A LETTER, &c. WHY is not a Catholic to be believed on his oath ? What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece of injustice? It is no challenge against a juryman, to say he is a Catholic; he sits in judgment upon your life and your property. Did any man ever hear it said that such or such a person was put to death, or that he lost his property, because a Catholic was among the jurymen? Is the question ever put ? Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the counsellor to inquire of the faith of the jury? If a man sell a horse, or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser be a Catholic? Appeal to your own experience, and try by that fairest of all tests- the justice of this enormous charge. We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, because we believe in the good faith of Catholics. Twothirds of Europe are, in fact, Catholics; are they all perjured? For the first fourteen centuries all the Christain world were Catholics; did they live in a constant state of perjury? I am sure these objections against the Catholics are often made by very serious and honest men, but I much doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing against the Christian religion so horrible as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it are unfit for all the purposes of civil life; for who is fit to live in society who does not respect oaths? But if this imputation be true, what folly to agitate such questions as the civil emancipation of the Catholics! If they are always ready suffered to breathe the air of England, or to drink of the waters of England? Why are they not driven into the howling wilderness? But now they possess, and bequeath, and witness, and decide civil rights; and save life as physicians, and defend property as lawyers, and judge property as jurymen; and you pass laws enabling them to command all your fleets and armies*, and then you turn round upon the very man whom you have made the master of the European seas, and the arbiter of nations, and tell him he is not to be believed on his oath. I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened to hear a single Catholic even suspected of getting into office by violating his oath; the oath which they are accused of violating is an insuperable barrier to them all. Is there a more disgraceful spectacle in the world than that of the Duke of Norfolk hovering round the House of Lords in the execution of his office, which he cannot enter as a peer of the realm? disgraceful to the bigotry and injustice of his country-to his own sense of duty, honourable in the extreme: he is the leader of a band of ancient and high-principled gentlemen, who submit patiently to obscurity and privation, rather than do violence to their conscience. In all the fury of party, I never heard the name of a single Catholic mentioned, who was suspected of having gained, or aimed at, any political advantage, by violating his oath. I have never heard so bitter a slander supported by the slightest proof. Every man in the circle of his acquaintance has met with Catholics, and lived with them probably as companions. If this immoral lubricity were their characteristic, it would surely be perceived in common life. Every man's experience would corroborate the imputation; but I can honestly say that some of the best and most excellent men I have ever met with have been Catholics; perfectly alive to the evil, and inconvenience *There is no law to prevent a Catholic from having the command of a British fleet or a British army. of their situation, but thinking themselves bound by the law of God and the law of honour, not to avoid persecution by falsehood and apostasy. But why (as has been asked ten thousand times before) do you lay such a stress upon these oaths of exclusion, if the Catholics do not respect oaths? You compel me, a Catholic, to make a declaration against transubstantiation, for what purpose but to keep me out of Parliament? Why, then, I respect oaths and declarations, or else I should perjure myself, and get into Parliament; and if I do not respect oaths, of what use is it to enact them in order to keep me out? A farmer has some sheep, which he chooses to keep from a certain field, and to effect this object, he builds a wall: there are two objections to his proceeding; the first is, that it is for the good of the farm that the sheep should come into the field; and so the wall is not only useless, but pernicious. The second is, that he himself thoroughly believes at the time of building the wall, that all the sheep are in the constant habit of leaping over such walls. His first intention with respect to the sheep is absurd, his means more absurd, and his error is perfect in all its parts. He tries to do that which, if he succeed, will be very foolish, and tries to do it by means which he himself, at the time of using them, admits to be inadequate to the purpose: but I hope this objection to the oaths of Catholics is disappearing; I believe neither Lord Liverpool, nor Mr. Peel (a very candid and honourable man), nor the Archbishops (who are both gentlemen), nor Lord Eldon, nor Lord Stowell (whose Protestantism nobody calls in question), would make such a charge. It is confined to provincial violence, and to the politicians of the second table. I remember hearing the Catholics from the hustings of an election accused of disregarding oaths, and within an hour from that time, I saw five Catholic voters rejected, because they would not take the oath of supremacy; and these were not men of rank who tendered themselves, but ordinary tradesmen. The |