these Catholic follies can take anything by Catholic emancipation. The bill which emancipates, is not a bill to emancipate all Catholics; but only to emancipate those who will prove to us, by the most solemn obligations, that they are wise and moderate Catholics. I conclude, Sir, remarks which, upon such a subject, might be carried to almost any extent, with presenting to you a petition to Parliament, and recommending it for the adoption of this meeting. And upon this petition, I beg leave to say a few words: -I am the writer of the petition I lay before you; and I have endeavoured to make it as mild and moderate as I possibly could. If I had consulted my own opinions alone, I should have said, that the disabling laws against the Catholics were a disgrace to the statute-book, a single security to the security of that oath. If Catholics are formidable, are not Protestant members elected by Catholics formidable? But what will the numbers of the Catholics be? Five or six in one house, and ten or twelve in the other; and this I state upon the printed authority of Lord Harrowby, the tried and acknowledged friend of our Church, the amiable and revered patron of its poorest members. The Catholics did not rebel during the war carried on for a Catholic king in the year 1715, nor in 1745. The government armed the Catholics in the American war. The last rebellion no one pretends to have been a Catholic rebellion, the leaders were, with one exception, all Protestants. The king of Prussia, the emperor of Russia, do not complain of their Catholic subjects. The Swiss cantons, Catholic and Pro-and that every principle of justice, testant, live together in harmony and peace. Childish prophecies of danger are always made, and always falsified. The Church of England (if you will believe some of its members) is the most fainting, sickly, hysterical institution that ever existed in the world. Everything is to destroy it, everything to work its dissolution and decay. If money is taken for tithes, the Church of England is to perish. If six old Catholic peers, and twelve commoners, come into Parliament, these holy hypochondriacs tear their hair, and beat their breast, and mourn over the ruin of their Established Church! The Ranter of yesterday is cheerful and confident. The Presbyterian stands upon his principles. The Quaker is calm and contented. The strongest, and wisest, and best establishment in the world, suffers in the full vigour of I am sick of these little clerico-polimanhood all the fears and the trem-tical meetings. They bring a disgrace blings of extreme old age. A vast deal is said of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of the claims it continues to make. But what signify its claims, and of what importance is its spirit? The bill will refuse all office to Catholics, who will not, by the most solemn oath, restrain this spirit, and abjure their claims. What establishment can muzzle its fools and lunatics? No one who will not abjure prudence, and humanity, called for their immediate repeal; but he who wishes to do anything useful in this world, must consult the opinions of others as well as his own. I knew very well if I had proposed such a petition to my excellent friends, the Archdeacon and Mr. William Vernon, it would not have suited the mildness and moderation of their character, that they should accede to it; and I knew very well, that without the authority of their names, I could have done nothing. The present petition, when proposed to them by me, met, as I expected, with their ready and cheerful compliance. But though I propose this petition as preferable to the other, I should infinitely prefer that we do nothing, and disperse without coming to any resolution. upon us and upon our profession, and make us hateful in the eyes of the laity. The best thing we could have done, would have been never to have met at all. The next best thing we can do (now we are met), is to do nothing. The third choice is to take my petition. The fourth, last, and worst, to adopt your own. The wisest thing I have heard here to-day, is the proposition of Mr. Chaloner, that we should burn lasting religious peace for these kingdoms, the extravagance of over-heated minds, or the studied insolence of men who intend mischief, may be equally overlooked. both petitions, and ride home. Here | vented by the intemperate conduct of we are, a set of obscure country some few members of that persuasion; clergymen, at the "Three Tuns," at that in the great business of framing a Thirsk, like flies on the chariot-wheel; perched upon a question of which we can neither see the diameter, nor control the motion, nor influence the moving force. What good can such meetings do? They emanate from local conceit, advertise local ignorance; make men, who are venerable by their profession, ridiculous by their pretensions, and swell that mass of paper lumber, which, got up with infinite rural bustle, and read without being heard in Parliament, are speedily consigned to merited contempt. A PETITION Proposed by the Rev. Sydney Smith, at a WE, the undersigned, being clergymen We beg you to inquire, whether all those statutes, however wise and necessary in their origin, may not now (when the Church of England is rooted in the public affection, and the title to the throne undisputed) be wisely and sufely repealed. If your Honourable House should, in your wisdom, determine that all these laws, which are enacted against the Roman Catholics, cannot with safety and advantage be repealed, we then venture to express an hope, that such disqualifying laws alone will be suffered to remain, which you consider to be clearly required for the good of the Church and State. We feel the blessing of our own religious liberty, and we think it a serious duty to extend it to others, in every degree in which sound discretion will permit. NOTE. This meeting was very numerously attended by the clergy. Mr. Archdeacon Wrangham and the Reverend William Vernon Harcourt (son of the late Archbishop of York), a very enlightened and liberal man, were the only persons who supported the Petition. CATHOLIC CLAIMS. A Speech at a Meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding of Yorkshire, held at Beverley, in that Riding, on Monday, April 11, 1825, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament, &c.* We are steadfast friends to that Church of which we are members, and [From the Yorkshire Herald.] we wish no law repealed which is really MR. ARCHDEACON, -It is very disessential to its safety; but we submit agreeable to me to differ from so many to the superior wisdom of your Honour-worthy and respectable clergymen here able House, whether that Church is not sufficiently protected by its antiquity, by its learning, by its piety, and by that moderate tenor which it knows so well how to preserve amidst the opposite excesses of mankind-the indifference of one age, and the fanaticism of another. It is our earnest hope, that any indulgence you might otherwise think it expedient to extend to the Catholic subjects of this realm, may not be pre assembled, and not only to differ from them, but, I am afraid, to stand alone among them. I would much rather vote in majorities, and join in this, or any other political chorus, than to stand unassisted and alone, as I am now doing. I dislike such meetings for I was left at this meeting in a minority of one. A poor clergyman whispered to me, that he was quite of my way of thinking, but had nine children. I begged he would remain a Protestant. 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. A 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 per wicked system which has been pur-petuating the bigoted oppression of sued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a gravedigger, 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 their fellow-subjects; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity; and they have 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 pa tience. 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 a'l adminis trations) says it is too bad; and Hail 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! faith is kept with heretics? Do not the Catholics and Protestants in the kingdom of the Netherlands meet in one common Parliament? Could they pursue a common purpose, have common friends, and common enemies, if there were a shadow of truth in this doctrine imputed to the Catholics ? The religious affairs of this last kingdom are managed with the strictest impartiality to both sects; ten Catholics and ten Protestants (gentlemen need not look so much surprised to hear it) positively meet together, Sir, in the same room. They constitute what is called the religious committee for the kingdom of the Netherlands, and so extremely desirous are they of preserving the strictest impartiality, that they have chosen a Jew for their secretary. Their conduct has been unimpeachable and unimpeached; the two sects are at peace with each other; and the doctrine, that no faith is kept with heretics, would, I assure you, be very little credited at Amsterdam or the Hague, cities as essentially Protestant as the town of Beverley. Wretched is our condition, and still more wretched the condition of Ireland, if the Catholic does not respect his oath. He serves on grand and petty juries in both countries; we trust our lives, our liberties, and our properties, to his conscientious reverence of an oath, and yet, when it suits the purposes of party to bring forth this argument, we say he has no respect for oaths. The right to a landed estate of 3000l. per annum was decided last week, in York, by a jury, the foreman of which was a Catholic; does any human being harbour a thought, that this gentleman, whom we all know and respect, would, under any circumstances, have thought more lightly of the obligation of an oath than his Protestant brethren of the box? We all disbelieve these arguments of Mr. A. the Catholic, and of Mr. B. the Catholic; but we believe them of Catholics in general, of the abstract Catholics, of the Catholic of the Tiger Inn, at Beverley, the formidable unknown Catholic, that is so apt to haunt our clerical meetings. I observe that some gentlemen who argue this question are very bold about other offices, but very jealous lest Catholic gentlemen should become justices of the peace. If this jealousy be justifiable anywhere, it is justifiable in Ireland, where some of the best and most respectable magistrates are Catholics. It is not true that the Roman Catholic religion is what it was. I meet that assertion with a plump denial. The Pope does not dethrone kings, nor give away kingdoms, does not extort money, has given up, in some instances, the nomination of bishops to Catholic Princes, in some I believe to Protestant Princes: Protestant worship is now carried on at Rome. In the Low Countries, the seat of the Duke of Alva's cruelties, the Catholic tolerates the Protestant, and sits with him in the same Parliament-the same in Hungary-the same in France. The first use which even the Spanish people made of their ephemeral liberty was to destroy the Inquisition. It was destroyed also by the mob of Portugal. I am so far from thinking the Catholic not to be more tolerant than he was, that I am much afraid the English, who gave the first lesson of toleration to mankind, will very soon have a great deal to learn from their pupils. Some men quarrel with the Catholics, because their language was violent in the Association; but a groan or two, Sir, after two hundred years of incessant tyranny, may surely be forgiven. A few warm phrases to compensate the legal massacre of a million of Irishmen are not unworthy of our pardon. All this hardly deserves the eternal incapacity of holding civil offices. Then they quarrel with the Bible Society; in other words, they vindicate that ancient tenet of their Church, that the Scriptures are not to be left to the unguided judgment of the laity. The objection to Catholics is, that they did what Catholics ought to do- and do not many prelates of our Church object to the Bible Society, and contend that the Scriptures ought not to be circulated without the comment of the Prayer Book and the Articles? If they are right, the Catho |