ber only forty, of whom no more than six are English members; but for the smallness of this force it is very easy to account when it is remembered that there are many Protestants as zealous in the work of innovation as the Roman Catholics could desire; who are less liable to suspicion; and who, therefore, not only have better chance at an election, but also are in Parliament the best tools Popery could select. It is not difficult to understand that the influential Roman Catholics of the West Riding are as willing to support Sir George Strickland as one of their own persuasion; and it is not very marvellous that the "liberal" Roman Catholics of Northumberland support Lord Howick, who declares for the annihilation of the Irish Church, as warmly as they could possibly support any one even of their warmest Jesuits. If the votes of the pseudo-Protestant and of the avowed Roman Catholic are to be exactly the same in the House of Commons, common sense and policy dictate to the Papists a preference for the former; and while so many of these convenient persons are to be found, there is no necessity for crowding the House of Commons with men openly adhering to a religion, which, peradventure, may yet again become the object of popular alarm. But at Court, where the required work cannot be efficaciously performed by de puty, we find the Roman Catholics contrive to appear in person. The Treasurer of the Household is a Roman Catholic, the Marchioness of Wellesley, Lady Bedingfield, and the Earl of Fingal, all of whom have been about the Court for some time, are Roman Catholics; and several others of the same kind have been placed in minor situations. Not a few places have been filled by individuals quite as well pleasing to Popery; namely, individuals notoriously of no religion at all. Many very high offices in the state are now held either by Roman Catholics or persons of this class. In Ireland, it is well known that nearly every legal situation which has fallen vacant during the existence of the present Government, has been given to a Roman Catholic. As instances, we may mention that the Master of the Rolls, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, the Chief Remembrancer, the Clerk of the Hanaper Office, the Attorney and the Solicitor-General, the Lord-Lieutenant's confidential legal adviser, are all Papists; and if as yet there are no more in similar stations, the reason is simply that there have unfortunately been very few legal vacancies. In the colonies the same gross mal-administration of patronage prevails. The newly appointed Governor of New South Wales is Sir Maurice O'Connell, whose very name speaks volumes. But this is not all.† As it is well that the names of these persons should be generally known, we subjoin them. English members: The Earl of Surrey, Lord Fitzalan, Messrs Langdale, W. Stanley, Standish and P. H. Howard. Irish members. Messrs Archbold, Bryan, Bellew, Chester, Fitzsimon, Maner, O'Connell, M. O'Connell, M. J. O'Connell, J. O'Connell, Morgan O'Connell, R. O'Ferrall, Reddington, E. B. Roche, J. H. Talbot, H. Ball, H. W. Barron, G. S. Barry, H. Bridgman, D. Callagan, J. Power, W. Roche, R. L. Shiel, T. Wyse, O'Connor Don, M. J. Blake, R. D. Browne, A. H. Lynch, J. P. Somers, C. O'Brien, Colonel Butler, J. J. Bodkin, Sir R. Nagle, and Sir Wm. Brabazon. It is proper to add, that Lords Surrey and Fitzalan have always most honourably abstained from violating their oaths by voting on Church matters. No better condemnation of the rest could be required. † Connected with the subject of the increase of Popish political influence, there is one topic which we cannot overlook, though it is rather a delicate one to mention; we mean the private progress made by the Roman Catholics among the leading liberal families. We are reluctant to refer to this matter, but it is necessary to do so. It is notorious, that the Duke of Leeds, the Marquis Wellesley, Lord Albemarle, Lord Kinnaird, Lord De Mauley, Mr Ward, M. P., and many more professing Protestants, married Roman Catholics. Such, too, is the case with many of the female Protestant nobility; for instance, the Duke of Sutherland's sister married Lord Surrey; Lord Sefton's daughter married Mr Towneley, the wealthy Lancashire Roman Catholic, &c. &c. These seem private matters, but we mention them, because they throw no little light on public ones. And then again, members of several liberal families have recently been converted, or rather perverted to Popery. We may name among others, a brother of Earl Spencer, Sir Charles Wolseley, Mr Philips, son of the late Whig Popery has been advancing not only in wealth and influence, honour and official power; it has been progressing in every other direction, and by every other means. Its proselyting zeal has been rekindled; its Jesuitical arts have been applied; its experience has been brought to bear; it has watched every opportunity of turning the balance between contending political parties; and thus gradually it has gone forward, till its course seems plain, and its path smooth and clear. While Protestants have been quarrelling, or while they have been sleeping, Popery, with stealthy steps, or by bold manoeuvres, has been gaining ground, disarming some, deluding others, conquering more, and marching onward to a position, whence it can defy opposition; nay more, can in turn overbear and threaten all. Many have ridiculed the pretence of those who foresaw such encroachment and such a triumph; many, even up to the present time, have so little heeded the matter, that they know not whether to ridicule or resist. Yet the slightest fair enquiry would have convinced the most sceptical that the peril was indeed fast approaching, and that a struggle must sooner or later come, if early efforts were not made to obviate the necessity of future struggles. We believe that it is now too late to stay the course of the successful superstition, though it cannot be too late to check and impede it; at any rate, it is high time that the people should ascertain the truth, however painful and alarming, and should act on the dictates of sound policy, when at length a sound judgment is formed. In 1792, there were not, in the whole of Great Britain, thirty Roman Catholic chapels; there are now five hundred and nineteen, and forty-three building. In that year, there was not one single Roman Catholic college; there are now ten, and sixty seminaries of education, besides chapel schools. Very lately, Mr Blundell of Jace Blundell, a Roman Catholic gentleman of great wealth, in Lancashire, died, leaving L.200,000 to the Roman Catholic bishop of London, doubtless for the increase of similar establishments; and by the Catholic magazines and Catholic directories, we observe some other bequests of great valueone, particularly, from a Miss Dempsey, who is stated to have left her whole property (which is called considerable) to her church. There are other symptoms of extraordinary zeal and activity, and money is well known to have been received from abroad, particularly from the Leopoldine Institution of Austria. It must be remembered, too, that the Roman Catholic population of Great Britain is now very little short of Two MILLIONS; that there is, as we have shown, great wealth among their leaders; and that, when more money is wanted, all the terrors of a death-bed are now, as they ever have been, employed by the priests-with their threatenings of purgatory, and their promises of masses for the soul-to extort a parting gift or legacy to the church. Before the Reformation, this system had been carried to such an extent, that, both in England and Scotland, the Church of Rome possessed upwards of one quarter of the whole land of the country; and nowadays, the same arts that gained that enormous property being employed-why, we ask, should they not be proportionately, or at least partially, successful? By law, devises of land for ecclesiastical or charitable purposes are void, by the force of acts which first were placed on the statute-book, centuries ago, to check the Papistswhich they constantly evaded then with wonderful sagacity and cunning, and which they may evade again; or if not, donations are still valid under certain circumstances, and personal property may be bequeathed as before. There is, therefore, every member for Leicestershire, Mr Roche the member for Cork county, Mr Kenelm Digby, Sir Bourchier Wrey, and Mr Benett, the son of the Whig member for Wiltshire. On facts of this kind, when they accumulate, no comment is necessary. For a great deal of curious information respecting the astonishing avarice and grasping ingenuity of the Romish ecclesiastics in this country, we refer our readers to Blackstone's Commentaries, Book II., Chapter XVIII. The passage to which we refer, occurs under the head of "Alienation in mortmain," and will well repay the trouble of perusal. fair prospect that the two millions will be speedily fully provided with religious instruction; and when we consider the immense number of Protestants who are Protestants only in name, and the very large portion of such who are wholly neglected, we own we see nothing unreasonable in the expectation that Popery will gain many more victims. In Mr Bickersteth's tract on the Progress of Popery, eighteen parishes are enumerated, with their population and Pro * testant church-room-the latter does not provide for one-tenth of the whole of that population, which exceeds one million of souls! Then, in Ireland, for years the proportion of Roman Catholics to Protestants has been gradually and steadily increasing through the former laxity of the Established Church, the zeal of Popery, and the recent bitter persecutions which have tended so much to the encouragement of Protestant emigration. In that unhappy country there is a college, Published in London, 1836; Seeley and Burnside. We cannot refrain from using one quotation, which Mr Bickersteth takes from Mr Scott-the able author, we presume, of the Continuation of Milner's Church History. It refers to the extent of Popish persecutions. "No computation can reach the numbers who have been put to death, in different ways, on account of their maintaining the profession of the Gospel, and opposing the corruptions of the Church of Rome. A million of poor Waldenses perished in France; 900,000 orthodox Christians were slain in less than thirty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted of having put to death, in the Netherlands, 36,000, by the hands of the common executioner, during the space of a few years. The Inquisition destroyed, by various tortures, 150,000 within thirty years. These are a few specimens, and but a few, of those which history has recorded; but the total amount will never be known till the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain." When to these things we add the days of Queen Mary in England, the Swedish butchery, the massacre of St Bartholomew, the Sicilian Vespers, the Inquisition at Goa, the suppression of the Reformation in Italy, the Irish massacre of 1641, the Council of Constance, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, truly we may well rally to resist the domination of the harlot, "drunk with the blood of the saints." But it is said, forsooth, Popery has changed; that the Ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard his spots! mockery! We read, in the Record and Times recently, an account of the banishment of some hundreds of poor Protestants from Zillerthal, in Tyrol. The incident recalls the recollection of Milton's noble sonnet on the persecution of the same people in Cromwell's time-a sonnet that should be in the very heart of every Englishman. "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold; Forget not; in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold, Oh Besides the facts stated above, we call the attention of our readers to the following quotations from the "Catholic Directory" of 1838. They will show the spirit and progress of Popery in Ireland as clearly as anything with which we have ever yet met. Diocese of Ardagh." There are religious libraries and Christian doctrine confraternities in almost every parish; and it is hoped that ere long they will be established in all. With one or two exceptions, every parish has one or more newly built and slated chapels." "Education has been greatly extended during the last few years; particularly that religious education which consists in an accurate knowledge of the mysteries and other saving truths of Christianity."—Catholic Directory, page 101. So much for the national system of education! * * "Religion has been steadily advancing in the diocese of Dromore. Although one of the smallest and certainly one of the poorest dioceses in Ireland, yet within the last few years sixteen new chapels have been built, and some of them among the best and most tasteful erections in the country."-Page 105. There are only seventeen parishes in Dromore, and yet we hear of sixteen new chapels ! “In no city within the same short space have so many religious and charitable in supported by public money, for the free education of priests; and of these there are now scarcely less than 2500, with four archbishops, twenty three bishops, eight colleges, besides Maynooth, several monasteries and many convents, nunneries, societies, clubs, and private seminaries. In Scotland, also, it is unfortunately too true that Popery has been of late rapidly advancing, particularly in the west. In Glasgow alone there are now 30,000 Roman Catholics, and even in Stirling they have recently erected a handsome chapel. In the colonies they have, under various names (as, for instance, the Bishop of Trinidad is called Bishop of Olympus), bishops at the following places :-Quebec (with a coadjutor); Montreal (with a coadjutor); Hudson's Bay; Kingston, Upper Canada (with a coadjutor); Newfound land; St John's, New Brunswick; Nova Scotia; Trinidad; Ceylon; Jamaica; Mauritius; Madras; Calcutta ; Australasia; Cape of Good Hope. In all these places they have extensive establishments. In Ceylon, their bishop is only lately appointed; and in the Catholic Magazine of September 1838, just published, they boast of having 100,000 persons attached to their church in that island. In India they pretend to 600,000; and though that number is questionable, still it is not denied that their converts constitute no inconsiderable portion of the southern population. In Trinidad nearly the whole people are Roman Catholics, and sixteen new missionaries have lately sailed to complete the Popish victory. From New South Wales, Bishop Broughton, the excellent Protestant diocesan, wrote to the Christian Knowledge Society in January 1836, to the following effect:-"Protestantism is much endangered in this colony; the efforts of Rome in this country are almost incredible. It is traversed by the agents of Rome. I earnestly desire means of counteracting these machinations. The Protestant schools can be maintained no longer, and a grant is required to maintain schools in connexion with the church, and in the churches themselves." In Canada, Popery is the established religion of one province, and is libcrally assisted in the other; while, during the period that intervened between 1831 and 1835, although 300,000 more emigrants had arrived out, the grant to the established church was gradually diminished from L. 16,000 per annum to L.3,500 per annum. In the Cape of Good Hope much has already been done in Graham's-Town and elsewhere; particularly in the new parts of the colony. In Newfoundland the Roman Catholics form a majority of the House of Assembly, and have gained otherwise a complete ascendency. A petition was presented to Parliament last session by Mr Gladstone, signed by 927 respectable inhabitants of the town of St John's, which was ordered to be printed. From this important document we extract the following passage :— "In this island, the population of which may be estimated at 75,000, of whom about one-half are Protestants and the other half Roman Catholics, it may be proper to remind your Honourable House that there are no legal distinctions affect ing any class of Her Majesty's subjects; and were the Roman Catholics permitted to follow the impulse of their own minds, and to act individually as their own wishes might prompt them, there would be no cause for apprehending that they would differ from their neighbours in matters of a civil nature. But it unfortunately happens that their clergy have acquired a thoroughly despotic and absolute control stitutions sprung up as in the metropolis of Ireland. The metropolitan church in Marlborough Street, and the new church of St Andrew, in Westlan Row, and St Paul, Arran Quay, are splendid proofs of the zeal and piety of the Catholic inhabitants of Dublin. That capital and its environs can now boast of twenty Catholic churches, one monastery, fourteen convents, five institutions of the Sisters of Charity, three Sisters of Mercy, six charitable societies for promoting spiritual and corporal works of mercy," &c. &c.-Page 109. Diocese of Ossory." Some new chapels and convents are in progress."-Page 114. "The Roman Catholic population of Cloyne and Ross, by the last census, amounts to nearly 400,000, and gives an average of nearly 7,000 to each parish."-Page 130. See the Report of the Church Missionary Society for 1838, page 80. "In the first place, they denounce them from the altar as persons hostile to the priests, and as opposed to the authority of their Church, and then warn their congregations not to deal or hold any intercourse with them, designating them commonly as 'mad dogs;' a term by which it is understood that the individuals to whom it is applied have not adopted the political views of their priests, and are therefore to be regarded as if excommunicated; and being thus branded, they are, to a very considerable, and in some instances to a ruinous extent, injured in their business, are constantly exposed to much personal insult, and are not unfrequently ill-treated in the open streets by the lower orders of their own creed, who deem it a meritorious service thus to carry into effect the denunciations of their own priests." In the South Seas, equal activity is displayed. Dr Lang, the principal of the Church of Scotland College in New South Wales, writing home on the 6th October, 1836, thus expresses himself: "The moral influence of the Christian church of New South Wales will extend eventually to the neighbouring islands of New Zealand, containing a native population of half a million of souls, and com prising an extent of territory almost equal to that of the British Islands; to the western islands of the Pacific, numberless, and teeming with inhabitants; to the Indian Archipelago, that great nursery of nations; to China itself. That the Ro. mish propagande has already directed her vulture eye to this vast field of moral influence, and strewn it, in imagination, with the carcasses of the slain, is unquestionable. Spanish monks and friars have within the last few years been sent from the recently formed republics of the South American to the eastern islands of the Pacific. Other groups, still more distant from the American continent, have recently been survey. ed and taken possession of by Romish missionaries direct from France; and the Roman Catholic Bishop of New South Wales is already taking his measures for co-operating with these missionaries from the westward, by transforming the sons of Irish convicts in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land into missionary priests, and dispersing them over the length and breadth of the vast Pacific." In the United States, although it is not forty years since the first Roman Catholic see was created, the Christian Observer, as quoted by Mr Bickersteth, states, "there is now a Catholic population of 600,000 souls under the government of the Pope, an archbishop of Baltimore, twelve bishops, and 341 priests. The number of churches is 401; masshouses, about 300; colleges, ten; seminaries for young men, nixe; theological seminaries, five; novitiates for Jesuits, monasteries and convents with academies attached, thirty-one ; seminaries for young ladies, thirty; schools of the sisters of charity, twentynine; an academy for coloured girls at Baltimore; a female infant school; and seven Catholic newspapers." In the West Indies unexampled efforts are now made among all classes, principally from the missionaries of Cuba, where Popery reigns in undisturbed supremacy and unrivalled splendour. Even in China, beyond the borders of which Protestants have failed to penetrate, and whence they are now effectually (though we trust only for a tine) excluded, the Jesuits have been working with a marvellous courage worthy of a better cause, and with a success which may well justify their boasting.* There is no corner of the globe which their restless feet have not invaded; there is no danger they have not braved; there is no artifice they have scorned; and, of course, no scruple has been allowed to deter men * For the boasting to which we allude, and other important information on the subject of Roman Catholic missions, we must refer to "Dr Wiseman's Lectures, London, 1837," and the "Roman Catholic Missions of Australasia, by W. Ullathome, D.D., Vicar-General." Published, Liverpool, Rockcliff and Duckworth, 1837. Some of the statements of the former work, particularly those relating to Protestant missions, have been refuted in the Rev. James Hough's "Protestant Missions Vindicated." Seeley, London, 1857. By the Catholic Directory of 1838, it appears that the Papists actually have two bishopricks in China! |