always strong, always vigilant, and always rich; you must commit no bluuders, exhibit no deficiencies, and meet with no misfortunes; you must present a square phalanx of impenetrable strength, for keen-eyed revenge is riding round your ranks; and if one heart falters, or one hand trembles, you are lost. that they may become his loyal subjects. Great Bri You may call all this threatening; I am sure I have no such absurd intention; but wish only, in sober sadness, to point out what appears to me to be the inevitable consequences of the conduct we pursue. If danger be not pointed out and insisted upon, how is it to be avoided? My firm belief is, that England will be compelled to grant ignominiously what she now refuses haughtily. Remember what happened respecting Ireland in the American war. In 1779, the Irish, whose trade was completely restricted by English laws, asked for some little relaxation, some liberty to export her own products, and to import the products of other countries; their petition was flung out of the House with the utmost disdain, and by an immense majority. In April, 1782, 70,000 Irish volunteers were under arms, the representatives of 170 armed corps met at Ulster, and the English Parliament (the Lords and Commons both on the same day and with only one dissentient voice, the ministers moving the question) were compelled, in the most disgraceful and precipitate manner, to acknowledge the complete indepen.ficulty of getting in a bill from an unwilling paymaster dance of the Irish nation, and nothing but the good sense and moderation of Grattan prevented the separation of the two crowns. If you call in the morning, the gentleman is not up if in the middle of the day, he is out; if in the even ing, there is company. If you ask mildly, you are indifferent to the time of payment; if you press, you are impertinent. No time and no manner can render such a message agreeable. So it is with the poor Ca tholics; their message is so disagreeable, that their time and manner can never be right. 6 Not this ses sion. Not now; on no account at the present time; any other time than this. The great mass of the Catholics are so torpid on the subject, that the question is clearly confined to the ambition of the few, or the whole Catholic population are so leagued together, that the object is clearly to intimidate the mother country. In short, the Catholics want justice, and we do not mean to be just, and the most specious method of refusal is, to have it believed that they are refused from their own folly, and not from our fault. It is no part of my province to defend every error of the Catholic church: I believe it has many errors, though I am sure these errors are grievously exaggerated and misrepresented. I should think it a vast accession to the happiness of mankind, if every Catholic in Europe were converted to the Protestant faith. The question is not, whether there shall be Catholics, but the question (as they do exist and you cannot get rid of them) is, what are you to do with them? Are you to make men rebels because you cannot make them Protestants? and are you to endanger your state because you cannot enlarge your church? England is the ark of liberty: the English Church I believe to be one of the best establishments in the world; but what is to become of England, of its church, its free institutions, and the beautiful political model it holds out What if O'Connell (a man certainly of extraordinato mankind, if Ireland should succeed in connecting ry talents and eloquence) is sometimes violent and initself with any other European power hostile to Eng- judicious? What if O'Gorman or O'Sullivan have land? I join in the cry of no Popery as lustily as any spoken ill of the Reformation? Is it a great stroke of man in the streets who does not know whether the national policy to depend on such childish considera. pope lives in Cumberland or Westmoreland; but I tions as these? If these chains ought to remain, know that it is impossible to keep down European could I be induced to remove them by the chaste lanPopery, and European tyranny, without the assistance guage and humble deportment of him who wears or with the opposition of Ireland. If you give the Irish them? If they ought to be struck away, would I their privileges, the spirit of the nation will overcome continue them, because my taste was offended by the the spirit of the church; they will cheerfully serve coarse insolence of a goaded and injured captive? you against all enemies, and chant a Te Deum for Would I make that great measure to depend on the your victories over all the Catholic armies of Europe. irritability of my own feelings, which ought to depend If it be true, as her enemies say, that the Roman Ca- upon policy and justice? The more violent and the tholic church is waging war all over Europe against more absurd the conduct of the Catholics, the greater common sense, against public liberty; selling the peo- the wisdom of emancipation. If they were always gople to the kings and nobles, and labouring for the few verned by men of consummate prudence and modera. against the many; all this is an additional reason why tion, your justice in refusing would be the same, but I would fortify England and Protestantism by every your danger would be less. The levity and irritability concession to Ireland: why I should take care that of the Irish character are pressing reasons why all just our attention was not distracted, nor our strength causes of provocation should be taken away, and those wasted by internal dissension; why I would not para-high passions enlisted in the service of the empire. lyze those arms which wield the sword of justice among the nations of the world, and lift up the buckler of safety. If the Catholic religion in Ireland is an abuse, you must tolerate that abuse, to prevent its extension and tyranny over the rest of Europe. If you will take a long view instead of a confined view, and look generally to the increase of human happiness, the best check upon the increase of Popery, the best securily for the establishment of the Protestant Church is, that the British empire shall be preserved in a state of the greatest strength, union, and opulence. My cry, then, is, no Popery; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not join with foreign Papists in time of war. Church for ever; therefore emancipate the Catholics, that they may not help to pull it down. King for ever; therefore emancipate the Catholics, In talking of the spirit of the papal empire, it is of ten argued that the will remains the same; that the pontiff would, if he could, exercise the same influence in Europe; that the Catholic Church would, if it could, tyrannize over the rights and opinions of mankind? but if the power is taken away, what signifies the will? If the pope thunders in vain against the kingdoms of the earth, of what consequence is his disposi tion to thunder? If mankind are too enlightened and too humane to submit to the cruelties and hatreds of a Catholic priesthood; if the Protestants of the empire are sufficiently strong to resist it, why are we to alarm ourselves with the barren volition, unseconded by the requisite power? I hardly know in what order or de scription of men I should choose to confide, if they could do as they would; the best security is, that thê rest of the world will not let them do as they wish to to do; and having satisfied myself of this, I am not very careful about the rest. ica, will be upon us. The Catholics will watch their opportunity, and soon settle the question of Catholic einancipation. To suppose that any nation can go on in the midst of foreign wars, denying common justice to seven millions of men, in the heart of the empire, awakened to their situation, and watching for the crit ical moment of redress, does, I confess, appear to me to be the height of extravagance. To foretell the consequence of such causes, in my humble apprehension, demands no more of shrewdness than to point out the probable results of leaving a lighted candle stuck up in an open barrel of gunpowder. Our government is called essentially Protestant; but if it be essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes, it should be essentially Protestant in the distribution of offices. The treasury is open to all religions, Parliament only to one. The tax-gatherer is the most indulgent and liberal of human beings: he excludes no creed, imposes no articles; but counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant paper; and is candidly and impartially oppressive to every description of the Christian world. Can any thing be more base than It is very difficult to make the mass of mankind bewhen you want the blood or the money of the Catho- lieve that the state of things is ever to be otherwise lics, to forget that they are Catholics, and to remem- than they have been accustomed to see it. I have ber only that they are British subjects; and when very often heard old persons describe the impossibili. they ask for the benefits of the British constitution, to ty of making any one believe that the American colo. remember only that they are Catholics, and to forget nies could ever be separated from this country. It that they are British subjects? was always considered as an idle dream of discontentNo Popery, was the cry of the great English Revo-ed politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a lution, because the increase and prevalence of Popery speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spi in England would, at that period, have rendered this rit of party, considered to be within the limits of pos island tributary to France. The Irish Catholics were, sibility. There was a period when the slightest conat that period, broken to pieces by the severity and cession would have satisfied the Americans; but all military execution of Cromwell, and by the penal laws. the world was in heroics, one set of gentlemen met at They are since become a great and formidable people. the Lamb, and another at the Lion; blood and treasure The same dread of foreign influence makes it now ne-men, breathing war, vengeance, and contempt; and in cessary that they should be restored to political rights. eight years afterwards, an awkward-looking gentleMust the friends of rational liberty join in a clamour man in plain clothes walked up to the drawing-room against the Catholics now, because, in a very different of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen of the state of the world, they excited that clamour a hun- Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as the Ambassador dred years ago? I remember a house near Battersea from the United States of America. Bridge which caught fire, and there was a general cry of Water, water!' 6 Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of the house were nearly drowned. Would it not have been rather singular to have said to the inhabitants, I heard you calling for water ten years ago, why don't you call for it now?' You must forgive me if I draw illustrations from common things-but in seeing swine driven, I have often thought of the Catholic question, and of the dif ferent methods of governing mankind. The object, one day, was to drive some of these animals along a path to a field where they had not been before. The man could by no means succeed; instead of turning their faces to the north, and proceeding quietly along, they made for the east and west, rushed back to the south, and positively refused to advance; a reinforce There are some men who think the present times so incapable of forming any opinions, that they are always looking back to the wisdom of our ancestors. Now, as the Catholics sat in the English parliament to the reign of Charles II. and in the Irish Parliament, Iment of rustics was called for; maids, children, neighbelieve, till the reign of King William, the precedents are more in their favour than otherwise; and to replace them in Parliament seems rather to return to, than to deviate from, the practice of our ancestors. If the Catholics are priest-ridden, pamper the rider, and he will not stick so close; don't torment the ani-lic emancipation; a little boy was sent before them mal ridden, and his violence will be less dangerous. The strongest evidence against the Catholics is that of Colonel John Irvine; he puts every thing against them in the strongest light, and Colonel John (with great actual, though, I am sure, with no intentional exaggeration) does not pretend to say there would be more than forty-six members returned for Ireland who were Catholics; but how many members are there in the House now returned by catholics, and compelled, from the fear of losing their seats, to vote in favour of every measure which concerns the Catholic Church? The Catholic party, as the colonel justly observes, was formed when you admitted them to the elective franchise. The Catholic party are increasing so much in boldness, that they will soon require of the members they return, to oppose generally any government hostile to Catholic emancipation, and they will turn out those who do not comply with this rule. If this is done, the phalanx so much dreaded from emancipation is found at once without emancipation. This consequence of resistance to the Catholic claims is well worth the attention of those who make use of the cry of no Popery, as a mere political engine. bours, all helped; a general rushing, screaming, and roaring ensued; but the main object was not in the slightest degree advanced. After a long delay, we resolved (though an hour before we should have disdained such a compromise) to have recourse to Catho with a handful of barley; a few grains were scattered in the path, and the bristly herd were speedily and safely conducted to the place of their destination. If, instead of putting Lord Stowell out of breath with dri ving-compelling the Duke of York to swear, and the chancellor to strike at them with the mace, Lord Liverpool would condescend, in his graceful manner, to walk before the Catholic doctors with a basket of barley, what a deal of ink and blood would be saved to mankind. Because the Catholics are intolerant we will be intole If the rant; but did any body ever hear before that a government is to imitate the vices of its subjects? Irish were a rash, violent, and intemperate race, are they to be treated with rashness, violence, and intemperance? If they were addicted to fraud and falsehood, are they to be treated by those who rule them with fraud and falsehood? Are there to be perpetual races in error and vice between the people and the lords of the people? Is the supreme power always to find virtues among the people; never to teach them by exam. ple, or improve them by laws and institutions? Make all sects free, and let them learn the value of the blessWe are taunted with our prophetical spirit, because ing to others by their own enjoyment of it; but if not, it is said by the advocates of the Catholic question let them learn it by your vigilance and firm resistance that the thing must come to pass; that it is inevita- to every thing intolerant. Toleration will then beble our prophecy, however, is founded upon experi- come a habit and a practice ingrafted upon the manence and common sense, and is nothing more than ners of a people, when they find the law too strong for the application of the past to the future. In a few them, and that there is no use in being intolerant. years time, when the madness and wretchedness of war It is very true that the Catholics have a double alleare forgotten, when the greater part of those who have giance, but it is equally true that their second or spilost in war, legs and arms, health and sons, have gone to their graves, the same scenes will be acted over *The same double allegiance exists in every Catholic again in the world. France, Spain, Russia and Amer-country in Europe. The spiritual head of the country 304 WORKS OF THE REV. SIDNEY SMITH. ritual allegiance has nothing to do with civil policy, do not accuse them of intentional cruelty and inand does not, in the most distant manner, interfere justice; I am sure there are very many excellent men What is meant by who would be shocked if they could conceive them. with their allegiance to the crown. allegiance to the crown, is, I presume, obedience to selves to be guilty of any thing like cruelty; but they acts of Parliament, and a resistance to those who are innocently give a wrong name to the bad spirit which constitutionally proclaimed to be the enemies of the is within them, and think they are tolerant, because country. I have seen and heard of no instance, for this they are not as intolerant as they could have been in century and a half last past, where the spiritual sove- other times, but cannot be now. The true spirit is to reign has presumed to meddle with the affairs of the search after God and for another life with lowliness The Catholics deny him such of heart; to fling down no man's altar, to punish no temporal sovereign. power by the most solemn oaths which the wit of man man's prayer; to heap no penalties and no pains on can devise. In every war, the army and navy are full those solemn supplications which, in divers tongues, of Catholic officers and soldiers; and if their allegiance and in varied forms, and in temples of a thousand in temporal matters is unimpeachable and unimpeach-shapes, but with one deep sense of human dependence, ed, what matters to whom they choose to pay spiritu- men pour forth to God. al obedience, and to adopt as their guide in genuflexion and psalmody? Suppose these same Catholics were foolish enough to be governed by a set of Chinese moralists in their diet, this would be a third allegiance; and if they were regulated by Brahmins in their dress, this would be a fourth allegiance; and if they received the directions of the Patriarch of the Greek Church in educating their children, here is another allegiance: and as long as they fought, and paid taxes, and kept clear of the quarter sessions and assizes, what matters how many fanciful supremacies and frivolous allegiances they choose to inanufacture or accumulate for themselves? A great deal of time would be spared, if gentlemen, before they ordered their post-chaises for a no-Popery meeting, would read the most elementary defence of these people, and inform themselves even of the rudiments of the question. If the Catholics meditate the resumption of the Catholic property, why do they purchase that which they know (if the fondest object of their political life succeed) inust be taken away from them? Why is not an attempt made to purchase a quietus from the rebel who is watching the blessed revolutionary moment for regaining his possessions, and revelling in the unbounded sensuality of mealy and waxy enjoyments? But after all, who are the descendants of the rightful possessors? The estate belonged to the O'Rourkes, who were hanged, drawn, and quartered in the time of Cromwell; true, but before that, it belonged to the O'Connors, who were hauged, drawn, and quartered in the time of Henry VII. The O'Sullivans have a still earlier plea of suspension, evisceration, and division. Who is the rightful posse We forget that Catholic Ireland sor of the estate? has been murdered three times over by its Protestant masters. sses Mild and genteel people do not like the idea of persecution, and are advocates for toleration; but then they think it no act of intolerance to deprive Catholics of political power. The history of all this is, that all men secretly like to punish others for not being of the same opinion with themselves, and that this sort of privation is the only species of persecution, of which the improved feeling and advanced cultivation of the age will admit. Fire and fagot, chains and stone walls, have been clamoured away; nothing remains but to mortify a man's pride, and to limit his resources, and to set a mark upon him, by cutting him off from his fair share of political power. By this receipt, insolence is gratified, and humanity is not shocked. The gentlest Protestant can see, with dry eyes, Lord Stourton excluded from Parliament, though he would abominate the most distant idea of personal cruelty to Mr. Petre. This is only to say that he lives in the nineteenth, instead of the sixteenth century, and that he is as intolerant in religious matters as the state of manners existing in his age will 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 Are they any thing else but deinto the flames? grees 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 among French, Spanish, and Austrian catholics, is the It is completely untrue that the Catholic religion is If the pope what it was three centuries ago, or that it is unchangeable and unchanged. These are mere words, without the shadow of truth to support them. were to address a bull to the kingdom of Ireland, excommunicating the Duke of 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 they sit in the same Parliament, are elected to the one church-Catholics at eleven, Protestants at one; same office, live together without hatred or friction. under equal laws. Who can see and know these things, and say that the Catholic religion is unchangeable and unchanged? 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 1. Historical recollections of the cruelties inflicted among the most conspicuous: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. 6. An unprincipled clamour by men who have no sort of belief in the danger of emancipation; but whe 7. A mean and selfish spirit of denying to others make use of no Popery as a political engine. the advantages we ourselves enjoy. 8. A vindictive spirit or love of punishing others, who offend our self-love by presuming, on important 9. Stupid compliance with the opinions of the mapoints, to entertain opinions opposite to our own. jority. 10. To these I must, in justice and candour add, as a tenth cause, a real apprehension on the part of hon est and reasonable men, that it is dangerous to grant farther concessions to the Catholics. To these various causes I shall make a short reply, in the order in which I have placed them. 1. Mere historical recollections are very miserable reasons for the continuation of penal and incapacitat ing laws, and one side has as much to recollect as the other. 2. The state has nothing to do with questions purely theological. 3. It is ill to say this in a country whose free insti tutions 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 while to attempt an enterprise so desperate. 6. This is an unfair political trick, because it is too dangerous; it is spoiling the table in order to win the game. The 7th and 8th causes exercise a great share of influence in every act of intolerance. The 9th must, of course, comprehend the greatest number. 10. Of the existence of such a clsss of no Poperists as this, it would be the height of injustice to doubt, but I confess it excites in me a very great degree of astonishment. Suppose after a severe struggle, you put the Irish down, if they are mad and foolish enough to recur to open violence; yet are the retarded industry, and the misapplied energies of so many millions of men to go for nothing? Is it possible to forget all the wealth, peace, and happiness which are to be sacrificed for twenty years to come, to these pestilential and disgraceful squabbles? Is there no horror in looking forward to a long period in which men, instead of ploughing and spinning, will curse and hate, and burn and murder. There seems to me a sort of injustice and impropriety in our deciding at all upon the Catholic question. It should be left to those Irish Protestants whose shutters are bullet proof; whose dinner-table is regularly spread with knife, fork, and cocked pistol; salt cellar and powder-flask. Let the opinion of those persons be resorted to, who sleep in sheet-iron night-caps; who have fought so often and so nobly before their scullery door, and defended the parlour passage as bravely as Leonidas defended the pass of Thermopyla. The Irish Protestant members see and know the state of their own country. Let their votes decide the case. We are quiet and at peace; our homes may be defended with a feather, and our doors fastened with a pin; and as ignorant of what armed and insulted Popery is, as we are of the state of New Zealand, we pretend to regulate by our clamours the religious factions of Ireland. It is a very pleasant thing to trample upon Catholics, and it is also a very pleasant thing to have an immense number of pheasants running about your woods; but there come thirty or forty poachers in the night, and fight with thirty or forty game preservers; some are killed, some fractured, some scalped, some maimed for life. Poachers are caught up and hanged; a vast body of hatred and revenge accumulates in the neighbourhood of the great man; and he says the sport is not worth the candle. The preservation of game is a very agreeable thing, but I will not sacrifice the happiness of my life to it. This amusement, like any other, may be purchased too dearly.' So it is with the Irish Protestants; they are finding out that Catholic exclusion may be purchased too dearly. Maimed cattle, fired ricks, threatening letters, barricadoed houses, to endure all this, is to purchase superiority at too dear a rate, and this is the inevitable state of two parties, the one of whom are unwilling to relinquish their ancient monopoly of power, while the other party have, at length discovered their strength, and are determined to be free. | any thing 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. You talk of their abuse of the Reformation, but is there any end to the obloquy and abuse with which the Catholics are upon every point, and from every quarter, assailed? Is there any one foily, vice, or crime, which the blind fury of Protestants does not lavish upon them? and do you suppose all this is to be heard in silence, and without retaliation? Abuse as much as you please, if you are going to emancipate, but if you intend to do nothing for the Catholics but to call them names, you must not be put out of temper if you receive a few ugly appellations 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, take the following enumeration of some of their most learned and careful writers. The whole number of Catholics who have suffered death in England for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion since the Reformation: Henry VIII. with consummate impartiality, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day and 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. Gentlemen (with the best intentions, I am sure,) Warburton properly says it exceeds in cruelty any meet together in a country town, and enter into reso- thing done by Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. lutions that no farther concessions are to be made to Elias Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Catholics; but if you will not let them into Parlia- the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. Edmunds. ment, why not allow them to be king's counsel, or ser- bury, for dispersing books against the Common Prayer. geants at law? Why are they excluded by law from With respect to the great part of the Catholic victims, some corporations in Ireland, and admissible, though the law was fully and literally executed; after being not admitted, to others? I think, before such general hanged up, they were cut down alive, dismembered, resolutions of exclusion are adopted, and the rights ripped up, and their bowels burnt before their faces; and happiness of so many millions of people disposed after which, they were beheaded and quartered. The of, it would be decent and proper to obtain some toler-time employed in this butchery was very considerable information of what the present state of the Irishable, and, in one instance, lasted more than half an Catholics is, and of the vast number of insignificant hour. offices from which they are excluded. Keep them The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater from Parliament, if you think it right, but do not, part of these men were put to death for political, uot therefore, exclude them from any thing else, to which for religious crimes. That is, a law is first passed you think Catholics may be fairly admitted without making it high treason for a priest to exercise his func danger, and as to their content or discontent, there tion in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt, can be no sort of reason why discontent should not be this is not religious persecution, but an offence against lessened, though it cannot be removed. the state. We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish uncandid reasoning as this. Is You are shocked by the present violence and abuse used by the Irish Association; by whom are they driven to it? and whom are you to thank for it? there a hope left to them? Is any term of endurance alluded to? any 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? The total number of those who suffered capitally in the reign of Elizabeth, is stated by Dodd, in his Church History, to be one hundred and ninety-nine; further *The total number of sufferers in the reign of Queen Mary, varies, I believe, from 200 in the Catholic to 280 in the Protestant accounts. I recommend all young men who wish to form some notion of what answer the Catholics have to make, to read Milner's Letters to a Prebendary,' and to follow the line of reading to which his references * A great majority of Irish members voted for Catholic lead. They will then learn the importance of that sacred maxim, Audi alteram partem. emancipation.. inquiries made their number to be two hundred and four; fifteen of these were condemned for denying the queen's supremacy; one hundred aud twenty-six for the exercise of priestly functions; and the others for being reconciled to the Catholic faith, or for aiding and assisting priests. In this list, no person is included who was executed for any plot, real or imaginary, except eleven, who suffered for the pretended plot of Rheins; a plot, which Dr. Milner justly observes, was so daring a forgery, that even Camden allows the sufferers to have been political victims. Besides these, mention is made in the same work of ninety Catholic priests, or laymen, who died in prison in the same reign. About the same time,' he says, 'I find fifty gentlemen lying prisoners in York Castle; most of them perished there, of vermin, famine, hunger, thirst, dirt, damp, fever, whipping, and broken hearts, the inseparable circumstances of prisons in those days. These were every week, for a twelve-month together, dragged by main force to hear the established service performed in the castle chapel." The Catholics were frequently, during the reign of Elizabeth, tortured in the most dreadful manner. In order to extort answers from father Campion, he was laid on the rack, and his limbs stretched a little, to show him, as the executioner termed it, what the rack was. He persisted in his refusal; then, for several days successively, the torture was increased, and on the last two occasions he was so cruelly rent and torn, that he expected to expire under the torment. While under the rack, he called continually upon God. In the reign of the Protestant Edward VI., Joan Knell was burnt to death, and the year after, George Parry was burnt also. In 1575, two Protestants, Peterson and Turwort, (as before stated,) were burnt to death by Elizabeth. In 1589, under the same queen, Lewes, a Protestant, was burnt to death at Norwich, where Francis Kett was also burnt for religious opinions in 1589, under the same great queen, who, in 1591, hanged the Protestant Hacket for heresy, in Cheapside, and put to death Greenwood, Barrow, and Penry, for being Brownists. Southwell, a Catholic, was racked ten times during the reign of this sister of bloody Queen Mary. In 1592, Mrs. Ward was hanged, drawn, and quartered for assisting a Catholic priest to escape in a box. Mrs. Lyne suffered the same punishment for harbouring a priest; and in 1586, Mrs. Clitheroe, who was accused of relieving a priest, and refused to plead, was pressed to death in York Castle; a sharp stone being placed underneath her back. they uniformly put to death, and in cold blood, all the priests and religious they could lay their hands on. The Protestant Servetus was put to death by the Protestants of Geneva, for denying the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Protestant Gentilis was, on the same score, by those of Berne; add to these, Felix Mans, Rotman, and Barnevald. Of Servetus, Melanethon, the mildest of men, declared that he deserved to have his bowels pulled out, and his body torn to pieces. The last fires of persecution which were lighted in England, were by Protestants. Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, was burnt by order of King James in Smithfield, on the 18th of March, 1612; on the 11th of April, in the same year, Edward Weightman was burnt at Litchfield, by order of the Protestant Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry; and this man was, I be lieve, the last person who was burnt in England for heresy. There was another condemned to the fire for the same heresy, but as pity was excited by the constancy of these sufferers, it was thought better to al low him to linger on a miserable life in Newgate. Fuller, who wrote in the reign of Charles II., and was a zealous Church of England man, speaking of the burnings in question, says, 'It may appear that God was well pleased with them.' 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 spi rit of the Catholics, I would ask them what they think of the following code, drawn up by the French Catholics against the French Protestants and 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 school-master for education, he is to forfeit 250 livres a month, and the schoolmaster who receives him, 50 livres. If they sent their chil dren to any seminary abroad, they were to forfeit 2000 livres, and the child so sent, became incapable of possessing property in France. To celebrate Protes tant worship, exposed the clergyman to a fine of 2800 livres. The fine to a Protestant for hearing it, was 1300 livres. If any Protestant denied the authority of the pope in France, his goods were seized for the first offence, and he was hanged for the second. If any Common Prayer-book, or book of Protestant wor ship be found in the possession of any Protestant, he shall forfeit 20 livres for the first offence, 40 livres for Have not Protestants persecuted both Catholics and the second, and shall be imprisoned at pleasure for their fellow Protestants in Germany, Switzerland, Ge- the third. Any person bringing from beyond sea, or neva, France, Holland, Sweden, and England? Look selling Protestant books of worship, to forfeit 100 lito the atrocious punishment of Leighton under Laud, vres. Any magistrate may search Protestant houses for writing against prelacy; first, his ear was cut off, for such articles. Any person, required by a magis then his nose slit, then the other ear cut off, then trate to take an oath against the Protestant religion, whipped, then whipped agam. Look to the horrible and refusing, to be committed to prison, and if he af cruelties exercised by the Protestant Episcopalians on terwards refuse again, to suffer forfeiture of goods. the Scottish Presbyterians, in the reign of Charles II., Any person, sending any money over sea to the sup of whom 8000 are said to have perished in that persecu- port of a Protestant seminary, to forfeit his goods, tion. Persecutions of Protestants by Protestants, are and be imprisoned at the king's pleasure. Any per. amply detailed by Chandler, in his History of Perse- son going over sea, for Protestant education, to for cution; by Neal, in his History of the Puritans; by feit goods and lands for life. The vessel to be forfeit Laing, in his History of Scotland; by Penn, in his Life ed which conveyed any Protestant woman or child of Fox; and in Brandt's History of the Reformation over sea, without the king's license. Any person conin the Low Countries; which furnishes many very ter- verting another to the Protestant religion, to be put rible cases of the sufferings of the Anabaptists and to death. Death to any Protestant priest to come in. Remonstrants. In 1560, the Parliament of Scotland to France; death to the person who receives him; decreed, at one and the same time, the establishment forfeiture of goods and imprisonment to send money of Calvinism, and the punishment of death against the for the relief of any Protestant clergyman: large reancient religion: With such indecent haste (says wards for discovering a Protestant parson. Every Robertson) did the very persons who had just escaped Protestant shall cause his child, within one month af ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to imitate their ex- ter birth, to be baptized by a Catholic priest, under a ample. Nothing can be so absurd as to suppose, penalty of 2000 livres. Protestants were fined 4000 that in barbarous ages, the excesses were all commit. livres a month for being absent from Catholic wor ted by one religious party, and none by the other. ship, were disabled from holding offices and employ. The Huguenots of France burnt churches, and hung ments, from keeping arms in their houses, from mainpriests wherever they found them. Froumenteau, one taining suits at law, from being guardians, from prac. of their own writers, confesses, that in the single prov- tising in law or physic, and from holding offices, civil ince of Dauphiny, they killed two hundred and twenty or military. They were forbidden (bravo, Louis priests, and one hundred and twelve friars. In the XIV. !) to travel more than five miles from home Low Countries, wherever Vandemerk and Soni, lieu-without license, under pain of forfeiting all their tenants of the Prince of Orange, carried their arms, goods, and they might not come to court under pain |