continent of Europe, and particularly if they visit Italy, they return home with prejudices increased and ignorance unenlightened. With little knowledge of the history and literature of the countries they travel through, and with few personal acquaintances among the people to soften their feelings towards them, they catch directly at those gross exhibitions of superstition which are so com

and against granting the claims of the Catholics of Ireland: that his sense of the evils and errors of the Catholic religion had become continually stronger and stronger; but his opinion with regard to the Catholic Question was wholly changed; and he was satisfied that there was no prospect of relieving Ireland from its superstitions but by granting to the Catholics their civil rights, and so alienating them from their dependence on Rome by uniting them on equal terms to their Protestant country

men.

In confirmation of this view of the subject, I know that some of the principal members of the Papal Government, in conversation with an individual totally unconnected with England, have expressed their apprehensions lest the Catholic claims should be granted; as the influence actually enjoyed by the Pope in Ireland would then be superseded in the minds of the Irish by natural feelings of attachment to their country and constitution.

mon, and think that they have now a confirmation of all their former notions of the monstrous nature of Popery.

On their return home they settle mostly in country parishes, and the little time which they can spare from their pastoral duties for pursuing their own studies, is naturally devoted to works on divinity. In this state of mind and with this previous education, the Catholic Question presents itself to their notice: a question involving at once the first principles of civil society; and requiring a copious knowledge of the history of the Christian Church, of the constitution and parties of England, and of the history and institutions of several of the nations of the continent. They who have never considered great political questions, nor have examined the origin of civil society, and the rights and duties of individuals as members of it, cannot appreciate the sin of that flagrant injustice which we have offered to the Catholics of Ireland. They who know not the history of the Christian Church, are ignorant of the causes which led successively to the growth of Popery, and know not the proba

bility of its improvement, if its nature be thoroughly understood, and a suitable plan of dealing with it be devised. They who have never studied the contests of our parties, and the vicissitudes of our government, are not aware that in their sense of the term we have no constitution at all; that we have no code in which the principles of our government were at once fully laid down, and the whole social edifice constructed according to them; but that what we call our constitution is a state of things resulting from various successive struggles, each of which had its own particular object, and led to its own particular reform. Thus the struggle which ended at the Revolution of 1688, was substantially and in principle, whether the crown or the nation as represented in Parliament should possess the effective control of our government; and all the enactments against Catholics were merely accidental, and arose partly out of the circumstance that the popular party in the last two reigns had consisted chiefly of Puritans; partly because persecution of Popery was the only point in which the Tories could sympatihze with the Whigs; and they were glad by their zeal against

the Catholics to compensate for their long oppression of the Protestant Dissenters; and partly because the great reliance of the two last Stuart princes was on the support of the Catholic despotism of France. But so little are the principles of Roman Catholics necessarily adverse to civil liberty, that had the quarrels between the Guelfs and Ghibelines lasted for three centuries longer, we should have seen the Pope supporting and supported by the free Republics of Italy in a contest against the Protestant tyranny and high monarchical doctrines of the emperors of Germany. They who know the Roman Catholic religion only from the naked statement of its worst tenets as exhibited in the works of Protestant controversialists, and are ignorant of what it is and has been in practice for the last hundred and fifty years wherever it has been placed in peaceful contact with Protestantism, judge of it naturally from the tendency of its most offensive principles, supposing that all men will carry their principles into practice, and ignorant of the checks and palliatives which in actual life neutralize their virulence. Not feeling therefore the sin of national injustice, not understanding the nature of

Catholicism, not acquainted with our parties and their struggles, not familiar with the actual state of the Catholic Religion in other countries, they act upon one impression only, which their education and professional studies have alike fostered, that Popery is an unchristian thing, and that nothing should be done to favour it. Influenced by this impression themselves they impart it to their parishioners, whose ignorance is more complete, and their passions more violent; and thus a clamour is raised, powerful from the numbers that join in it, and respectable from the honesty of their motives; but worth nothing in determining the merits of the Question, as the knowledge of those who raise it is so little proportioned to their zeal. I know that it savours of arrogance to claim a superiority of knowledge over those who differ from us; and the carvers among the lions would no doubt represent the matter differently. Yet the statement which I have given of the ordinary education and studies of the most active class of our opponents is one which they themselves cannot deny ; nor can it be denied, on the other hand, that all those statesmen who have most considered the