the civil difficulties of life, men de-¡ your profession, those talents will pend upon your exercised faculties, never be used to the public injury, and your spotless integrity; and they which were intended and nurtured for require of you an elevation above all the public good. I hope you will that is mean, and a spirit which will weigh these observations, and apply never yield when it ought not to yield. them to the business of the ensuing As long as your profession retains its week, and beyond that, in the common character for learning, the rights of occupations of your profession : always mankind will be well arranged; as bearing in your minds the emphatic long as it retains its character for words of the text, and often in the virtuous boldness, those rights will be hurry of your busy, active lives, well defended; as long as it pre- honestly, humbly, heartily exclaiming serves itself pure and incorruptible on to the Son of God, "Master, what other occasions not connected with shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

SPEECHES.

MEETING OF THE CLERGY
OF CLEVELAND.

March, 1825.

[From the Yorkshire Herald.] MR. ARCHDEACON, I am extremely sorry that the clergy of the North Riding of Yorkshire have abandoned that distinction and pre-eminence, which they have held over the clergy of the other two Ridings, in their abstinence from political discussion and from public meetings, on the subject of the Catholics. I sincerely wish that nothing had been done, and no méeting of any description called. As it has been called, it is my duty to attend it, and certainly I will not attend in silence. Do not let my learned brethren, however, be alarmed; I am not going to inflict upon them a speech. I never attended a public political meeting before in my life; nor have I ever made a speech; and therefore my want of skill is a pretty good security to you for my want of length.

them again, but take the blame to yourselves for advancing them!

The first dictum of the enemies of the Catholics is, that they are not to be believed upon their oath; but upon what condition did the parliament of 1793 grant to the Catholics immunity and relief? Upon the condition that they should sign certain oaths; and why was this made a condition, if the oath of a Catholic is not credible? Or is a small subdivision of the clergy of the North Riding of Yorkshire to consider that test as futile, and those securities as frail, which the united wisdom of the British Parliament has deemed sufficient for the most sacred acts, and the most solemn laws? I am almost ashamed to ask you (for it has been regularly asked in this discussion for thirty years past), by what are the Catholics excluded from the offices for which they petition, unless by their respect for oaths? If they do not respect oaths they cannot be excluded; if they do respect oaths, why do you exclude them when you have such There are two difficulties in speak- means of safety and security in your ing upon the subject; one, that the own hands? If Catholics are so caretopics are very numerous, the other, less of their oaths, show me some susthat they are trite; -the last I cannot pected Catholic who has crept into cure, nor can you cure it; and we must place by perjury; who has enjoyed all agree to suffer patiently under each those advantages by his own impiety, other. I shall obviate the first by con- which are denied to him by the justice fining myself to those commonplaces of the law: I not only do not know an in which the strength of the enemy instance of this kind, but I never seems principally to consist: if they heard of such an instance - if you have been an hundred times refuted have heard such an instance, produce before, do not blame me for refuting it; if not, give up your gratuitous and

scandalous charge. But not only do I persecution of heretics. Upon the see men of the greatest rank and for- same principle, Catholics might retort tune submitting to the most mortifying upon our own Church the many Caprivations for the sake of oaths, but I tholics condemned to death in the see the lowest and poorest Catholics reign of Elizabeth ;-upon this pringive up their right of voting at elec- ciple they might cast in your teeth the tions, sacrificing the opportunity of decrees of the University of Oxford, in supporting the favourer of their fa- support of passive obedience, ordered vourite question, and suffering the by the House of Commons to be burned disgrace of rejection at the hustings, by the hands of the common hangman from their delicate and conscientious in the reign of Queen Anne; they might regard to the solemn covenant of an remind you of the atrocious and imoath. What magistrate dares reject moral acts of Parliament, passed by the oath of a Catholic? What judge the Protestant parliaments of Ireland dares reject it? Is not property against its Catholic inhabitants, during changed, is not liberty abridged, is not the reigns of George I. and George II. the blood of the malefactor shed? Are Wickedness and cruelty such as the not the most solemn acts of law, both Spartan would not have exercised upon here and in Ireland, founded and bot- his helot-such as the planter would tomed upon the oath of a Catholic? abstain from with his slave-one of Is no peace, is no league, made with the worst and most wicked periods of Catholics? do not the repose and hap-human history! Are all these impupiness of Europe often rest upon the oaths and asseverations of Catholics? Does my learned brother forget that two-thirds of Christian Europe are Catholics?-and am I to understand from him, that this vast proportion of the Christian world is deficient in the common elements of civil life?-that they are no more capable of herding together than the brutes of the field?that they appeal to God only to allay suspicion, and to protect fraud? If such are his opinions, I must tell him (though I am sure he neither knows the mischief, nor means it), that Carlile, in his wildest blasphemies against the Christian religion, never uttered anything against it so horrible and so unjust.

tations true now, because they were true then? Has not the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland almost petitioned in favour of the Catholics? Would any Protestant church now condemn to death those who dissented from the doctrines of its establishment? All dissenters live in the midst of our venerable establishment unmolested, and under the broad canopy of the law. It is not now possible, with all the intelligence and wisdom which characterises that learned body, that a similar decree should emanate from the University of Oxford. For all our own institutions we claim the benefit of time; and, like Joshua, bid the sun stand still, when we want to smite and discomfit our enemies. I come now to another common But, Sir, remember at what a period phrase, the parent of much bigotry this assertion is made of the unand mischief; and that is, that "The changed and unchangeable spirit of spirit of the Catholic religion is un- the Catholic religion. The Catholic changeable and unchanged." Now, Sir, revenues are destroyed, and yet the I must tell these gentlemen of the 15th spirit of submission to priests is the century, that if this method of appealing same in the minds of the lay Catholics to the absurdities of a past age, and who have voted for the destruction of impinging them upon the present age these revenues. The inquisitions are is fair and just, it must be a rule as broken open-the chains of the victims applicable to one sect as to another. are loosened - the fires are quenched Upon this principle, I may call the the Catholic churches are deserted! Church of Scotland a persecuting In Spain, in France, in Italy, the priests Church, because, in the year 1646, it are reduced to a state of beggary; and petitioned Parliament for the severest yet the authors of this meeting can see

the bosom of its legislature? Why there is a regular Catholic establishment in Malta and in Canada? Why it tolerates (nay, even endows) Mahomedan and Hindoo establishments? In the midst of this "essentially Protestant government," sat Catholic peers and Catholic commoners for more than a century - without blame, without reproach, without religious conflict, in civil harmony, and in theological peace.

no change in the minds of the Catho- | this limitation, I beg to ask why this lics. Sir, I meet this absolute assertion essentially Protestant government alwith an absolute denial! and I bring lows Unitarians and Presbyterians in my proofs. Let the mover of this re· solution read the oath of 1793, taken by the four Catholic archbishops, the bishops and clergy of Ireland, - let him read the rescript of pope Pius VI., of the 17th of June, 1791,-let him read the solemn resolutions of six of the most considerable Catholic universities of Europe, required and received by Mr. Pitt,-let him remember that the pope has confirmed a Catholic bishop of Malta, nominated to that see by the late king; and now let the learned gentleman produce to me, from his records, such facts, such opinions, such clear declarations, such securities, and such liberality as these. He has nothing to produce, and nothing to say, but the trita cantilena that "the spirit of the Catholic religion is unchangeable and unchanged." Sir, if I could suffer my understanding to be debauched by such a mere jingle of words-if I could say that any human spirit was unchanged and unchange-spection of Protestant commissioners, able, I should say so of that miserable spirit of religious persecution, of that monastic meanness, of that monopoly of heaven, which says to other human beings, "If you will not hold up your hands in prayer as I hold mine-if you will not worship your God as I wor-medy from the disease, and that when ship mine, I will blast you with civil incapacities, and keep you for ever in the dust." This, Sir, of all the demons which haunt the earth, is the last bad spirit which retires before justice, cou-sures which are intended to prevent it. rage, and truth.

Now I come to the danger! What is it? Is it from foreign intercourse? But is the question now agitated for the first time, whether or not the priests of Ireland are to have intercourse with a foreign power? That intercourse has subsisted for centuries, does subsist at this moment, in full vigour, uninspected and uncontrolled. Mr. Grattan's bill, which I strongly suspect the learned mover never to have read, subjects all this intercourse to the in

punishes, not with obsolete penalties like the present laws, but with adequate and proper punishment, any clandestine intercourse with Rome. I really did expect that my learned brothers would be able to discriminate the re

they had resolved to be frightened, they would at least have ascribed their agitation to the unrestrained intercourse with Rome; and not to the very mea

Does the learned mover imagine that I must not pass over (while I am the Protestants, like children, are going cleansing gutters and sweeping streets) to lay open all offices to the Catholics the notable phrase of "a government without exception and without precauessentially Protestant." If this phrase tion? No Catholic chancellor, no mean anything, it means nothing use- Lord-keeper, no Lord-Lieutenant of ful to the arguments of my opponents. Ireland, no place in any ecclesiastical In clinging to this phrase, which, by court of judicature; and many other the smiles and nods of the gentlemen restraints and negatives are contained opposite, appears to give them peculiar in the intended emancipation of the delight, they must mean, I suppose, Catholics. Then let the learned genEpiscopalian as well as Protestant, for tleman read the proposed oath. I defy they never can mean that our govern- Dr. Duigenan, in the full vigour of his ment is essentially Presbyterian, essen- incapacity, in the strongest access of tially Swedenborgian, essentially Rant- that Protestant epilepsy with which he ing, or essentially Methodist. With was so often convulsed, to have added