CATHOLICS.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1827.] We seize upon the opportunity which this able pamphlet of his lordship affords us, to renew our attention to the Catholic question. There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to have deserted our friend the Pope; and they will say of us, Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall. God forbid it should ever be said of us with justice-it is pleasant to loll and roll, and to accumulate-to be a purple and fine linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of accumulating upon each other; but the best thing of all is to live like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, justice, and truth. Ir a poor man were to accept a guinea upon | straightly pursuing his object without hope or the condition that he spoke all the evil he could fear, under the influence of good feelings and of another whom he believed to be innocent, high principle. The House of Commons does and whose imprisonment he knew he should not contain within its walls a more honest, upprolong, and whose privations he knew he right man. should increase by his false testimony, would not the person so hired be one of the worst and basest of human beings? And would not his guilt be aggravated, if, up to the moment of receiving his aceldama, he had spoken in terms of high praise of the person whom he subsequently accused? Would not the latter feature of the case prove him to be as much without shame as the former evinced him to be without principle? Would the guilt be less, if the person so hired were a man of education? Would it be less if he were above want? Would it be less, if the profession and occupation of his life were to decide men's rights, or to teach them morals and religion? Would it be less by the splendour of the bribe? Does a bribe of 3000l. leave a man innocent, whom a bribe of 30l. would cover with infamy? You are of a mature period of life, when the opinions of an honest man ought to be, and are fixed. On Monday you were a barrister or a country clergyman, a serious and temperate friend to religious liberty and Catholic emancipation. In a few weeks from this time you are a bishop, or a dean, or a judgepublishing and speaking charges and sermons against the poor Catholics, and explaining away this sale of your soul by every species of falsehood, shabbiness, and equivocation. You may carry a bit of ermine on your shoulder, or hide the lower moiety of the body in a silken petticoat-and men may call you Mr. Dean, or My Lord; but you have sold your honour and your conscience for money; and, though better paid, you are as base as the witness who stands at the door of the judgment-hall, to swear whatever the suborner will put into his mouth, and to receive whatever he will put in his pocket.† When soldiers exercise, there stands a goodly portly person out of the ranks, upon whom all eyes are directed, and whose signs and motions, in the performance of the manual exercise, all the soldiers follow. The Germans, we believe, call him a Flugelman. We propose Lord Nugent as a political flugelman;-he is always consistent, plain and honest, steadily and 1. A Plain Statement in support of the Political Claims of the Roman Catholics; in a Letter to the Rev. Sir George Lee, Bart. By Lord Nugent, Member of Parliament for Aylesbury. London, Hookham. 1826. 2. A Letter to Viscount Milton, M P By One of his 3. Charge by the Ir.hbishop of Cashel. Dublin, Milli Constituents. London, Ridgway. 1827. ken. It is very far from our intention to say that all who were for the Catholics, and are now against them, have made this change from base motives; it is equally far from our intention not to say that many men of both professions have subjected themselves to this shocking imputation. The Letter to Lord Milton is very well and very pleasantly written. We were delighted with the liberality and candour of the Archbishop of Cashel. The charge is in the highest degree creditable to him. He must lay his account for the furious hatred of bigots, and the incessant gnawing of rats. There are many men who (thoroughly aware that the Catholic question must be ultimately carried) delay their acquiescence till the last moment, and wait till the moment of peril and civil war before they yield. That this moment is not quite so remote as was supposed a twelvemonth since, the events now passing in the world seem to afford the strongest proof. The truth is, that the disaffected state of Ireland is a standing premium for war with every cabi net in Europe which has the most distant intention of quarrelling with this country for any other cause. "If we are to go to war, let us do so when the discontents of Ireland are at their greatest height, before any spirit of concession has been shown by the British cabinet." Does any man imagine that so plain and obvious a principle has not been repeatedly urged on the French cabinet? that the eyes of the Americans are shut upon the state of Ireland-and that that great and ambitious republic will not, in case of war, aim a deadly blow at this most sensitive part of the British empire? We should really say, that England has fully as much to fear from Irish fraternization with America as with France. The language is the same; the Americans have preceded them in the struggle; the number of emigrant and rebel Irish is very great in America; and all parties are sure of perfect toleration under the protection of Ame rica. We are astonished at the madness and folly of Englishmen, who do not perceive that both France and America are only waiting for a cou Y Can any thing be so utterly childish and foolish as to talk of the bad taste of the Catholic leaders?-as if, in a question of conferring on, or withholding important civil rights from seven millions of human beings, any thing could arrest the attention of a wise man but the good or evil consequences of so great a measure. Suppose Mr. S. does smell slightly of tobacco-admit Mr. L. to be occasionally stimulated by rum and water-allow that Mr. F. was unfeeling in speaking of the Duke of York—what has all this nonsense to do with the extinction of religious hatred and the paci fication of Ireland? Give it if it is right, refuse it if it is wrong. How it is asked, or how it is given or refused, is less than the dust of the balance. venient opportunity to go to war with this coun- | Many a tradesman gets paid in this manner try; and that one of the first blows aimed at our who would soon smirk and smile himself intc independence would be the invasion of Ireland. the gazette, if he trusted to the promises of the We should like to argue this matter with a great. regular tory lord, whose members vote steadily against the Catholic question. "I wonder that mere fear does not make you give up the Catholic question! Do you mean to put this fine place in danger-the venison-the picturesthe pheasants-the cellars-the hot-house and the grapery? Should you like to see six or seven thousand French or Americans landed in Ireland, and aided by a universal insurrection of the Catholics? Is it worth your while to run the risk of their success? What evil from the possible encroachment of Catholics, by civil exertions, can equal the danger of such a position as this? How can a man of your carriages, and horses, and hounds, think of putting your high fortune in such a predicament, and crying out, like a schoolboy or a chaplain, "Oh, we shall beat them! we shall What is the real reason why a good honest put the rascals down!" No Popery, I admit to tory, living at ease on his possessions, is an your lordship, is a very convenient cry at an enemy to Catholic emancipation? He admits election, and has answered your end; but do the Catholic of his own rank to be a gentlenot push the matter too far: to bring on a civil man, and not a bad subject and about theowar for no popery is a very foolish proceeding logical disputes an excellent tory never troubles in a man who has two courses, and a remove! his head. Of what importance is it to him As you value your side-board of plate, your whether an Irish Catholic or an Irish Protestbroad rihand, your pier glasses-if obsequious ant is a judge in the King's Bench at Dublin? domestics and large rooms are dear to you-if None; but I am afraid for the church of Ireland, you love ease and flattery, titles and coats of says our alarmist. Why do you care so much arms-if the labour of the French cook, the for the church of Ireland, a country you never dedication of the expecting poet, can move you live in Answer-I do not care so much for the -if you hope for a long life of side-dishes-church of Ireland, if I was sure the church of Eng if you are not insensible to the periodical arri- land would not be destroyed.And is it for the val of the turtle fleets-emancipate the Catho- Church of England alone that you fear?—Anlics! Do it for your ease, do it for your indo-swer-Not quite to that, but I am afraid we should lence, do it for your safety-emancipate and all be lost, that every thing would be overturned, and eat, emancipate and drink-emancipate, and preserve the rent-roll and the family estate!" The most common excuse of the Great Shabby is, that the Catholics are their own enemies that the violence of Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Shiel have ruined their cause-that, but for these boisterous courses, the question would have been carried before this time. The an. swer to this nonsense and baseness is, that the very reverse is the fact. The mild and the long-suffering may suffer for ever in this world. If the Catholics had stood with their hands before them simpering at the Earls of Liverpool and the Lords Bathurst of the moment, they would not have been emancipated till the year of our Lord four thousand. As long as the patient will suffer, the cruel will kick. No treason-no rebellion-but as much stubbornness and stoutness as the law permits-a thorough intimation that you know what is your due, and that you are determined to have it if you can lawfully get it. This is the conduct we recommend to the Irish. If they go on withholding, and forbearing, and hesitating whether this is the time for the discussion or that is the. time, they will be laughed at for another century as fools-and kicked for another century as slaves. "I must have my bill paid (says the sturdy and irritated tradesman); your master has put me off twenty times under different pretences. I know he is at home, and I will not quit the premises till I get the money." that I should lose my rank and my estate. Here, then, we say, is a long series of dangers, which (if there were any chance of their ever taking place) would require half a century for their development; and the danger of losing Ireland by insurrection and invasion, which may happen in six months, is utterly overlooked and forgotten. And if a foreign influence should ever be fairly established in Ireland, how many hours would the Irish church, how many months would the English church, live after such an event? How much is any English title worth after such an event-any English family-any English estate? We are astonished that the brains of rich Englishmen do not fall down into their bellies in talking of the Catholic question—that they do not reason through the cardia and the pylorus-that all the organs of digestion do not become intellectual. The descendants of the proudest noblemen in England may become beggars in a foreign land from this disgraceful nonsense of the Catholic question-fit only for the ancient females of a mar. ket town. What alarms us in the state of England is the uncertain basis on which its prosperity is placed—and the prodigious mass of hatred which the English government continues, by its obstinate bigotry, to accumulate-eight hundred and forty millions sterling of debt. The revenue depending upon the demand for the shoes, stockings, and breeches of Europe-and seven millions of Catholics in a state of the greatest fury and exasperation. We persecute as if we did not owe a shilling-we spend as if we had no disaffection. This, by possibility, may go on; but it is dangerous walking-the chance is, there will be a fall. No wise man should take such a course. All probabilities are against it. We are astonished that Lord Hertford and Lord Lowther, shrewd and calculating tories, do not see that it is nine to one against such a game. Abigail turns up her nose at them, and the housekeeper declares for flesh and blood, and will have none of their company. It is delicious to the persecution-fanciers to reflect that no general bill has passed in favour of the Protestant Dissenters. They are still disqualified from holding any office-and are only protected from prosecution by an annual indemnity act. So that the sword of Damocles still hangs over them-not suspended, indeed, by a thread, but by a cart-rope-still it hangs. there an insult, if not an injury, and prevents the painful idea from presenting itself to the mind of perfect toleration, and pure justice. There is the larva of tyranny, and the skeleton of malice. Now this is all we presume to ask for the Catholics-admission to Parliament, exclusion from every possible office by law, and annual indemnity for the breach of law. This is surely much more agreeable to feebleness, to littleness, and to narrowness, than to say the Catholics are as free and as eligible as ourselves. It is not only the event of war we fear in the military struggle with Ireland; but the expense of war, and the expenses of the English government, are paving the way for future revolutions. The world never yet saw so extravagant a government as the government of England. Not only is economy not practised-but it is despised; and the idea of it connected with disaffection, Jacobinism, and Joseph Hume. Every rock in the ocean where a cormorant can perch is occupied by our troops-has a governor, deputy-governor, store-keeper, and deputy-store-keeper-and will soon have an archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, with thirty-four professors, educating seventeen ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for each professor, with every species of nonsense, athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous. A just and necessary war costs this country about one hundred pounds a minute; whipcord fifteen thousand pounds; red tape seven thousand pounds; lace for drummers and fifers, nineteen thousand pounds; a pension to one man who has broken his head at the Pole; to another who has shattered his leg at the Equator; sub-a tying-up or parcel-packing action; some sidies to Persia; secret service-money to Thibet; an annuity to Lady Henry Somebody and her seven daughters-the husband being shot at some place where we never ought to have had any soldiers at all; and the elder brother returning four members to Parliament. Such a scene of extravagance, corruption, and ex-gious platoons, or roaring psalms out of wag. pense as must paralyze the industry, and mar the fortunes, of the most industrious, spirited people that ever existed. The most intolerable circumstance of the Catholic dispute is, the conduct of the Dissenters. Any man may dissent from the Church of England, and preach against it, by paying sixpence. Almost every tradesman in a market town is a preacher. It must absolutely be ride and tie with them; the butcher must hear the baker in the morning, and the baker listen to the butcher in the afternoon, or there would be no congregation. We have often speculated upon the peculiar trade of the preacher from his style of action. Some have strike strongly against the anvil of the pulpit; some screw, some bore, some act as if they were managing a needle. The occupation of the preceding week can seldom be mistaken In the country, three or four thousand Ranters are sometimes encamped, supplicating in reli gons. Now all this freedom is very proper; because, though it is abused, yet in truth there is no other principle in religious matters, than to let men alone as long as they keep the peace. Yet we should imagine this unbounded license of Dissenters should teach them a little charity towards the Catholics, and a little respect for their religious freedom. But the picture of sects is this-there are twenty fettered men in a jail, and every one is employed in loosening his own fetters with one hand, and riveting those of his neighbour with the other. Few men consider the historical view which will be taken of present events. The bubbles of last year; the fishing for half-crowns in Vigo Bay; the Milk Muffin and Crumpet Companies; the Apple, Pear, and Plum Associations; the National Gooseberry and Current Company; will all be remembered as instances of that partial madness to which society is occasionally exposed. What will be said of all the intolerable trash which is issued forth "If, then,' says a minister of our own at public meetings of No Popery? The follies church, the Reverend John Fisher, rector of of one century are scarcely credible in that Wavenden, in this county, in a sermon pub which succeeds it. A grandmamma of 1827 lished some years ago, and entitled The is as wise as a very wise man of 1727. If the Utility of the Church Establishment, and its world lasts till 1927, the grandmammas of that Safety consistent with Religious Freedom'→ period will be far wiser than the tip-top No-If, then, the Protestant religion could have oriPopery men of this day. That this childish nonsense will have got out of the drawingroom, there can be no doubt. It will most probably have passed through the steward's room -and butler's pantry, into the kitchen. This is the case with ghosts. They no longer loll on couches and sip tea; but are down on their knees scrubbing with the scullion-or stand sweating, and basting with the cook. Mrs. ginally worked its way in this country against numbers, prejudices, bigotry, and interest; if in times of its infancy, the power of the prince could not prevail against it; surely, when confirmed by age, and rooted in the affections of the people-when invested with authority, and in full enjoyment of wealth and powerwhen cherished by a sovereign who holds his very throne by this sacred tenure, and whose conscientious attachment to it well warrants | of conversion ceased to be in Popish hands. the title of Defender of the Faith-surely any attack upon it must be contemptible, any alarm of danger must be imaginary."-Lord Nugent's Letter, p. 18. To go into a committee upon the state of the Catholic laws is to reconsider, as Lord Nugent justly observes, passages in our domestic his-and difficulty, he had persuaded that prince to tory, which bear date about 270 years ago. Now, what human plan, device, or invention, 270 years old, does not require reconsideration? If a man drest as he drest 270 years ago, the pugdogs in the street would tear him to pieces. If he lived in the houses of 270 years ago, unrevised and uncorrected, he would die of rheumatism in a week. If he listened to the sermons of 270 years ago, he would perish with sadness and fatigue; and when a man cannot make a coat or a cheese, for 50 years together, without making them better, can it be said that laws made in those days of ignorance, and framed in the fury of religious hatred, need no revision, and are capable of no amendment. Cranmer himself, in his dreadful death, met with but equal measure for the flames to which he had doomed several who denied the spiritual supremacy of Henry the Eighth; to which he had doomed also a Dutch Arian, in Edward the Sixth's reign; and to which, with great pains doom another miserable enthusiast, Joan Bocher, for some metaphysical notions of her own on the divine incarnation. So that on both sides' (says Lord Herbert of Cherbury) it grew a bloody time.' Calvin burned Servetus at Geneva, for discoursing concerning the Trinity contrary to the sense of the whole church; and thereupon set forth a book wherein he giveth an account of his doctrine, and of whatever else had passed in this affair, and teacheth that the sword may be lawfully employed against heretics.' Yet Calvin was no Papist. John Knox extolled in his writings, as the godly fact of James Melvil,' the savage murderer by which Cardinal Beaton was made to expiate his We have not the smallest partiality for the many and cruel persecutions; a murder to Catholic religion; quite the contrary. That it which, by the great popular eloquence of Knox, should exist at all-that all Catholics are not his fellow labourers in the vineyard of refor converted to the Protestant religion-we con- mation, Lesly and Melvil, had been excited; sider to be a serious evil; but there they are, and yet John Knox, and Lesly and Melvil, were with their spirit as strong, and their opinions as no Papists. Henry the Eighth, whose one virdecided, as your own; the Protestant part of tue was impartiality in these matters, (if an the cabinet have quite given up all idea of put-impartial and evenly balanced persecution of ting them to death; what remains to be done? all sects be a virtue,) beheaded a chancellor We all admit the evil; the object is to make it and a bishop, because having admitted his civil as little as possible. One method commonly supremacy, they doubted his spiritual. Of the resorted to, we are sure, does not lessen, but latter of them Lord Herbert says, 'The pope, increase the evil; and that is, to falsify histo- who suspected not perchance, that the bishop's ry, and deny plain and obvious facts, to the end was so near, had, for more testimony of his injury of the Catholics. No true friend to the favour to him as disaffection to our king, sent Protestant religion, and to the Church of Eng-him a cardinal's hat; but unseasonably, his land, will ever have recourse to such disin-head being off. He beheaded the Countess genuous arts as these. of Salisbury, because at upwards of eighty years old she wrote a letter to Cardinal Pole, her own son: and he burned Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent,' for a prophecy of his death. He burned four Anabaptists in one day for opposing the doctrine of infant baptism; and he burned Lambert, and Anne Ascue, and Belerican, and Lassells, and Adams, on another day, for opposing that of transubstantiation; with many others of lesser note, who refused to subscribe to his Six Bloody Articles, as they were called, or whose opinions fell short of his, or exceeded them, or who abided by opinions after he had abandoned them; and all this after the Reformation. And yet Henry the Eighth was the sovereign who first delivered us from the yoke of Rome. "Our histories have not, I believe, stated what is untrue of Queen Mary, nor, perhaps, have they very much exaggerated what is true of her; but our arguers, whose only talk is of Smithfield, are generally very uncandid in what they conceal. It would appear to be little known that the statutes which enabled Mary to burn those who had conformed to the church of her father and brother, were Protestant statutes, declaring the common law against heresy, and framed by her father Henry the Eighth, and confirmed and acted upon by order of council of her brother Edward the Sixth, enabling that mild and temperate young sovereign to burn divers misbelievers, by sentence of commissioners (little better, says Neale, than a Protestant Inquisition) appointed to ‘examine and "In later times, thousands of Protestant Dissearch after all Anabaptists, Heretics, or con- senters of the four great sects were made to temners of the Book of Common Prayer.' It languish in loathsome prisons, and hundreds would appear to be seldom considered, that her to perish miserably, during the reign of Charles zeal might very possibly have been warmed by the Second, under a Protestant high church gothe circumstance of both her chaplains having vernment, who then first applied, in the prayer been imprisoned for their religion, and herself for the Parliament, the epithets of 'most reli arbitrarily detained, and her safety threatened,gious and gracious,' to a sovereign whom they during the short but persecuting reign of her brother. The sad evidences of the violence of those days are by no means confined to her acts. The fagots of persecution were not kindled by Papists only, nor did they cease to blaze when the power of using them as instruments knew to be profligate and unprincipled beyond example, and had reason to suspect to be a concealed Papist. "Later still, Archbishop Sharpe was sacrificed by the murderous enthsiasm of certain Scotch Covenanters, who yet appear to have "On subjects like these, silence on all sides, and a mutual interchange of repentance, forgiveness, and oblivion, is wisdom. But to quote grievances on one side only, is not honesty."Lord Nugent's Letter, pp. 24-27. sincerely believed themselves inspired by Hea- | best, recommended them; and because I beven to this act of cold-blooded barbarous as- lieved, from the language of some who supsassination. ported it only on these conditions, that they offered the fairest chance for the measure being carried. I voted for them as the price of Catholic emancipation, for which I can scarcely contemplate any Irish price that I would not pay. With the same object, I would vote for them again; but I shall never again have the opportunity. For these also, if they were thought of any value as securities, the events of this year in Ireland have shown you that you have lost for ever. And the necessity of the great measure becomes every day more urgent and unavoidable."-Lord Nugent's Letter, pp. 71, 72. Sir Richard Birnie can only attend to the complaints of individuals; but no cases of swindling are brought before him so atrocious as the violation of the treaty of Limerick, and the disappointment of those hopes, and the frustration of that arrangement; which hopes, and which arrangements, were held out as one of the great arguments for the union. The chapter of English fraud comes next to the chapter of English cruelty, in the history of Ireland-and both are equally disgraceful. Can any man living say that Ireland is not in a much more dangerous state than it was before the Catholic convention began to exist? that the inflammatory state of that country is Nothing can be more striking than the conduct not becoming worse and worse?-that those of the parent legislature to the legislature of the men whom we call demagogues and incendiaWest Indian Islands. "We cannot leave you to ries have not produced a very considerable and yourselves upon these points" (says the English alarming effect upon the Irish population? government); "the wealth of the planter and the Where is this to end? But the fool lifteth up commercial prosperity of the island are not the his voice in the coffee-house, and sayeth, "“We only points to be looked to. We must look to shall give them an hearty thrashing: let them the general rights of humanity, and see that arise-the sooner the better-we will soon put they are not outraged in the case of the poor them down again." The fool sayeth this in slave. It is impossible we can be satisfied, till the coffee-house, and the greater fool praiseth we know that he is placed in a state of progress him. But does Lord Stowell say this? does and amelioration." How beautiful is all this! Mr. Peel say this? does the Marquis of Hertford and how wise, and how humane and affecting say this? do sensible, calm, and reflecting men are our efforts throughout Europe to put an end like these, not admit the extreme danger of to the slave trade? Wherever three or four combating against invasion and disaffection, negotiators are gathered together, a British di- and this with our forces spread in active hosplomate appears among them, with some arti-tility over the whole face of the globe? Can cle of kindness and pity for the poor negro. All is mercy and compassion, except when wretched Ireland is concerned. The saint who swoons at the lashes of the Indian slave is the encourager of No-Popery meetings, and the hard, bigoted, domineering tyrant of Ireland. See the folly of delaying to settle a question which, in the end, must be settled, and, ere long, to the advantage of the Catholics. How the price rises by delay! This argument is extremely well put by Lord Nugent. "I should observe that two occasions have already been lost of granting these claims, coupled with what were called securities, such as never can return. In 1808, the late Duke of Norfolk and Lord Grenville, in the one house, and Mr. Ponsonby and Mr. Grattan, in the other, were authorized by the Irish Catholic body to propose a negative to be vested in the crown upon the appointment of their bishops. Mr. Perceval, the chancellor, and the spiritual bench, did not see the importance of this opportunity. It was rejected; the Irish were driven to despair; and in the same tomb with the question of 1808 lies forever buried the veto. The same was the fate with what were called the wings' attached to Sir Francis Burdett's bill of last year. I voted for them, not for the sake certainly of extending the patronage of the crown over a new body of clergy, nor yet for the sake of diminishing the popular character of elections in Ireland, but because Mr. O'Connell, and because some of the Protestant friends of the measure who knew Ireland the they feel this vulgar, hectoring certainty of |