I have often endeavoured to reflect upon the causes which, from time to time, raised such a clamour against the Catholics, and I think the following are among the most conspicuous: 1. Historical recollections of the cruelties inflicted upon the Protestants. 2. Theological differences. 3. A belief that the Catholics are unfriendly to liberty. 4. That their morality is not good. 5. That they meditate the destruction of the Protestant Church. distant idea of personal cruelty to Mr. | parliament, are elected to the same Petre. This is only to say that he lives office, live together without hatred or in the nineteenth, instead of the six-friction, under equal laws. Who can teenth century, and that he is as intol- see and know these things, and say that erant in religious matters as the state the Catholic religion is unchangeable of manners existing in his age will and unchanged? permit. Is it not the same spirit which wounds the pride of a fellow-creature on account of his faith, or which casts his body into the flames? Are they anything else but degrees and modifications of the same principle? The minds of these two men no more differ because they differ in their degrees of punishment, than their bodies differ because one wore a doublet in the time of Mary, and the other wears a coat in the reign of George. I do not accuse them of intentional cruelty and injustice: I am sure there are very many excellent men who would be shocked if they could conceive themselves to be guilty of anything like cruelty; but they innocently give a wrong name to the bad spirit which is within them, and think they are tolerant, because they are not as intolerant as they could have 8. A vindictive spirit or love of punbeen in other times, but cannot be now.ishing others, who offend our self-love The true spirit is to search after God by presuming, on important points, to and for another life with lowliness of entertain opinions opposite to our own. heart; to fling down no man's altar, to 9. Stupid compliance with the opinpunish no man's prayer; to heap no pen-ions of the majority. alties and no pains on those solemn supplications which, in divers tongues, and in varied forms, and in temples of a thousand shapes, but with one deep sense of human dependence, men pour forth to God. 6. An unprincipled clamour by men who have no sort of belief in the danger of emancipation, but who make use of No Popery as a political engine. 7. A mean and selfish spirit of denying to others the advantages we ourselves enjoy. 10. To these I must, in justice and candour, add, as a tenth cause, a real apprehension on the part of honest and reasonable men, that it is dangerous to grant further concessions to the Catholics. It is completely untrue that the To these various causes I shall make Catholic religion is what it was three a short reply, in the order in which I centuries ago, or that it is unchange-have placed them. able and unchanged. These are mere 1. Mere historical recollections are words, without the shadow of truth to very miserable reasons for the continsupport them. If the Pope were to uation of penal and incapacitating address a bull to the kingdom of Ire-laws, and one side has as much to land, excommunicating the Duke of recollect as the other. York, and cutting him off from the succession, for his Protestant effusion in the House of Lords, he would be laughed at as a lunatic in all the Catholic chapels in Dublin. The Catholics would not now burn Protestants as heretics. In many parts of Europe, Catholics and Protestants worship in one church-Catholics at eleven, Protestants at one; they sit in the same 2. The State has nothing to do with questions purely theological. 3. It is ill to say this in a country whose free institutions were founded by Catholics, and it is often said by men who care nothing about free institutions. 4. It is not true. 5. Make their situation so comfortable, that it will not be worth their while to attempt an enterprise so desperate. 10. Of the existence of such a class of No Poperists as this, it would be the height of injustice to doubt, but I confess it excites in me a very great degree of astonishment. It is a very pleasant thing to trample upon Catholics, and it is also a very pleasant thing to have an immense num 6. This is an unfair political trick, because it is too dangerous: it is spoil-ber of pheasants running about your ing the table in order to win the game. woods; but there come thirty or forty The 7th and 8th causes exercise a poachers in the night, and fight with great share of influence in every act of thirty or forty game-preservers; some intolerance. The 9th must, of course, are killed, some fractured, some scalped, comprehend the greatest number. some maimed for life. Poachers are caught up and hanged; a vast body of hatred and revenge accumulates in the neighbourhood of the great man; and he says, "The sport is not worth the candle. The preservation of game is a very agreeable thing, but I will not sacrifice the happiness of my life to it. This amusement, like any other, may be purchased too dearly." So it is with the Irish Protestants; they are finding out that Catholic exclusion may be purchased too dearly. Maimed cattle, fired ricks, threatening letters, barricadoed houses,-to endure all this, is to purchase superiority at too dear a rate; and this is the inevitable state of two parties, the one of whom are unwilling to relinquish their ancient monopoly of power, while the other party have, at length, discovered their strength, and are determined to be free. Suppose, after a severe struggle, you put the Irish down, if they are mad and foolish enough to recur to open violence; yet are the retarded industry, and the misapplied energies of so many millions of men, to go for nothing? Is it possible to forget all the wealth, peace, and happiness which are to be sacrificed for twenty years to come, to these pestilential and disgraceful squabbles? Is there no horror in looking forward to a long period in which men, instead of ploughing and spinning, will curse and hate, and burn and murder? There seems to me a sort of injustice and impropriety in our deciding at all Gentlemen (with the best intentions, upon the Catholic question. It should I am sure) meet together in a county be left to those Irish Protestants whose town, and enter into resolutions that shutters are bullet-proof; whose din-no further concessions are to be made ner-table is regularly spread with knife, to the Catholics; but if you will not let fork, and cocked pistol; salt-cellar and them into Parliament, why not allow powder-flask. Let the opinion of those them to be king's counsel, or sergeantspersons be resorted to, who sleep in at-law? Why are they excluded by sheet-iron nightcaps; who have fought law from some corporations in Ireland, so often and so nobly before their scul- and admissible, though not admitted, lery-door, and defended the parlour to others? I think, before such general passage as bravely as Leonidas de-resolutions of exclusion are adopted, fended the pass of Thermopyla. The Irish Protestant members see and know the state of their own country. Let their votes decide the case. We are quiet and at peace; our homes may be defended with a feather, and our doors fastened with a pin; and, as ignorant of what armed and insulted Popery is, as we are of the state of New Zealand, we pretend to regulate by our clamours the religious factions of Ireland. A great majority of Irish members voted for Catholic Emancipation. and the rights and happiness of so many millions of people disposed of, it would be decent and proper to obtain some tolerable information of what the present state of the Irish Catholics is, and of the vast number of insignificant offices from which they are excluded. Keep them from Parliament if you think it right, but do not, therefore, exclude them from anything else, to which you think Catholics may be fairly admitted without danger; and as to their content or discontent, there can be no sort of reason why discon tent should not be lessened, though it take the following enumeration of cannot be removed. some of their most learned and care any suffered death in England for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion since the Reformation: The whole number of Catholics who have Henry VIII. Total . 59 204 25 23 8 319 You are shocked by the present vio-ful writers :lence and abuse used by the Irish Association by whom are they driven to it? and whom are you to thank for it? Is there a hope left to them? Is any term of endurance alluded to,scope or boundary to their patience? Is the minister waiting for opportunities? Have they reason to believe that they are wished well to by the greatest of the great? Have they brighter hopes in another reign? Is there one clear spot in the horizon? anything that you have left to them, but that disgust, Henry VIII., with consummate imhatred, and despair, which, breaking partiality, burnt three Protestants and out into wild eloquence, and acting hanged four Catholics for different upon a wild people, are preparing every errors in religion on the same day, and day a mass of treason and disaffection, at the same place. Elizabeth burnt which may shake this empire to its very centre? and you may laugh at Daniel O'Connell, and treat him with contempt, and turn his metaphors into ridicule; but Daniel has, after all, a great deal of real and powerful eloquence; and a strange sort of misgiving sometimes comes across me, that Daniel and the Doctor are not quite so great fools as many most respectable country clergymen believe them to be. two Dutch Anabaptists for some theological tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly pleading with the queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against popish connection, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the disperser of the book. Camden saw it done. Warburton properly says it exceeds in cruelty anything done by Charles I. On the You talk of their abuse of the Re- 4th of June, Mr. Elias Thacker and formation-but is there any end to the Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the obloquy and abuse with which the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at Catholics are upon every point, and St. Edmund's-bury, for dispersing from every quarter, assailed? Is there books against the Common Prayer. any one folly, vice, or crime, which the With respect to the great part of the blind fury of Protestants does not Catholic victims, the law was fully and lavish upon them? and do you suppose literally executed: after being hanged all this is to be heard in silence, and up, they were cut down alive, dismemwithout retaliation? Abuse as much bered, ripped up, and their bowels as you please, if you are going to burnt before their faces; after which emancipate; but if you intend to do they were beheaded and quartered. nothing for the Catholics but to call The time employed in this butchery them names, you must not be out of was very considerable, and, in one temper if you receive a few ugly appel-instance, lasted more than half an lations in return. The great object of men who love party better than truth, is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors; but what can be more flagrantly unjust than to take our notions of history only from the conquering and triumphant party? If you think the Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants, hour. The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part of these men were put to death for political, not for religious crimes. That is, a law is first passed, making it high treason for a priest to exercise his function in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt, this is not religious persecution, but an offence against the state. We are, I hope, all too busy to need any he was so cruelly rent and torn, that answer to such childish, uncandid reasoning as this. he expected to expire under the torment. While under the rack, he called The total number of those who continually upon God. In the reign suffered capitally in the reign of Eliza- of the Protestant Edward VI., Joan beth, is stated by Dodd, in his Church Knell was burnt to death, and the year History*, to be one hundred and nine-after, George Parry was burnt also. nine; further inquiries made their In 1575, two Protestants, Peterson and number to be two hundred and four: Turwort (as before stated) were burnt fifteen of these were condemned for to death by Elizabeth. In 1589, under denying the queen's supremacy; one the same queen, Lewes, a Protestant, hundred and twenty-six for the exercise was burnt to death at Norwich, where of priestly functions; and the others Francis Kett was also burnt for relifor being reconciled to the Catholic gious opinions, in 1589, under the same faith, or for aiding and assisting priests. great queen; who, in 1591, hanged In this list, no person is included who the Protestant Hacket for heresy, in was executed for any plot, real or Cheapside, and put to death Greenimaginary, except eleven, who suffered wood, Barrow, and Penry, for being for the pretended plot of Rheims; a Brownists. Southwell, a Catholic, was plot, which, Dr. Milner justly observes, racked ten times during the reign of was so daring a forgery, that even this sister of bloody Queen Mary. In Camden allows the sufferers to have 1592, Mrs. Ward was hanged, drawn, been political victims. Besides these, and quartered, for assisting a Catholic mention is made, in the same work, of priest to escape in a box. Mrs. Lyne ninety Catholic priests, or laymen, who suffered the same punishment for hardied in prison in the same reign. bouring a priest; and in 1586, Mrs. "About the same time," he says, "I Clitheroe, who was accused of relieving find fifty gentlemen lying prisoners in a priest, and refused to plead, was York Castle; most of them perished pressed to death in York Castle; a there, of vermin, famine, hunger, thirst, sharp stone being placed underneath dirt, damp, fever, whipping, and broken her back. hearts, the inseparable circumstances Have not Protestants persecuted both of prisons in those days. These were Catholics and their fellow Protestants every week, for a twelvemonth together, in Germany, Switzerland, Geneva, dragged by main force to hear the France, Holland, Sweden, and Engestablished service performed in the land? Look to the atrocious punishCastle chapel." The Catholics were ment of Leighton, under Laud, for frequently, during the reign of Eliza- writing against prelacy: first his ear beth, tortured in the most dreadful was cut off, then his nose slit; then the manner. In order to extort answers other ear cut off, then whipped, then from Father Campian, he was laid on whipped again. Look to the horrible the rack, and his limbs stretched a cruelties exercised by the Protestant little, to show him, as the executioner Episcopalians on the Scottish Presbytermed it, what the rack was. He per-terians, in the reign of Charles II, of sisted in his refusal; then for several days successively, the torture was increased, and on the last two occasions, The total number of sufferers in the whom 8000 are said to have perished in that persecution. Persecutions of Protestants by Protestants, are amply detailed by Chandler, in his History of reign of Queen Mary, varies, I believe, from Persecution; by Neale, in his History 200 in the Catholic to 280 in the Protestant of the Puritans; by Laing, in his accounts. I recommend all young men who History of Scotland; by Penn, in his wish to form some notion of what answer Life of Fox; and in Brandt's History the Catholics have to make, to read Milner's "Letters to a Prebendary," and to follow of the Reformation in the Low Counthe line of reading to which his references tries; which furnishes many very lead. They will then learn the importance terrible cases of the sufferings of the of that sacred maxim, Audi alteram partem. Anabaptists and Remonstrants, In There are, however, grievous faults on both sides: and as there are a set of men, who, not content with retaliating upon Protestants, deny the persecuting spirit of the Catholics, I would ask them what they think of the following code, drawn up by the French Catholics carried into execution for one hundred years, and as late as the year 1765, and not repealed till 1782. 1560, the parliament of Scotland decreed, at one and the same time, the establishment of Calvinism, and the punishment of death against the ancient religion: "With such indecent haste (says Robertson) did the very persons who had just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to imitate their ex-against the French Protestants, and ample.' Nothing can be so absurd as to suppose, that in barbarous ages the excesses were all committed by one religious party, and none by the other. "Any Protestant clergyman remainThe Huguenots of France burnt ing in France three days, without churches and hung priests wherever coming to the Catholic worship, to be they found them. Froumenteau, one punished with death. If a Protestant of their own writers, confesses, that in sends his son to a Protestant schoolthe single province of Dauphiny they master for education, he is to forfeit killed two hundred and twenty priests, 250 livres a month, and the schooland one hundred and twelve friars. master who receives him, 50 livres. If In the Low Countries, wherever Van- they sent their children to any seminary demerk, and Sonoi, lieutenants of the abroad, they were to forfeit 2000 livres, Prince of Orange, carried their arms, and the child so sent became incapable they uniformly put to death, and in of possessing property in France. To cold blood, all the priests and religious celebrate Protestant worship, exposed they could lay their hands on. The the clergyman to a fine of 2800 livres. Protestant Servetus was put to death The fine for a Protestant for hearing by the Protestants of Geneva, for it, was 1300 livres. If any Protestant denying the doctrine of the Trinity, as denied the authority of the Pope in the Protestant Gentilis was, on the France, his goods were seized for the same score, by those of Berne; add to first offence, and he was hanged for the these, Felix Mans, Rotman, and Bar- second. If any Common Prayer-book, nevald. Of Servetus, Melanchthon, the or book of Protestant worship, be mildest of men, declared that he de- found in the possession of any Protestserved to have his bowels pulled out, ant, he shall forfeit 20 livres for the and his body torn to pieces. The last first offence, 40 livres for the second, fires of persecution which were lighted and shall be imprisoned at pleasure for in England, were by Protestants. Bar- the third. Any person bringing from tholomew Legate, an Arian, was burnt beyond sea, or selling, any Protestant by order of King James in Smithfield, books of worship, to forfeit 100 livres. on the 18th of March, 1612; on the Any magistrates may search Protestant 11th of April, in the same year, Edward houses for such articles. Any person, Weightman was burnt at Lichfield, by required by a magistrate to take an order of the Protestant Bishop of Lich- oath against the Protestant religion, field and Coventry; and this man was, and refusing, to be committed to prison, I believe, the last person who was burnt and if he afterwards refuse again, to in England for heresy. There was suffer forfeiture of goods. Any person, another condemned to the fire for the sending any money over sea to the same heresy, but, as pity was excited support of a Protestant seminary, to by the constancy of these sufferers, it forfeit his goods, and be imprisoned at was thought better to allow him to the king's pleasure. Any person going linger on a miserable life in Newgate. over sea, for Protestant education, to Fuller, who wrote in the reign of forfeit goods and lands for life. The Charles II., and was a zealous Church vessel to be forfeited which conveyed of England man, speaking of the burn-any Protestant woman or child over ings in question, says, "It may appear sea, without the king's licence. Any that God was well pleased with them." person converting another to the Pro |