use the substance, if not the words of my hon. and learned friend) as the religion of Fenelon. Another hon. and learned friend of mine, now no longer a member of this House, in a splendid passage which I well remember, enumerated the great divines of the Roman Catholic church, and referred to the solemn and saintly morality of Nicole, the severe and intellectual faith of Pascal, the devout and affectionate religion of Fenelon, and asked, whether the church, which these men represented, could be fairly an object of the aversion with which we regard it? I answer, whatever the church may be which these men represent, it is not the church of Rome. The church of Rome will have none of them. It "proscribed them living, and condemns them dead." Of Fenelon I have already quoted the proscription: Pascal, also, in his two celebrated works, (one, indeed-the "Pensées"-on account of the notes of Voltaire which accompanied it), is condemned in the same "Index"; and Dr. Doyle, in a Letter which was published last year in Dublin, as distinctly renounces another of the very best of the Roman Catholic divines. His Correspondent, in reference to a comprehensive scheme for uniting the churches of England and of Rome, had referred to the names of Pascal and Quesnel. He answers, "the very mention of Baius and Quesnel would cause every Catholic to revolt from you; and I, myself, would rather undertake to reconcile a church-of-England-man to Rome, than attempt to render Quesnel or Baius acceptable-so odious are these names to us." "The opinions of Baius or Quesnel should never be mentioned, if you wish to conciliate the Roman Catholics." ↑ And yet, it is by these names-the names of Fenelon, Pascal and Quesnel that the church of Rome is most advantageously known in this country; it is by these names, that it is alleged, by her Protestant friends, that she is represented. Upon the subject of the works proscribed in the "Index", I will intrude no further on the attention of the House, than to say, that not only are all the Versions of the Scriptures, which may have been published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in any spoken language (quâvis *Lettersonthe Re-union of the Churches. Dublin 1824. p. 13. + Letters on the Re-union of the Churches; p. 24. vulgari lingua), prohibited absolutely and universally, but in one of the latest additions to that "Index" (a single sheet, printed in 1820, and containing the works prohibited since the date of that Index in 1819), are two editions of the New Testament in Italian, both from the Vulgate; both by Martini, archbishop of Florence; both printed in Italy; and neither of them stated to have a single heretical note; but both alike proscribed, as unfit to be read. The prohibitory clause is as follows: the Pope (having recited the condemnation of the editions of the New Testament in question, of an English impression of the saine book, and of seven other works, one of Medical Jurisprudence, one of Physiology), proceeds-" Itaque nemo cujuscunque gradus et conditionis prædicta opera damnata atque proscripta, quocumque loco et quocumque idiomate, aut in posterum edere, aut edita legere, vel retinere audeat, sub pœnis," &c. From the tyranny over the human mind thus exercised by the church of Rome, wherever it has power, I draw this conclusion, that, to give it new power any where would be most unsafe; and if it were given on the ground that the church of Rome has changed its character, would be most contrary to the evidence of facts. It has still the same grasping, dominant, exclusive, and intolerant character: it is weaker, indeed, than it was; but it carries with it every where the same mind. You have, indeed, shorn and bound the strong man; but, the secret of his strength is still upon him; and if, from whatever motive, you admit him into the sanctuary of your temple, beware lest the place and the opportunity should call that strengthinto action, and with all the original energies of his might restored for the occasion, he should pull down the temple of the constitution upon you, and bury you and your idols and himself in one common ruin. The prohibitions which I have quoted are not, I repeat it, from old worm-eaten authorities: they were published not seven years ago, in Rome, by the last Pope. His own personal conduct accorded too much with the spirit of that book. Though he owned how large a share the heretics of England had in his restoration; though he owned specifically that it was the act of England which was the means of restoring to him all those treasures of ancient greatness, of which Rome had been deprived; though he was ever anxious to shew every personal kindness and attention to the English as individuals; though he was himself, as an hon. friend of mine described him to be, with some latitude indeed, a "Protestant Pope, and almost one of the best Protestants in Europe;" yet, so entirely did he in Cathedrá, adopt the principles of his station; so little did he venture to deviate from the intolerance of his predecessors, that the English, in the day in which I was at Rome, seven years after the restoration of that Pope, had no place of worship recognised or tolerated in Rome. I speak in the hearing of many members who must have been in Rome within the last ten years; and, without fear of contradiction, I assert, that though the English were connived at, when they went to the drawing-room of one of their own countrymen to have under his roof the comfort and advantage on Sundays of their own church-service, they were not permitted to have it; and when they wished to have a regular chapel, the permission was distinctly refused. The worship of the English Protestants at Rome was not only not licensed, it was not even tolerated-it was only connived at. Is this the proof that the spirit of the church of Rome is changed?-that it is more tolerant, more willing, and more fit, to be blended with Protestantism? Will the House believe, that the English, that the Protestants generally, had, when I was in Rome, four years ago, no space allowed them there, marked out and secured for themselves, where they could bury those members of their families whom it might be their misery to lose there? From consecrated ground they were excluded of course; but is it credible that they should not have been permitted to wall round, or to fence in that portion of the waste in which they were nevertheless allowed to cast their dead? If the right hon. gentleman, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had been present, I would have asked him, whether there be not in the archives of his office some representation, dated five or six years ago, on the part of the English in Rome, soliciting the interference of our government in obtaining for them a burying-ground of their own; or at least some security and sacredness to the spot now uninclosed and open to every other purpose? The fact is, that the intolerance of the see of Rome is as great as ever. The late Pope, good man as he was in many points, distinctly proved this, in that very curious work printed here thirteen years ago, containing his official correspondence, with Alquier and Miollis, when they seized the papal states in 1808.* The Pope himself was carried off a prisoner into France. While Buonaparte was meditating it, he still felt it right to submit, for the sanction of the Pope, certain articles relating, not to the universal church, but to the internal administration of France itself as it related to religion. One of those articles was, that all religions should be free. -" Que tous les cultes soient libres et publiquement exercés." The Pope answered as if he had been Julius 2nd or Sixtus 5th. He turns round to his cardinals, and tells them in words which no Protestant should ever forget "We have rejected this article, as contrary to the canons, to the councils, to the Catholic religion, to the tranquillity of life, and to the welfare of the state." In another rescript to the bishops in the same work, he refers to the toleration of all sects actually granted in France under Buonaparte; and says that such alliance can no more consist with the Catholic church, than a concord with Christ and Belial. Let it always be recollected that this was in reference to an application from a sovereign on his throne, in the plenitude of his power, to a poor decrepid old man, whom he was about to carry off as a prisoner into the centre of France; that Buonaparte felt the spiritual power of the Pope, when he asked the exercise of it to confirm his * Relation de ce qui s'est passé à Rome dans l'Envahissement des Etats du St. Siège par les François. 3tom. Lond. 1812. + Si pretende la libertà d'ogni culto con publico esercizio, e questo articolo siccome opposto à canoni ed ai concili, e alla religione cattolica, al quieto vivere, ed alla felicità dello stato, per le funeste consequenze che ne deriverebbero, lo abbiamo pure rigettato. Relation, tom i., p. 42. † Relation, tom. i. p. 193. own regulations for the internal government of France; and that the Pope showed the unchanging character of his church in refusing, even under such extremities, to yield one jot of its intolerant assumptions. But it may be said, that this was all in the effete and worn-out soil of Europe. Take the seedling to another world; and see what a different fruit it will produce. But stop, in the first place, and mark what fruit it did produce, when the ground was newly turned up in Spain. By the constitution of the Cortes, it was enacted in respect to spiritual liberty as follows:-" The religion of the Spanish nation is, and shall be perpetually, the Roman Catholic, the only true religion. The nation protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other." The oath of the members of the Cortes was this- "I swear to defend and preserve the Catholic, far as Rome is concerned, we call the dark ages. Sir, I contend, that the evidence on which this alleged change in the Church of Rome is supposed to rest, upon the proof of which change we are told to relax all our securities against its former character, is itself so little trust-worthy on many other points, that no vital alteration in the constitution can safely or consistently be made on the testimony of such witnesses. I will not exhaust the patience of the House, by comparing the evidence of Dr. Doyle, before the committee, with his letters as J. K. L.; or the evidence of Mr. O'Connell before the committee, with the speeches of that gentleman before the Roman Catholic Association. I will, however, quote one or two passages from Dr. Doyle, comparing them with what he had said elsewhere; and I would appeal to the hon. and learned member for Winchelsea, or to the hon. and learned member for Apostolic, and Roman religion, without Peterborough, whether, if they had such admitting any other into the kingdom." a witness as Dr. Doyle in the box, who Is the church of Rome here changed? Go across the Atlantic; what is the fundamental article in the constitution of the newest of the Roman Catholic states of the New World? I will not trust my recollection, but I will read a passage from the constitution of Mexico; it is nearly the same as that of the Cortes: "The religion of the state shall be the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic church. The state protects it by just and salutary laws; and prohibits the exercise of any other." This is the act not of imperial, but of republican Mexico; it is the newest specimen of that kind of religious freedom which the members of the church of Rome will admit, even when taking the greatest care of their own civil rights. I might quote much about the Protestants in France, and the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion even there; still more about the Vaudois, against whom the king of Sardinia, on his restoration, re-enacted all the oppressive decrees which had been repealed during their subjection to France. I might quote not less as to the spirit of the Belgian church; but I trust, that I have already said enough to prove that the semper eadem of the Romish church is no vain boast; that that church is at this day as grasping, as despotic, as exclusive, as in those ages, which by an unnecessary courtesy to the present, so VOL. XIII. had in one place professed his respect for the Established Church, as next to his own, and his unwillingness even to touch her property if pressed on his acceptance, they would not ask him"Pray, Dr. Doyle, do you not remember, in such a place, and before such and such people, saying, that the religion of the establishment in Ireland must be divested of the plague of riches? Do you remember saying-We shall see (the passage is in the twelve letters of J. K. L. p. 34, which I will proceed to read) whether this mighty Babylon can be suffered to exist; -whether this enormous mass of wealth can remain untouched in a country which has no exchequer, which cannot pay the interest of her debt, which has no public institution that is not sectarian; we shall see whether this magnum latrocinium, as it was called by Burke, be compatible with the exigencies of the state, the interest of the proprietors, and the peace or prosperity of the empire?" And having compared the spirit of this passage with the spirit of his refusal to receive for the church of Rome any portion of the revenues of the establishment, I ask, whether the hon, and learned members would rest any case before a jury on the testimony of such a witness? Dr. Doyle was asked, if the Pope should interfere with the rights of the king, what would the Roman Catholic clergy do. His answer before the 2 K necessary to enable the Catholics to have a careful watch over the enormous expenditure of the church establishment." Is not this warning enough to us? Are these the men to whom it would be safe to intrust the care of our Protestant interests? Are these the men whom we would place in this House to legislate for the church of England? It is said that these passages all refer to the church of Ireland; that Dr. Doyle, in his evidence, has expressly committee is "We should oppose him by every means in our power, even by the exercise of our spiritual authority."* Now, I will suppose, that, this measure not being carried, the Pope should attempt to absolve from their allegiance the Roman Catholic subjects of Ireland, and a rebellion should break out. Hear Dr. Doyle, (I quote from the pamphlet which I hold in my hand, "Letters on the Re-union of the Churches," printed in Dublin last year). "If a rebellion were raging from Carrick-limited his observations to the church of fergus to Cape Clear, no sentence of excommunication would be fulminated by a Catholic prelate."† Will you believe him when he is writing this in his study in Carlow; or when he is answering leading questions, with a great object to gain, in a committee above stairs? Some of Mr. O'Connell's speeches and writings warn us sufficiently of the ulterior objects of the Roman Catholics, if they can gain power. I quote them for this object, and not to contrast them with his evidence. "Think you that I forgot," said he, in his letter to the Courier, 17th June, 1824, "the two millions of fertile acres which the clergy of the few enjoy, along with the tithes of all the rest of the land? Think you I forgot the church rates, which compel the famishing Catholic peasants to erect gorgeous churches for the clergy, that they may pray and preach in stately Joneliness?" On the 13th January last, Mr. O'Connell gave us the history of the progress of the designs of the Roman Catholics; it is in a speech to the Association. "Nineteen years ago, no allusion to the Protestant establishment had been made in their petition. Once Mr. Scully had made an allusion to it; he was met by the frown of lord Fingal; and Hay was nearly handling the înkstand." He goes on to say, that he was glad that they had not got emancipation sooner; meaning, I suppose, that they had now strength to seize other and higher objects. "The Established Church was burthensome to the people, and did them no kind of good. He would be content that they should go to the Castle, and there receive what was thought fit; he protested against their going to the peasant's hut, and to taking, as had been on a former occasion stated, the blankets." At another meeting, he said, "the privilege of sitting in parliament was a privilege * Evidence, House of Commons, p. 192. † Letters, p. 4. Ireland. Sir, there is no church of Ireland: the church of Ireland ceased to exist at the Union; it is now for ever one with the church of England: they form one undivided establishment: any attack on the one is an attack on the other: and that part which is in Ireland cannot he pulled down or undermined without shaking the English part to its foundation. Let not the establishment in England fondly believe that the church in Ireland can be destroyed, or even weakened, without a mortal injury to their own nearer interests: let not the people of England believe that a successful attack can be made upon the property of the church, whether in England or in Ireland, without endangering the security of all other property. The injury to the establishment in England, the danger to all other property, may be more or less remote; but, whether near or distant, it is alike inevitable from the day when power is once in any quarter familiarized with spoliation. Let neither the establishment nor the people of England believe that the church of Rome has changed, or can change her policy or her principles; that she is, or ever can be favourable, or even indifferent to our institutions; and that she may now at length be safely entrusted with the legislative care of our religion. Unless the evidence, even of our own contemporary experience, be fallacious (I have pledged myself not to appeal to history), the see of Rome is at this day hostile, not merely to the dignity and supremacy of the Protestant church in this empire, but to the toleration of any other church any where else: and the testimony before the Committee upon which a change to the contrary is assumed, and upon which this great innovation in our constitution is demanded, is utterly insufficient to justify us in incurring even the slightest of those hazards, with which, in my judgment, that innovation would be followed. ultimate object, as is shown in the evi- The next point which I shall endeavour | fairly represented the public mind in Ireto prove is, that the object which is to be land. Catholic Emancipation was on sought with so much hazard, that object their lips; but it was not their real and which has been so long and so clamorously sought under the name of Catholic Emancipation is of no value, comparatively, to the mass of those in whose name it is claimed. It is not easy to bring forward specific evidence from the people themselves to prove the fact; but in the first place, look at their condition as described by almost every witness; and see, whether to the great mass of the people (and we are continually told of the six millions who are interested in the question), the objects still withheld, seats in parliament, or on the bench, can be of any felt value? In the next place, let the people be allowed to speak by those who, at different periods, for the last | thirty-three years, have represented themselves to be the great friends of the people. What said Dr. M'Nevin, one of the Irish Directory in 1798? A noble lord who was examining him before a committee of the House of Lords in Ireland, happened to hold a pen in his hand, and said, "Do you think the mass of the people in the provinces of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught care the value of this pen, or the drop of ink which it contains, for parliamentary reform, or Catholic Emancipation?"- " I am sure they do not."* This may, perhaps, be said to be an answer to too leading a question (not more leading, by the by, let me repeat, than the questions often put in the committee up stairs) :-But what said Thomas Addis Emmett, another, I think, of the Irish Directory in 1798? "I believe the mass of the people do not care a feather for Catholic Emancipation, neither did they care for Parliamentary Reform till it was explained to them as leading to other objects."+ What said Oliver Bond before the same committee of the Lords in Ireland? "Catholic Emancipation was a mere pretence in 1791 for the purpose of reform." In a second answer he closed his sentence with some memorable words: " I believe the mass of the people did not, and do not care for Parliamentary Reform; but those who thought for them, did." Why do I quote these men? I quote them, because, like the Roman Catholic leaders of the present day, they would have been held at that time to have * House of Lords (Ireland) Committee of Secrecy, 1799, p. 43. + Committee of Secrecy, p. 50. Committee of Secrecy, p. 52. ac turbarum duces esse I contend that Catholic Emancipation will still leave discontented and dissatisfied the few, to whom it will nevertheless have been of real benefit. It will have opened to them some roads to honour as yet untrod; but you still leave enough to violate your own principle; you only remove the difficulty one or two steps further. You allow Mr. O'Connell to have a silk gown; you allow Mr. Charles Butler to sit upon the bench; but you will still exclude both of them from that which constitutes to a young and ardent mind the great hope and stimulus of the profession; you still for ever exclude him, and every one of his class in religion, from the chance of ever being lord chancellor; and when my honourable and learned friend (the member for Plympton) talked of the damp and chill given to generous ambitiou by the exclusion of the rising talents of the law from its higher elevations, I felt that, even by the bill of which he was, at the moment, the eloquent advocate, that exclusion is rendered only just so much the more marked, as it is perpetuated by the very friends of the Roman Catholics in a bill which they call the Relief Bill. So little would this measure in the course of nature satisfy those for whom it is more immediately intended. They would still be marked and branded; their religion |