many good and well-meaning clergymen beside you, painting the Catholics in such detestable colours; two thirds, at least, of Europe are Catholics,-they are Christians, though mistaken Chris. tians; how can I possibly admit that any sect of Christians, and above all, that the oldest and the most numerous sect of Christians, are incapable of fulfilling the common duties and relations of life: though I do differ from them in many particulars, God forbid I should give such a handle to infidelity, and subscribe to such blasphemy against our common religion! that in so Protestant a country as Great Britain, the character of her parliaments and her cabinet could not be changed by the few Catholics who would ever find their way to the one or the other. But the power of the Crown is immeasurably greater than the power which the Catholics could obtain from any other species of authority in the state; and it does not follow, because the lesser degree of power is innocent, that the greater should be so too. As for the stress you lay upon the danger of a Catholic chancellor, I have not the least hesitation in saying, that his appointment Do you think mankind never change would not do a ten thousandth part of their opinions without formally exthe mischief to the English Church pressing and confessing that change? that might be done by a Methodistical When you quote the decisions of anchancellor of the true Clapham breed; cient Catholic councils, are you preand I request to know, if it is really so pared to defend all the decrees of very necessary that a chancellor should English convocations and universities be of the religion of the Church of since the reign of Queen Elizabeth? I England, how many chancellors you could soon make you sick of your unhave had within the last century who candid industry against the Catholics, have been bred up in the Presbyterian and bring you to allow that it is better religion? And again, how many you to forget times past, and to judge and have had who notoriously have been be judged by present opinions and without any religion at all? present practice. I must beg to be excused from explaining and refuting all the mistakes about the Catholics made by my Lord Redesdale; and I must do that nobleman the justice to say, that he has been treated with great disrespect. Could anything be more indecent than to make it a morning lounge in Dublin to call upon his Lordship, and to cram him with Arabian-night stories about the Catholics? Is this proper behaviour to the representative of Majesty, the child of Themis, and the keeper of the conscience in West Britain? Who Why are you to suppose that eligibility and election are the same thing, and that all the cabinet will be Catholics whenever all the cabinet may be Catholics? You have a right, you say, to suppose an extreme case, and to argue upon it so have I: and I will suppose that the hundred Irish members will one day come down in a body, and pass a law compelling the King to reside in Dublin. I will suppose that the Scotch members, by a similar stratagem, will lay England under a large contribution of meal and sulphur: no measure is without objec-ever reads the Letters of the Catholic tion, if you sweep the whole horizon Bishops, in the Appendix to Sir John for danger; it is not sufficient to tell Hippesly's very sensible book, will see me of what may happen, but you must to what an excess this practice must show me a rational probability that it have been carried with the pleasing will happen after all, I might, con- and Protestant nobleman whose name trary to my real opinion, admit all I have mentioned, and from thence your dangers to exist; it is enough for I wish you to receive your answer me to contend, that all other dangers about excommunication, and all the taken together are not equal to the trash which is talked against the danger of losing Ireland from disaffec- Catholics. tion and invasion. : I am astonished to see you, and A sort of notion has, by some means or another, crept into the world, that world. Did the kings of Prussia ever refuse to employ a Catholic? Would Frederick the Great have rejected an able man on this account? We have seen Prince Czartorinski, a Catholic secretary of state in Russia; in former times, a Greek patriarch and an apostolic vicar acted together in the most perfect harmony in Venice; and we have seen the Emperor of Germany in modern times entrusting the care of his person and the command of his guard to a Protestant Prince, Ferdinand of Wirtemberg. But what are all these things to Mr. Perceval? He has looked at human nature from the top of Hampstead Hill, and has not a thought beyond the little sphere of his own vision. "The snail," say the Hindoos, "sees nothing but his own shell, and thinks it the grandest palace in the universe." difference of religion would render quitted by a Catholic congregation; men unfit to perform together the and I will venture to say that the Swiss offices of common and civil life: that Catholics were more bigoted to their Brother Wood and Brother Grose religion than any people in the whole could not travel together the same circuit if they differed in creed, nor Cockell and Mingay be engaged in the same cause if Cockell was a Catholic and Mingay a Muggletonian. It is supposed that Huskisson and Sir Harry Englefield would squabble behind the Speaker's chair about the Council of Lateran, and many a turnpike bill miscarry by the sarcastical controversies of Mr. Hawkins Brown and Sir John Throckmorton upon the real presence. I wish I could see some of these symptoms of earnestness upon the subject of religion; but it really seems to me that, in the present state of society, men no more think about inquiring concerning each other's faith than they do concerning the colour of each other's skins. There may have been times in England when the quarter sessions would have been disturbed by theological polemics: but now, after a Catholic justice had once been seen on the bench and it had been clearly ascertained that he spoke English, had no tail, only a single row of teeth, and that he loved port wine, after all the scandalous and infamous reports of his physical conformation had been clearly proved to be false, he would be reckoned a jolly fellow, and very superior in flavour to a sly Presbyterian. Nothing, in fact, can be more uncandid and unphilosophical * than to say that a man has a tail, because you cannot agree with him upon religious subjects; it appears to be ludicrous: but I am convinced it has done infinite mischief to the Catholics, and made a very serious impression upon the minds of many gentlemen of large landed property. In talking of the impossibility of Catholic and Protestant living together with equal privilege under the same government, do you forget the Cantons of Switzerland? You might have seen there a Protestant congregation going into a church which had just been ⚫Vide Lord Bacon, Locke, and Descartes. I now take a final leave of this subject of Ireland; the only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance, a want of something difficult to unravel, and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar; it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man say, I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it, this mode of arguing upon the Catholic question I can well understand; but that any human being with an understanding two degrees elevated above that of an Anabaptist preacher, should conscientiously contend for the expediency and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in their present state, and of subjecting us to such tremendous peril in the present condition of the world, it is utterly out of my power to conceive. Such a measure as the Catholic question is entirely beyond the common game of politics; it is a measure in which all parties ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the place where and the stake for which they play. If Ireland is gone, where are jobs? where are reversions? where is my brother, Lord Arden? where are my dear and near factures perish, Ireland is more and relations? The game is up, and the more irritated, India is threatened, Speaker of the House of Commons will fresh taxes are accumulated upon the be sent as a present to the menagerie wretched people, the war is carried on at Paris. We talk of waiting from without it being possible to conceive particular considerations, as if centuries any one single object which a rational of joy and prosperity were before us: being can propose to himself by its in the next ten years our fate must be continuation; and in the midst of this decided; we shall know, long before unparalleled insanity we are told that that period, whether we can bear up the Continent is to be reconquered by against the miseries by which we are the want of rhubarb and plums.* À threatened, or not: and yet, in the very better spirit than exists in the English midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to people never existed in any people in abstain from the most certain means the world; it has been misdirected, of increasing our strength, and advised and squandered upon party purposes to wait for the remedy till the disease in the most degrading and scandalous is removed by death or health. And manner; they have been led to believe now, instead of the plain and manly that they were benefiting the commerce policy of increasing unanimity at home, of England by destroying the comby equalising rights and privileges, merce of America, that they were what is the ignorant, arrogant, and defending their Sovereign by perwicked system which has been pur-petuating the bigoted oppression of sued? Such a career of madness and their fellow-subjects; their rulers and of folly was, I believe, never run in so their guides have told them that they short a period. The vigour of the would equal the vigour of France by ministry is like the vigour of a grave-equalling her atrocity; and they have digger, the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which they make. There is nothing which it is worth while either to take or to retain, and a constant train of ruinous expeditions have been kept up. Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his country; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of neutrals into the enemy's ports; the neutrals who carried our manufactures we have not only excluded, but we have compelled them to declare war against us. It was our interest to make a good peace, or convince our own people that it could not be obtained; we have not made a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing but of the arrogance of the Foreign Secretary and all this has taken place in the short space of a year, because a King's Bench barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into Ministers of State, were determined to show country gentlemen that the late administration had no vigour. In the meantime commerce stands still, manu : gone on wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be; that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar houses, and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with Even Allen Park (accustomed as he has always been to be delighted by all adminis trations) says it is too bad; and Hall and Morris are said to have actually blushed in one of the divisions. monastic bigotry; that it should calmly and I did not think that the magnanigive itself up to be ruined by the flashy mity of Englishmen would ever stoop arrogance of one man, and the narrow to such degradations. fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, Longum vale! THE JUDGE THAT SMITES CONTRARY TO THE LAW. A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PETER, YORK BEFORE THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT. AND THE HON. SIR GEORGE SOWLEY HOLROYD, KNT. MARCH 28, 1824. ACTS, XXIII. 3. Sittest thou here to judge me after the law, and commandest thou me to be smitten, contrary to the law? Testament, the words of our Saviour and of St. Paul, when they contain any opinion, are always to be looked upon as lessons of wisdom to us, howWITH these bold words St. Paul re-ever incidentally they may have been pressed the unjust violence of that delivered, and however shortly they ruler, who would have silenced his may have been expressed. As their arguments, and extinguished his zeal words were to be recorded by inspired for the Christian faith: knowing well writers, and to go down to future ages, the misfortunes which awaited him, nothing can have been said without prepared for deep and various calamity, reflection and design. Nothing is to not ignorant of the violence of the be lost, everything is to be studied : a Jewish multitude, not unused to suffer, great moral lesson is often conveyed in not unwilling to die, he had not pre-a few words. Read slowly, think pared himself for the monstrous spec- deeply, let every word enter into your tacle of perverted Justice; but losing soul, for it was intended for your soul. that spirit to whose fire and firmness we owe the very existence of the Chris-condemnation of that man who smites tian faith, he burst into that bold rebuke which brought back the extravagance of power under the control of law, and branded it with the feelings of shame: "Sittest thou here to judge me after the law, and commandest thou me to be smitten, contrary to the law?" I would observe that in the Gospels, and the various parts of the New I take these words of St. Paul as a contrary to the law; as a praise of that man who judges according to the law; as a religious theme upon the importance of human Justice to the happiness of mankind and if it be that theme, it is appropriate to this place, and to the solemn public duties of the past and the ensuing week, over which some here present will preside, at which |