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. 1. Mere historical recollections are 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 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 create a general impression of justice, if the property of the Residentiaries, it be not what common honesty requires might have been annexed to the from any Ministry, is what common smallest livings of the neighbourhood sense points out to them. It is strength where the Prebendal estate was situated. and duration it is the only power The interval which has elapsed since which is worth having-in the struggle the first furious demand for Reform of parties it gives victory, and is remem- would have enabled the Commissioners bered, and goes down to other times. to adopt a scheme of much greater moderation than might perhaps have been possible at the first outbreak of popular indignation against the Church; and this sort of distribution would have A mixture of different orders of Clergy in the Commission would at least have secured a decent attention to the representations of all; for of seven communications made to the given much more general satisfaction Commission by Cathedrals, and in-than the plan adopted by Commisvolving very serious representations respecting high interests, six were totally disregarded, and the receipt of the papers not even acknowledged. sioners; for though money, in the esti mation of philosophers, has no ear mark, it has a very deep one in the opinion of the multitude. The riches of the Church of Durham were most hated in the neighbourhood of Durham; and there such changes as I have pointed out would have been most gladly received, and would have conciliated the greatest favour to the Church. The people of Kent cannot see why their Kentish Estates, given to the Cathedral of Canterbury, are to augment livings in Cornwall. The Citizens of London see some of their ministers starving in the city, and the profits of the extinguished Prebends sent into Northumberland. These feelings may be very unphiloso I cannot help thinking that the Commissioners have done a great deal too much. Reform of the Church was absolutely necessary-it cannot be avoided, and ought not to be postponed; but I would have found out what really gave offence, have applied a remedy, removed the nuisance, and done no more. I would not have operated so largely on an old, and (I fear) a decaying building. I would not, in days of such strong political excitement, and amidst such a disposition to universal change, have done one thing more than was absolutely necessary, to remove the odium against the Estab-phical, but they are the feelings of the lishment, the only sensible reason for mass; and to the feelings of the mass issuing any Commission at all; and the Reforms of the Church ought to be the means which I took to effect this directed. In this way the evil would should have agreed as much as possible have been corrected where it was most with institutions already established. seen and noticed. All patronage would For instance, the public were disgusted have been left as it was. One order with the spectacle of rich Prebendaries of the Church would not have plundered enjoying large incomes, and doing little the other. Nor would all the Caor nothing for them. The real remedy thedrals in England have been subfor this would have been to have com-jected to the unconciliating empire, and bined wealth and labour; and as each unwearied energy of one man. of the present Prebendaries fell off, to Instead of this quiet and cautious have annexed the stall to some large mode of proceeding, all is change, and populous parish. A Prebendary fusion, and confusion. New Bishops, of Canterbury or of St. Paul's, in his new Dioceses, confiscated Prebendspresent state, may make the Church Clergymen changing Bishops, and unpopular; but place him as Rector Bishops Clergymen mitres in Manof a Parish, with 8000 or 9000 people, chester, Gloucester turned into Bristol. and in a Benefice of little or no value, Such a scene of revolution and comhe works for his wealth, and the mutation as has not been seen since odium is removed. In like man- the days of Ireton and Cromwell! and ner the Prebends, which are not the singularity is, that all this has 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. Charles I. and Total 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, hatred, and despair, which, breaking out into wild eloquence, and acting upon a wild people, are preparing every day a mass of treason and disaffection, 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. 59 204 25 23 8 319 Henry VIII., with consummate impartiality, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day, and at the same place. Elizabeth burnt 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. : In fact, nothing can be more unjust the greatest of human evils. Many and idle than the reasoning of many different answers may be given to these laymen upon Church matters. You questions; but they are questions which, choose to have an Establishment not ending in Mammon, have a God forbid you should choose other-powerful bearing on real religion, and wise and you wish to have men of deserve the deepest consideration from decent manners and good education as its disciples and friends. Let the comthe Ministers of that Establishment: forts of the Clergy go for nothing. all this is very right but are you Consider their state only as religion is willing to pay them as such men ought affected by it. If upon this principle I to be paid? Are you willing to pay am forced to allot to some an opulence to each Clergyman, confining himself which my clever friend the Examiner to one spot, and giving up all his time would pronounce to be unapostolito the care of one parish, a salary of cal, I cannot help it; I must take 500l. per aunum? To do this would this people with all their follies, and require three millions to be added to prejudices, and circumstances, and the present revenues of the Church; carve out an establishment best suited and such an expenditure is impossible! for them, however unfit for early What then remains, if you will have Christianity in barren and conquered a Clergy, and will not pay them Judea. equitably and separately, than to pay them unequally and by lottery? and yet this very inequality, which secures to you a respectable Clergy upon the most economical terms, is considered by laymen as a gross abuse. It is an abuse, however, which they have not the spirit to extinguish by increased munificence to their Clergy, nor justice to consider as the only other method by which all the advantages of a respectable Establishment can be procured; but they use it at the same time as a topic for sarcasm and a source of economy. This, it will be said, is a Mammonish view of the subject: it is so, but those who make this objection forget the immense effect which Mammon produces upon religion itself. Shall the Gospel be preached by men paid by the State? shall these men be taken from the lower orders, and be meanly paid? shall they be men of learning and education? and shall there be some magnificent endowments to allure such men into the Church? Which of these methods is the best for diffusing the rational doctrines of Christianity? Not in the age of the Apostles, not in the abstract, timeless, nameless, placeless land of the philosophers, but in the year 1837, in the porter-brewing, cotton-spinning, tallow-melting kingdom of Great Britain, bursting with opulence, and flying from poverty as Not only will this measure of the Commission bring into the Church a lower and worse educated set of men, but it will have a tendency to make the Clergy fanatical. You will have a set of ranting, raving Pastors, who will wage war against all the innocent pleasures of life, vie with each other in extravagance of zeal, and plague your heart out with their nonsense and absurdity: cribbage must be played in caverns, and sixpenny whist take refuge in the howling wilderness. In this way, low men, doomed to hopeless poverty, and galled by contempt, will endeavour to force themselves into station and significance. There is an awkward passage in the memorial of the Church of Canterbury, which deserves some consideration from him to whom it is directed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, at his consecration, takes a solemn oath that he will maintain the rights and liberties of the Church of Canterbury; as Chairman, however, of the New Commission, he seizes the patronage of that Church, takes two-thirds of its Revenues, and abolishes two-thirds of its Members. That there is an answer to this I am very willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it is; and this attack upon the Revenues and Members of Canterbury is not obedience to an Act of Parliament, but the very Act of Parliament, which 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. "Any Protestant clergyman remaining in France three days, without coming to the Catholic worship, to be punished with death. If a Protestant sends his son to a Protestant schoolmaster for education, he is to forfeit 250 livres a month, and the schoolmaster who receives him, 50 livres. If 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. The Huguenots of France burnt churches and hung priests wherever they found them. Froumenteau, one of their own writers, confesses, that in the single province of Dauphiny they killed two hundred and twenty priests, and one hundred and twelve friars. 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 |