and the Parlia- human action is impeded, and no ment be taken by surprise?-that the human institution is safe or comnation are to go to bed over night, and mendable. The King has the power to see the Pope walking arm in arm of pardoning, and so every species with Lord Castlereagh the next morn- of guilt may remain unpunished: he ng?-One would really suppose, from has a negative upon legislative acts, the Bishop's fears, that the civil defences and so no law may pass. None but of mankind were, like their military Presbyterians may be returned to the bulwarks, transferred, by superior skill House of Commons-aud so the Church and courage, in a few hours, from the of England may be voted down. The Tanquished to the victor-that the Scottish and Irish members may join destruction of a church was like the together in both Houses, and dissolve blowing up of a mine-deans, preben- both Unions. If probability is put out daries, churchwardens, and overseers, of sight and if, in the enumeration all up in the air in an instant. Does of dangers, it is sufficient to state any his Lordship really imagine, when the which, by remote contingency, may mere dread of the Catholics becoming happen, then is it time that we should legislators has induced him to charge begin to provide against all the host his clergy, and his agonised clergy to of perils which we have just enumeextort from their prelate the publication rated, and which are many of them as of the Charge, that the full and mature likely to happen, as those which the danger will produce less alarm, than Reverend Prelate has stated in his the distant suspicion of it has done in Charge. His Lordship forgets that the present instance?-that the Pro- the Catholics are not asking for election, testant writers, whose pens are now but for eligibility · not to be admitted up to the feather in ink, will, at any into the Cabinet, but not to be excluded future period, yield up their Church, from it. A century may elapse before without passion, pamphlet, or pug- any Catholic actually becomes a memnacity? We do not blame the Bishop ber of the Cabinet; and no event can of Lincoln for being afraid but we be more utterly destitute of probability, blame him for not rendering his fears than that they should gain an asceninteligible and tangible for not cir- dency there, and direct that ascendency curuscribing and particularising them against the Protestant interest. If the by some individual case-for not Bishop really wishes to know upon showing us how it is possible that the what our security is founded; it is Catholics (granting their intentions to upon the prodigious and decided superibe as bad as possible) should ever be ority of the Protestant interest in the able to ruin the Church of England. British nation, and in the United ParHis Lordship appears to be in a fog; liament. No Protestant King would ad, as daylight breaks in upon him, select such a Cabinet, or countenance be will be rather disposed to disown such measures; no man would be mad his panic. The noise he hears is not enough to attempt them; the English roaring-but braying; the teeth and Parliament and the English people the mane are all imaginary; there is would not endure it for a moment. No nothing but ears. It is not a lion that man indeed, but under the sanctity of Hops the way, but an ass. the mitre, would have ventured such an extravagant opinion.-Woe to him, if he had been only a Dean. But, in spite of his venerable office, we must

:

One method his Lordship takes, in handling this question, is, by pointing out dangers that are barely possible, and

express our decided belief, that his Lordship (by no means averse to a good bargain) would not pay down five pounds, to receive fifty millions for his posterity, whenever the majority of the Cabinet should be (Catholic emancipation carried) members of the Catholic religion. And yet, upon such terrors as these, which, when put singly to him, his better sense would laugh at, he has thought fit to excite his clergy to petition, and done all in his power to increase the mass of hatred against the Catholics.

sense, a dread of sacerdotal ambition. Those feelings, so generally diffused, and so clearly pronounced on all occasions, are our real bulwarks against the Catholic religion; and the real cause which makes it so safe for the best friends of the Church to diminish (by abolishing the Test Laws) so very fertile a source of hatred to the State. In the 15th page of his Lordship's Charge, there is an argument of a very curious nature.

"Let us suppose," says the Bishop of Lincoln, "that there had been no Test Laws, no disabling statutes, in the year 1745, when an attempt was made to overthrow the Protestant Government, and to place a Popish sovereign upon the throne of these kingdoms; and let us suppose that the leading men in the Houses of Parliament, that the ministers of state, and the commanders of our armies, had then been Papists. Will any one contend, that that formidable rebellion, supported as it was by a foreign enemy, would have been resisted with the same zeal, and suppressed with the same facility, as when all the measures were planned and executed by sincere Protestants ? "—(p. 15.)

And so his Lordship means to infer that it would be foolish to abolish the laws against the Catholics now, because it would have been foolish to have abolished them at some other period;

It is true enough, as his Lordship remarks, that events do not depend upon laws alone, but upon the wishes and intentions of those who administer these laws. But then his Lordship totally puts out of sight two considerations the improbability of Catholics ever reaching the highest offices of the state and those fixed Protestant opinions of the country, which would render any attack upon the Established Church so hopeless, and therefore so improbable. Admit a supposition (to us perfectly ludicrous, but still necessary to the Bishop's argument) that the Cabinet Council consisted entirely of Catholics, we should even then have no more fear of their making the English people Catholics, than we should have of a Cabinet of Butchers making the Hindoos eat beef. The Bishop has not stated the true and great security for any course of human actions. It is not the word of the law, nor the spirit of the Government, but the general way of thinking among the people, especially when that way of thinking is ancient, exercised upon high interests, and connected with striking passages in history. The Pro--the Spanish Armada was defeated testant Church does not rest upon the little narrow foundations where the Bishop of Lincoln supposes it to be placed if it did, it would not be worth saving. It rests upon the general opinion entertained by a free and reflecting people, that the doctrines of the Church are true, her pretensions moderate, and her exhortations useful. It is accepted by a people who have, from good taste, an abhorrence of sacerdotal mummery; and from good

- that a measure must be bad, because there was formerly a combination of circumstances, when it would have been bad.

His Lordship might, with almost equal propriety, debate what ought to be done if Julius Cæsar were about to make a descent upon our coasts; or lament the impropriety of emancipating the Catholics, because the Spanish Armada was putting to sea. The fact is, that Julius Cæsar is dead

in the reign of Queen Elizabeth-for half a century there has been no disputed succession-the situation of the world is changed-and, because it is changed, we can do now what we could not do then. And nothing can be more lamentable than to see this respectable Prelate wasting his resources in putting imaginary and inapplicable cases, and reasoning upon their solution, as if it had any thing to do with present affairs.