use of new ecclesiastical titles not belonging to the Establishment is lawful."

But the great mistake into which the Papal party have fallen is in the assumption that they have any power or right to send a Bull or Letter such as this to this country, or to put it in force, more now than formerly. The 13th of Eliz. c. 2, after reciting in the preamble a former act, against attributing" any manner of jurisdiction" to the Bishop of Rome in these dominions, goes on to denounce the effect of his "divers. Bulls and Writings" as having absolved and reconciled men to yield themselves subject to the said authority, and "to take absolution at the hands of certain naughty and subtile practisers," whereby "hath grown great disobedience and boldness in many, not only to withdraw and absent themselves from all Divine Service, now most godly set forth and used within this realm;" which, with other evil effects," are hereafter very like to be renewed." Then follows section 2, in which Bulls or Instruments for such purposes (as aforesaid) are set forth together with Bulls of Absolution. Section 3 then continues the category in these all-comprehensive terms:-"Or if any person or persons, after the said first day of July, shall obtain or get from the said Bishop of Rome, &c., any manner of Bull, WRITING or Instrument written or printed, containing any thing, matter or cause whatsoever; or shall publish, or by any ways or means put in ure any such Bull, Writing or Instrument; that then all and every such act and acts, offence and offences shall be deemed and adjudged by the authority of this Act to be High Treason ; and the offender and offenders therein, their procurers, abettors and counsellors to the fact and committing of the said offence or offences, shall be deemed and adjudged High Traitors to the Queen and the Realm." The Common Law offence of high treason is thus declared to apply to the mere sending, &c. of the said bulls, writings or instruments.

The section then enacts as follows: "and being thereof lawfully indicted and attainted according to the course of the laws of this realm shall suffer pains of death; and also lose and forfeit all their lands, tenements, hereditaments, goods and chattels, as in cases of high treason by the laws of this realm ought to be lost and forfeited." The 4th section then enacts, "that all aiders, comforters or maintainers after the committing of such acts shall incur the penalties of præmunire."

They understood how to draw statutes in those days: and it is obvious that, supposing this to be in force, there is no escape from the terrible grasp of its terms. It is generally believed that it has been repealed by the 9th & 10th Vict. c. 59, which repeals

the above cited 13 Eliz. c. 2, "sO FAR ONLY as the same imposes the penalties or punishments therein mentioned: but it is hereby declared that nothing in this enactment contained shall authorize or render it lawful for any person or persons to import, bring in, or put in execution within this realm any such bulls, writings or instruments, and that in all respects, save us to the said penalties or punishments, the law shall continue the same as if this enactment had not been made."

Thus this clause not only limits its repealing enactment to the penalties imposed in the section above cited of the 13th of Eliz., but it expressly re-enacts the rest. Now, in the rest, the entire mischief of the statute of Eliz. is comprised. The offence described is made high treason; and, moreover, the part repealed, setting forth the punishment, was a lenient provision when it was enacted; for a worse punishment than mere death was then attached by common law to the offence, without any enactment at all. And this comparatively mild clause is all that the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 59, repeals; for it limits the repeal to the express penalty which "the same" (i. e. the Act of Elizabeth) imposes: necessarily, therefore, leaving the offence liable to the penalty which would have been inflicted had the clause in that Act stopped at the words "high traitors to the Queen and the realm." Now the offence therein described was that of crimen lesæ majestatis, which was then the terrible one of drawing to the scaffold, of disembowelling while alive, half-hanging, decapitation and quartering (4 Black. Com. 92 & 93; 1 Hale, P. C. 382; Coke, 3 Inst. 211). And the fact is, that the concluding clause in the 13th of Eliz. was inserted in misericordiâ, as a modification or lessening of the full punishment which the law would otherwise have then inflicted, and, be it observed, which the 9th & 10th Vict. c. 59, thus actually restores: for inasmuch as the simple and milder penalty of mere death is repealed, and the offence retained, the punishment then attached to it by the common law revives. Nor does the 54th Geo. III. c. 146, help it; for that statute, which enacts an alleviation in the punishment of treason, is restricted to those cases only in which, as the law then stood (in 1814), the sentence required by law to be pronounced, was the disembowelling while alive, &c. Now the 13th of Eliz. did not then require it, so that it is untouched by the statute of Geo. III. c. 146; and all that the statute of 9 & 10 Vict. has done has been to affix the horrid form of execution to the statute of Elizabeth, which its more careful framers expressly avoided.

Thanks to the enlightened Christianity of these times, and to our increased humanity, our greatly decreased skill in law

making will place Cardinal Wiseman and his counsellors in no peril of their lives; but that they have committed high treason under the 13th of Elizabeth is to our minds incontestable, unless it can be successfully argued that they do not put themselves within the mischief of the statute. But when we dwell on the all-comprehensive grasp of the carefully selected words of the clause, to embrace every kind of papal "instrument or writing," "containing any thing, matter or cause whatsoever," and when the offence is declared to be equally perpetrated by publishing, or using, or procuring such instrument, or in aiding or abetting those who do either of these, we confess we have looked in vain for the loophole through which the dexterity of a Vatican of casuists can creep.

Sir Edward Sugden is of the same opinion. Mr. Anstey, though he mistakes the real penalty (which, indeed, all seem to have overlooked), thinks also the statute in full force. Mr. Warren, in his eloquent pamphlet, cites Reeves, Hallam, and even Lingard, in its support. We deny that where the offence is left plainly expressed, as that of high treason, that an indictment for mere misdemeanor under it would lie; although where a statute (merely) commands or prohibits anything of public concern, the person guilty of disobedience is liable to be indicted for the disobedience." Hawk. Pl. Cr. b. i. c. 22, § 5. See also Bac. Abr. tit. Stat. K.

Some means are required of repressing the advances of the Roman Catholic religion in the country at this time, beyond those furnished by the mere efforts of reason. Moreover, the sword of the Spirit (which must ever be the first and highest, and, under God's blessing, the most effective weapon against the machinations of Rome) should be aided and defended by the arm of human law, temperately and wisely but firmly exerted. This we hold to be its legitimate use, and imperatively required of our rulers by the emergency of the peril which now besets the strongholds of our glorious Protestant faith. Against the slightest efforts of intolerance we should be among the first to move; but every motive of reason and of justice, and above all, the sacred claims of religious liberty, demand of our Protestant Empire and our liberal Government, that acts avowedly aggressive on our faith should be resisted, when made by a Church whose power has ever thriven as conscience became enslaved, and whose strength is proportioned to its means of suppressing the independent judgment, and moral and mental vigour of the people over whom it rules.

This we believe to be the most formidable statute against the present aggression, notwithstanding that Mr. Barnes, in his

"Letter on the Papal Brief,” very hastily and most erroneously says, that "with exceptions very unimportant, all statutes against the Roman Catholics since the first of Elizabeth are repealed. We shall presently comment on one or two statutes previous to that of 13 Eliz., which have been deemed more or less applicable to the case of this aggression; but it will be convenient to do so in the course of a more detailed notice of the last-named of the pamphlets at the head of this article, and which Dr. Bowyer will have published ere this number reaches the hands of our readers.

Dr. Bowyer, in this new pamphlet, labours hard to reconcile the Papal measures with perfect allegiance to the Crown and non-aggression towards the Protestant faith. Dr. Bowyer is not only a highly educated gentleman, and a profound lawyer, and a sincere Roman Catholic from conviction, but his pamphlet, entitled "Roman Documents," is issued as

"By Authority."

We feel, therefore, that we are doing the largest measure of justice to the Roman Catholic body by taking him as the exponent of their sentiments, more so on a subject partly legal, than by citing the appeal of the Cardinal himself, who may also-able and dignified as is his style-be deemed a less disinterested and dispassionate witness.

"We have proved the notion, that the style of a diocesan bishop taken from the place where his see or seat is planted can be termed a 'territorial title,' to be utterly unsupported by authority, and contrary to ecclesiastical law and history; that the name of Bishop of a town or city never meant anything more than that his cathedra and cathedral are erected there, for which reason Catholic bishops are always called by the name of a place and not by that of a district; and that bishops with the supposed 'territorial titles' existed even while the Church was proscribed and persecuted by the civil power.

Now, to say that the title of Bishop of Shrewsbury, for instance, does not mean more than the name of a see where a cathedral is, and therefore cannot be a territorial title, is mere special pleading; the fact being, that besides this historical meaning it also designates a certain accurately-defined district of England and Wales, which is as completely a territorial distinction as it is possible to conceive any title to convey. Quite as much so as the term Archbishop of Canterbury; and Dr. Bowyer may just as well argue that that title is not territorial, but only indicative of the scat of sovereignty. What says Lord Beaumont on this point:-"To send a Bishop to Beverley for the spiritual direction of the Roman Catholic clergy

in Yorkshire, and to create a See of Beverley, are two very different things-the one is allowed by the tolerant laws of the country; the other requires territorial dominion and sovereign power within the country." Common sense also says that a title which designates a defined territory is a territorial title, and Dr. Bowyer's learning will hardly persuade us otherwise.

"We have demonstrated that the bare office of a diocesan bishop, such as the bishop of Birmingham or Clifton, is not a dignity in the sense in which the Crown is the fountain of honour and dignity; that it was in existence long before the common law, or any dignity known to the common law was invented-that the office is not, and never was a dignity at common law, and the writers on dignities consequently pass it over in silence; and that the legal privileges sometimes annexed to bishoprics, such as those belonging to bishops of the Established Church, are merely accidental-not appertaining to the office of a diocesan bishopric, which is a purely spiritual office with cure of souls. And indeed, whereas all dignities are creations of the royal prerogative, the Crown cannot create a new bishopric even in the Established Church, and still less can the Crown or the legislature itself make a Roman Catholic bishop. Where then is the aggression upon, or usurpation of, her Majesty's prerogative? The Pope has done what no other authority on earth could do, and it necessarily follows that he has therefore neither usurped nor encroached on the rights of the Crown or the nation.

The Queen's prerogative consists, as Dr. Bowyer very well knows, not in making bishops, but in being sole head of Spiritualty and Temporalty in and over the Church. And it is in setting up in England a spiritual, and indirectly a temporal, power on the part of a Church which arrogates to itself pre-eminence over all others that the attempt consists to usurp and to encroach on the supremacy and rights of the crown and the nation; and which remain-and long may they continue to be-part and parcel of the law and constitution of this realm.

"These, and other arguments," proceeds Dr. Bowyer, " urged in the Cardinal Wiseman's appeal and in my pamphlet, remain to this day absolutely unrefuted. No attempt has been made to meet them on the merits; though the country is inundated with pamphlets, lectures, sermons, speeches, charges, addresses, episcopal answers to addresses, and newspaper articles on the 'Papal Aggression.' The only reply of our opponents has been a loud, vehement and frequent reiteration of their former positions, as though no defence whatever had been made on our side. The topics and assertions at the last public meeting are the same as at the first. Day by day we repeatedly hear indignant and bitter denunciations of the Holy See, as having parcelled out the kingdom, violated the Queen's prerogative as the sole fountain of honour, by the creation of dignities in England'-—and outraged the sovereign power, by erecting territorial titles.' It would be