the words of the Church of England Liturgy, than which man never devised better, "in whom standeth our eternal life," and "whose service is perfect freedom." Toleration is but as a scabbard to clothe the sword of persecution: whilst it covers the keenness of the edge, it preserves for use the weapon within, and retains its form. That weapon it is which a government, conforming to the spirit of Christianity or of Liberty, must cast away and renounce for ever.

We are told that the relieving the Roman Catholics from the penalties and privations which, by being Roman Catholics, they now incur, would be the giving them political power. Now this is not so: there can hardly be a grosser misuse of terms, or mistake in reality, than to confound Power with Privilege. Privilege is not Power: it is protection from Power. What the Church of England possesses, and what the opponents of religious liberty would retain, is exclusive Power. What we desire for dissenters, Protestant and Catholic, is community of Privilege. Mere eligibility to civil office is not Power; it is Privilege. Mere eligibility to Parliament is not Power; it is Privilege. Privilege is what belongs to a member of the State; Power is what belongs to the State itself. These two things, as Mr. Burke expresses it, "I conceive to be as different as a part is from the whole, that is, just as different as possible." But we are sometimes told that, to give full effect to our principle, the Throne itself must be left open to them, or that we are inconsistent. This is by no means a necessary consequence, nor has it the remotest connexion with the premises. I might admit the Roman Catholic to all the rights and privileges of all other British subjects, and might continue to exclude him from the Throne; and yet I think I could show that I am not inconsistent in principle. We have a right to confer Sovereignty, or any other trust, on what terms we please: we have no right to deprive of a franchise but for some proved crime. The Act of Settlement provides that the Crown shall descend to the heirs-general of a certain line being Protestants. The King of England is supreme head of the Church: the Church of England is Protestant. I think it would be an inconsistency to place a Roman Catholic sovereign at the head of a Protestant Church. But, again, is eligibility to the Throne among the "rights and privileges of other British subjects?" While there is such a thing as constructive treason, I will not say so within hearing of His Majesty's Attorney-General.

But, with respect to the dangers to be apprehended from their eligibility to office and representation, Parliament, I have heard

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.

it said, might be filled with Catholics; all places of trust and honor might be filled, with Catholics; and England might by degrees become again a Catholic country. Indeed!If the House of Commons were to be filled with Catholics, whose fault would it be? The fault of the electors. I have known the having voted for the Catholics urged with some success as an objection to a candidate at an election. I do not think that the being a Catholic would in many places be a successful recommendation of one. What power is it apprehended is to deprive the people, after Catholic Emancipation shall have passed, of the means of returning Protestants to the House of Commons if they choose it? And if any where the people should prefer the electing a Catholic, I only ask a free choice for the people. But it appears to me that the answer to the whole objection is simpler yet. A religion can prevail in a State only from one or more of these three causes,-its own intrinsic truth and excellence, or the property and talents of its professors, or a simultaneous inclination. and consent of the majority of the people. If, then, we say that by the removal of the present restrictive laws, the Roman Catholic religion would, in any natural, or probable, or even possible, event, ultimately prevail, we must admit that our alarms are founded on one at least of these three premises: either that we are now by penal power oppressing the cause of Truth; or that we are excluding the majority of the property and talents of our country; or that we are counteracting the general wish of the people. Now, in fact, I do not believe, nor would our antagonists admit, any one of these positions; and therefore I do not apprehend the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion. Indeed, it is a supposition which I should reluctantly adopt, because insulting to Protestantism itself, that there is any danger that a form of Church Government, which the spirit and energy of the people overthrew at the beginning of the sixteenth century, should be reestablished by common consent in the nineteenth. It would, in other words, be to suppose that the advances of civilisation, learning, and liberty, have impaired the popularity, and therefore endangered the security of the Protestant faith. When we argue the right to exclude the Roman Catholics, we represent them as a contemptible minority; but when we argue the danger of admitting them, we suppose them a formidable majority. Both cannot be true. But then it is said, "What is now a minority, contemptible for the smallness of its numbers, and contemptible for the bigotry and folly of its professors, may in process of time become a majority." No high compliment this to the zeal, talents, virtue, or popularity, of the Established Church.

"If, then," says a minister of our own Church, the Rev. John

Fisher, rector of Wavenden, in this county, in a sermon published some years ago, and entitled, "The Utility of the Church Esta blishment, and its Safety consistent with Religious Freedom," "If, then, the Protestant religion could have originally worked its way in this country against numbers, prejudices, bigotry, and interest; if, in times of its infancy, the power of the Prince could not prevail against it; surely, when confirmed by age, and rooted in the affections of the people,-when invested with authority, and in full enjoyment of wealth and power,-when cherished by a Sovereign who holds his very throne by this sacred tenure, and whose conscientious attachment to it well warrants the title of Defender of the Faith,-surely any attack on it must be contemptible, any alarm of danger must be imaginary."

Well do I remember the warm and lasting impression in favor of religious freedom made on my boyish mind by that excellent discourse preached at Buckingham in 1807, and then published and presented to my father by its eloquent author; and happy do I esteem myself that a copy of it is still retained by me; and happier still should I be if any persuasions of mine could induce that Reverend Gentleman to republish, in times when the avowal of such sentiments comes from our clergy with peculiar grace, a sermon so full of Christian unction, of social charity, and political wisdom. But I said at the beginning that in my judgment clergymen as such had nothing to do with a purely political question; I must, therefore, if I cannot refrain from quoting another passage, cite it merely as giving a faithful summary of my own opinion, but expressed in terms admirable for their boldness, and how much more forcible than any that I could employ.

"But though" (says Mr. Fisher again,')" it has happily proved that the cry of danger was unfounded, far otherwise was the danger of the cry. The beginning of strife, says an experienced ruler of a people, is as the letting out of waters; and when the waters of strife are thus let out, the dirty torrent sweeps all before it ; and a most awful responsibility rests on those who would have employed such an ungovernable instrument, even allowing the sincerity of their apprehensions.3 Let it be duly reflected on, that the three divisions of this United Realm have each a widely dif ferent profession of faith, and that in each there are numerous subdivisions of sects, already sufficiently irritated by religious niceties; and then let it be asked if this be an age and a country in

1 Sermon of the Rev. J. Fisher, p. 14. 2 Ibid. p. 15. Alluding to the cry of "No Popery" raised at the General Election which had just then taken place.

which to widen religious differences, or to sport with religious prejudices?"

And now one word respecting the principles sometimes very loosely, sometimes very disingenuously, and always very injuriously, imputed to the Roman Catholics as a political party. For it is not too much to require a strong prima facie case against the political character of those whom, by certain statutory exceptions, we bar from the exercise of common law rights. In examining the reasons for their exclusion founded on their former conduct and character as a sect in power, it is somewhat in favor of a reconsideration of their case, that the most generally received illustrations from domestic history bear date somewhere about two hundred and seventy years ago. But I agree that it is right first to look to their character in power; and therefore our opponents, with perfect justice, though with a somewhat too passionate alacrity, always direct our attention to the reign of bloody Queen Mary. But they generally, (which is not quite so just,) having begun with bloody Queen Mary, end with her also. Now, this is an unfair partiality; unfair on her religion, unfair on her family, and unfair on others who were neither of her religion nor her family. It is true that the details of obsolete barbarities, "clothed" (as it has been well expressed) "in the stolen garments of religion," and perpetrated amidst the darkness and fury of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, abound in the history of almost every country of Europe. That age may be termed eminently the age of Ecclesiastical Persecution, among all churches and all sects, as circumstances furnished them with the means; the succeeding age may be termed eminently that of Controversial Vexation. The same year had given birth to Luther and Loyola. The one, as a monk in an obscure German convent, began a system which he lived to see triumph in a considerable part of northern Europe over that papal influence which, from times coeval with the first general prevalence of Christianity itself, had maintained undisputed an empire claiming to extend beyond the limits of this world. The other was the founder of the mighty order of the Jesuits; that fierce spiritual aristocracy, which, rapidly spreading itself from Spain throughout the four quarters of the globe, became the dispenser alike, though not in an equal degree, of great good and great evil. If the Jesuits bowed nations to their secular yoke, they taught kings also to tremble before the political authority of powerful associations of their subjects. They lorded it over crowns, but gave not liberty to the people; they guarded letters, and perpetuated by education the lights of learning; they

1

Arthur O'Leary's "

"Plea for Liberty of Conscience."

cultivated for the use of man those arts which tend to peace and humanity, yet kindled throughout all the great monarchies of Christendom the flames of what are strangely called religious war and religious persecution, and have rendered their name hateful to all posterity as the authors of the Holy Inquisition. Yet if, where Popery kept its ground, it was not by gentle or warrantable means, neither was the march of the Reformed religion at all more remarkable for that mild and sober spirit which should ever accompany the advances of Truth against Error and Corruption. The conflict, which, during the earlier period of its success, was a conflict of force and of blood, began, as its footing in England, Germany, Switzerland and Holland became more secure, to affect the softer character of a war of disputation. The infant energies of the Reformation had prevailed, and Protestantism had established itself too firmly to require the assistance of very active or wholesale persecution for its advancement. In this country, a more silent, though not less effectual, and scarcely less cruel, system of persecution prevailed, by statutes well framed for the purpose and duly executed. At the former period, the mischiefs of a civil war and a long disputed succession had scarcely been allayed in this country, the sanguinary habits of our countrymen had scarcely had time to subside, all the recollections and many of the jealousies of the families which had taken opposite sides under the two Roses were still fresh,-when England suddenly became a principal stage on which the great quarrel which divided the Christian Church was to be decided. Queen Mary, weak, bigoted, and cruel, found at her accession the basis but newly laid of the Protestant religion in England. The heresy, still young, was gradually hardening into a formidable maturity. It had been reared in a royal cradle, and not by guiltless means. By royal hands its destruction was menaced, and by means bearing the strongest family resemblance to those that had protected its infancy, and fostered its growing power. Devoted as Queen Mary was to a husband, who ruled absolutely over a country, in arms, in arts, and in commerce, the rival of England, she added to her naturally arbitrary temper other feelings which made her a willing agent in the hands of Spain; and her reign has been deservedly stigmatised as one of fire and blood. Yet we Protestants have since had the story a little too much our own way, and have argued the matter somewhat after the fashion in which King Henry the Eighth argued the matter of transubstantiation with the unfortunate Lambert; holding, like him, our disputation in our own court, on evidence exclusively of our own choosing, before our own audience; and, like him, denouncing severe penalties on our adversary, if judgment should be so given against him.