LETTER I.

In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the Pope is not landed — nor DEAR ABRAHAM, are there any curates sent out after A WORTHIER and better man than him-nor has he been hid at St. Alyourself does not exist; but I have ban's by the Dowager Lady Spencer always told you from the time of our -nor dined privately at Holland boyhood, that you were a bit of a House-nor been seen near Dropmore. goose. Your parochial affairs are gov- If these fears exist (which I do not erned with exemplary order and regu- believe), they exist only in the mind larity; you are as powerful in the of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; vestry as Mr. Perceval is in the House they emanate from his zeal for the of Commons, and, I must say, with Protestant interest; and, though they much more reason; nor do I know reflect the highest honour upon the any church where the faces and smock-delicate irritability of his faith, must frocks of the congregation are so clean, or their eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. There is another point, upon which I will do you ample justice; and that is, that the eyes so directed towards you are wide open; for the rustic has, in general, good principles, though he cannot control his animal habits; and, however loud he may snore, his face is perpetually turned toward the fountain of orthodoxy.

Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed, according to our ancient intimacy and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply to yours.

certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation: and, though the Pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the vigilance of our cruisers; and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil.

Exactly in the same manner, the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the

Foreign Office, turns out to be without | brotherhood have been able to persuade the shadow of a foundation: instead the country into a continuation of this of the angels and archangels, men- grossest of all absurdities, you have tioned by the informer, nothing was ten times the power which the Catholic discovered but a wooden image of clergy ever had in their best days. Lord Mulgrave, going down to Chat-Louis XIV., when he revoked the ham, as a head-piece for the Spanker Edict of Nantes, never thought of pregun-vessel it was an exact resem- venting the Protestants from fighting blance of his Lordship in his military his battles; and gained accordingly uniform; and therefore as little like a some of his most splendid victories by god as can well be imagined. the talents of his Protestant generals. No power in Europe, but yourselves, has ever thought for these hundred years past, of asking whether a bayonet is Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran; but whether it is sharp and well-tempered. A bigot delights in public ridicule; for he begins to think he is a martyr. I can promise you the full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of Europe to the other.

Having set your fears at rest, as to the extent of the conspiracy formed against the Protestant religion, I will now come to the argument itself.

You say these men interpret the Scriptures in an unorthodox manner, and that they eat their God.-Very likely. All this may seem very important to you, who live fourteen miles from a market town, and, from long residence upon your living, are become I am as disgusted with the nonsense a kind of holy vegetable; and, in a of the Roman Catholic religion as you theological sense, it is highly impor- can be and no man who talks such tant. But I want soldiers and sailors nonsense shall ever tithe the product for the state; I want to make a greater of the earth, nor meddle with the ecuse than I now can do of a poor coun- clesiastical establishment in any shape; try full of men; I want to render the-but what have I to do with the military service popular among the Irish; to check the power of France; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time will be nothing but a mass of French slaves: and then you, and ten other such boobies as yon, call out -"For God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland!

They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do! . . . They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!" I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are. What! when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined against this country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no religious persuasion; when the population of half the globe is up in arms against us; are we to stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop examines a candidate for holy orders? and to suffer no one to bleed for England who does not agree with you about the 2nd of Timothy? You talk about Catholics! If you and your

speculative nonsense of his theology, when the object is to elect the mayor of a county town, or to appoint a colonel of a marching regiment? Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the blockhead believes in all the Catholic nonsense of the real presence? I am sorry there should be such impious folly in the world, but I should be ten times a greater fool than he is, if I refused, in consequence of his folly, to lead him out against the enemies of the state. Your whole argument is wrong: the state has nothing whatever to do with theological errors which do not violate the common rules of morality, and militate against the fair power of the ruler: it leaves all these errors to you, and to such as you. You have every tenth porker in your parish for refuting them; and take care that you are vigilant, and logical in the task.

I love the Church as well as you do; but you totally mistake the nature of an establishment, when you contend

that it ought to be connected with the | Catholics of both kingdoms than had military and civil career of every indi- been done for them since the Reformavidual in the state. It is quite right tion. In 1778, the ministers said that there should be one clergyman to nothing about the royal conscience; every parish interpreting the Scriptures in 1733* no conscience; in 1804 no after a particular manner, ruled by a conscience; the common feeling of regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich humanity and justice then seem to proportion of haycocks and wheat- have had their fullest influence upon sheafs. When I have laid this foun- the advisers of the Crown but in dation for a rational religion in the 1807-a year, I suppose, eminently state-when I have placed ten thousand fruitful in moral and religious scruples well educated men in different parts of (as some years are fruitful in apples, the kingdom to preach it up, and com- some in hops)-it is contended by the pelled everybody to pay them, whether well-paid John Bowles, and by Mr. they hear them or not - I have taken Perceval (who tried to be well paid), such measures as I know must always that that is now perjury which we had procure an immense majority in favour hitherto called policy and benevolence! of the Established Church; but I can Religious liberty has never made go no further. I cannot set up a civil such a stride as under the reign of his inquisition, and say to one, you shall present Majesty; nor is there any not be a butcher, because you are not instance in the annals of our history, orthodox; and prohibit another from where so many infamous and damnabrewing, and a third from administer- ble laws have been repealed as those ing the law, and a fourth from defend-against the Catholics which have been ing the country. If common justice put an end to by him and then, at did not prohibit me from such a the close of this useful policy, his conduct, common sense would. The advisers discover that the very meaadvantage to be gained by quitting the heresy would make it shameful to abandon it; and men who had once left the Church would continue in such a state of alienation from a point of honour, and transmit that spirit to the latest posterity. This is just the effect your disqualifying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees, and Dr. Kippis; crowded the congregation of the Old Jewry to suffocation; and enabled every sublapsarian, and superlapsarian, and semi-pelagian clergyman, to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of a gentleman.

sures of concession and indulgence, or (to use my own language) the measures of justice, which he has been pursuing through the whole of his reign, are contrary to the oath he takes at its commencement! That oath binds his Majesty not to consent to any mea sure contrary to the interest of the Established Church: but who is to judge of the tendency of each particular measure? Not the King alone: it can never be the intention of this law that the King, who listens to the advice of his Parliament upon a road bill, should reject it upon the most important of all measures. Whatever You say the King's coronation oath be his own private judgment of the will not allow him to consent to any tendency of any ecclesiastical bill, he relaxation of the Catholic laws.-Why complies most strictly with his oath, not relax the Catholic laws as well as if he is guided in that particular point the laws against Protestant dissenters? by the advice of his Parliament, who If one is contrary to his oath, the other may be presumed to understand its must be so too; for the spirit of the tendency better than the King, or any oath is, to defend the Church establish- other individual. You say, if Parliament, which the Quaker and the Pres-ment had been unanimous in their byterian differ from as much or more than the Catholic; and yet his Majesty has repealed the Corporation and Test Act in Ireland, and done more for the

* These feelings of humanity and justice

were at some periods a little quickened by the representations of 40,000 armed volunteers.

opinion of the absolute necessity for | in making an impression upon Ireland, Lord Howick's bill, and the King had do you think we should hear anything thought it pernicious, he would have of the impediment of a coronation been perjured if he had not rejected it. I say, on the contrary, his Majesty would have acted in the most conscientious manner, and have complied most scrupulously with his oath, if he had sacrificed his own opinion to the opinion of the great council of the nation; because the probability was that such opinion was better than his own and upon the same principle, in common life, you give up your opinion to your physician, your lawyer, and your builder.

oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers, and such unheard-of nonsense, if the most distant prospect existed of conciliating the Catholics by every species even of the most abject concession? And yet, if your argument is good for anything, the coronation oath ought to reject, at such a moment, every tendency to conciliation, and to bind Ireland for ever to the crown of France.

I found in your letter the usual remarks about fire, fagot, and bloody Mary. Are you aware, my dear Priest, that there were as many persons put to death for religious opinions under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody Mary? The reign of the former was, to be sure, ten times as long, but I only mention the fact, merely to show you that something depends upon the age in which men live, as well as on their religious opinions. Three hundred years ago, men burnt and hanged each other for these opinions. Time has

You admit this bill did not compel the King to elect Catholic officers, but only gave him the option of doing so if he pleased; but you add, that the King was right in not trusting such dangerous power to himself or his successors. Now you are either to suppose that the King for the time being has a zeal for the Catholic establishment, or that he has not. If he has not, where is the danger of giving such an option? If you suppose that he may be influenced by such an admi-softened Catholic as well as Protestant: ration of the Catholic religion, why did his present Majesty, in the year 1804, consent to that bill which empowered the Crown to station ten thousand Catholic soldiers in any part of the kingdom, and placed them absolutely at the disposal of the Crown? If the King of England for the time being is a good Protestant, there can be no danger in making the Catholic eligible to anything if he is not, no power can possibly be so dangerous as that conveyed by the bill last quoted; to which, in point of peril, Lord Howick's bill is a mere joke. But the real fact is, one bill opened a door to his Majesty's advisers for trick, jobbing, and intrigue; the other did not.

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Besides, what folly to talk to me of an oath, which, under all possible circumstances, is to prevent the relaxation of the Catholic laws! for such a solemn appeal to God sets all conditions and contingencies at defiance. Suppose Bonaparte was to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials,

they both required it; though each perceives only his own improvement, and is blind to that of the other. We are all the creatures of circumstances. I know not a kinder and better man than yourself; but you (if you had lived in those times) would certainly have roasted your Catholic: and I promise you, if the first exciter of this religious mob had been as powerful then as he is now, you would soon have been elevated to the mitre. I do not go to the length of saying that the world has suffered as much from Protestant as from Catholic persecution; far from it: but you should remember the Catholics had all the power, when the idea first started up in the world that there could be two modes of faith; and that it was much more natural they should attempt to crush this diversity of opinion by great and cruel efforts, than that the Protestants should rage against those who differed from them, when the very basis of their system was complete freedom in all spiritual inatters.

I cannot extend my letter any fur- | rather die than take; and so the Cathother at present, but you shall soon hear lie is excluded from Parliament because from me again. You tell me I am a he will not swear that he disbelieves the party man. I hope I shall always be leading doctrines of his religion! The so, when I see my country in the hands Catholic asks you to abolish some of a pert London joker and a second-oaths which oppress him; your answer rate lawyer. Of the first, no other is, that he does not respect oaths. Then good is known than that he makes why subject him to the test of oaths? pretty Latin verses; the second seems The oaths keep him out of Parliament; to me to have the head of a coun- why, then, he respects them. Turn try parson, and the tongue of an Old which way you will, either your laws Bailey lawyer. are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are: but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in favour of a Dissenter.

If I could see good measures pursued, I care not a farthing who is in power; but I have a passionate love for common justice, and for common sense, and I abhor and despise every man who builds up his political fortune upon their ruin.

God bless you, reverend Abraham, and defend you from the Pope, and all of us from that administration who seek power by opposing a measure which Burke, Pitt, and Fox all considered as absolutely necessary to the existence of the country.

LETTER II.

I will not dispute with you whether the Pope be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I hope it is not so; because I am afraid it will induce his Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce several severe bills against popery, if that is the case; and though he will have the decency to appoint a previous committee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee will be garbled DEAR ABRAHAM, and the report inflammatory. Leaving THE Catholic not respect an oath! this to be settled as he pleases to settle why not? What upon earth has kept it, I wish to inform you, that previously him out of Parliament, or excluded to the bill last passed in favour of the him from all the offices whence he is Catholics, at the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, excluded, but his respect for oaths? and for his satisfaction, the opinions There is no law which prohibits a of six of the most celebrated of Catholic to sit in Parliament. There the foreign Catholic universities were could be no such law; because it is taken as to the right of the Pope to impossible to find out what passes in interfere in the temporal concerns of the interior of any man's mind. Sup- any country. The answer cannot pospose it were in contemplation to ex-sibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even clude all men from certain offices who in the mind of Baron Maseres; and contended for the legality of taking Dr. Rennel would be compelled to tithes: the only mode of discovering admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at that fervid love of decimation which I the very moment the question were know you to possess would be to tender put to him. To this answer might be you an oath against that damnable added also the solemn declaration doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual and signature of all the Catholics in man to take, abstract, appropriate, Great Britain. subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck, &c. if the Catholics admitted such a dan&c. &c., and every other animal that gerous dispensing power in the hands ever existed, which of course the law of the Pope; but they all deny it, and Yers would take care to enumerate. laugh at it, and are ready to abjure it Now this oath I am sure you would in the most decided manner you can

I should perfectly agree with you,