in which you use the word) in the publication of a statement in Dublin thirty-four years ago, to prove to the Catholics, by very simple reasoning, (which you endeavor to make offensive by a most unwarrantable use of italics,) that though they were called on to swear that they would not disturb the Protestant government, they were not called on to swear that they would not, by the legitimate means of preaching, teaching, and writing, weaken the Protestant religion. I do not see that the framers of this statement deserve to be assailed by the exclamation, “ admirable casuists!" neither will plain people exactly understand why those, who know that they can get absolution from their oaths as soon as they become inconvenient, should be "prodigiously nice and accurate, in estimating the exact quantum of obligation which they undertake:" indeed, as far as I am acquainted with the labors of moralists, you have the undisputed honor of founding the code, which makes such caution an object of ridicule and reprehension.

Having got by means of these two particles on the scent of Catholic casuistry, you run it breast high through four pages; in which not a single sentence occurs pointing even remotely at the question how will the danger from Catholic casuistry be affected by the concession of the claims? In fact, the whole is merely one of those attempts which pervade your book so thoroughly, that if I were to notice them all, I should reprint the major part of it, by any means, fair or unfair, to cast odium on Mr. Canning's "Catholic friends ;" or, as you are elsewhere pleased to call them, "present masters.' Indeed, Sir, such is the pervading unfairness of your representations respecting Mr. Canning and the Catholics, that I am obliged to say of you, as you say of Gother and Dr. Coppinger, on this very occasion, that after "hunting you through your various windings, I am taught the absolute impossibility of taking any thing whatever," I will not say in matters of what you term "dogmatic fact," but in that description of facts which derive their principal force from the coloring which is communicated to them-" on your bare assertion." Your usual course is to make as strong a case against the Catholics as you are able; to represent in the strongest light possible the evils which may arise to a state from their pernicious doctrines, and to leave the application to your readers. You know that in many minds, all the mud and filth which you have raked up will impinge on the Catholic question; and you are in hopes that a good deal of it may

in all,

DANGER III.-From Dread of Excommunication.

The matter is introduced as follows:-Thus then it was that the Pope condemned, and so do the Roman Catholics of Ireland (for they have admitted his Bull) condemn, the proposition that the dread of excommunication ought not to deter the members of their church from doing what they conceive to be their duty. But how, on this principle, can we be assured that the Roman Catholics of Ireland will not, on all occasions, yield to the terrors of excommunication, in spite of their own private conceptions of their duty? The appeal to history, I repeat, affords a fearful confirmation of the reasonableness of the apprehension. And it has received a most instructive illustration from the events even of the last few months." I wish, Sir, you had condescended to tell us what those events have been; for I, who left England in November, have heard of none of any consequence, as having occurred between that time and the date of your Letter, except the insurrection in Portugal, in which, I believe, the Pope has taken no part; and I am in utter darkness on the subject. However, will you tell me -What has this to do with the concession of the claims? It did not generate the propensity of the Catholics of Ireland to yield to the terrors of excommunication, which you assure us receives such a fearful confirmation from history-for they are not conceded: and you have unaccountably forgotten to tell us how the concession, when it does take place, will augment this propensity. You are engaged, when you introduce this danger, in lamenting over some clauses omitted from an oath to be administered-to whom? Catholics of Ireland? No! but to the knot of peers, the small band of M. P.'s and the Catholic members of lay corporations, who would or might have been called into existence if the Bill of 1825 had passed into a law. But, if you had named them, your readers would have seen at once that they were a small powerless body, not likely to do much harm if they did yield to the terrors of excommunication: so it suited you better to say " the Catholics of Ireland."

The

Two pompous pages, guarded by ifs, follow, on the subject of the Pope's infallibility. They are too trifling to be made a separate subject, so I will have one word with them here. "The history of the three last centuries proclaims, to every one who thinks of history at all as something better than an old Almanack, that" no Catholic nation does practically, and, I believe, scarcely one theoretically, admit the Pope's infallibility. They obey him when it suits them; and when it suits them better they make war on him, and take him prisoner. The Irish Catholics have rejected his authority twice, pointedly, on this very question. A legislator,

to be sure, who should "hold it as a matter of divine faith," must create a convulsion in the state; unless indeed he should happen to fall into the hands of that composing gentleman Mr. Jack Ketch in the attempt.

DANGER IV. From the Doctrine of exclusive Salvation.

In discussing this danger, you really do, for the first time in your book, venture on a pretty direct appeal to a practical point in the Catholic question. I suppose you think that you have got a very strong case; and, that I may not misrepresent you, I must quote you at some length. "Now, Sir, our complaint against the Church of Rome is, not that it excludes from salvation those who impugn doctrines which it thinks fundamental, but that it holds as fundamental one particular doctrine, which requires the belief, under pain of damnation, of every thing else whatever which it shall choose to prescribe, I mean the infallible authority of the church. This one tenet enslaves the minds of those who hold it; or, at any rate, it makes them unfit to legislate for any other church. For it teaches them to regard that church as leading its members to perdition." Though there is no positive unfairness in the application of the word "legislate," there is a very convenient ambiguity. Though a member of either House of Parliament merely bears a part in legislation, he is called a legislator, and perhaps in common parlance may be said to legislate. That a legislature of one church should legislate for another, is certainly anomalous, though the anomaly exists in our own country; but that a Catholic legislature should legislate for a Protestant church, which it regards as leading its members to perdition, would indeed be highly unfit. But if the truth is, that some fifty or fewer Catholics are to form part of a body containing six hundred and fifty, Church of England, Protestant Dissenting, and Catholic legislators; and if this body is to legislate not only for the Church of England, but for a Catholic church, and for a domestic community of which one-fourth are of that persuasion, as well as for foreign communities, containing professors of almost every religion under the sun; if there is another branch of this legislature, possessing nearly equal powers, in which the Catholics will bear a still smaller proportion; and if over all there is a king who must be a Protestant, then indeed the case is changed, and the proposition which sounded so monstrous in your enunciation may be found to describe a very reasonable and a very salutary measure. You proceed: "In respect to our own church, the Protestant church of

'Letter I. p. 56.

England and Ireland, it is admitted to be either an integral part, or an inseparable adjunct, of the present constitution of this kingdom. The writ of summons to Parliament expresses now, as it did of old, one of the principal ends of holding it to be, to consult for the safety and defence of the Church of England. We say, therefore, that those who believe that this church leads its members to damnation, as they cannot, with a sound conscience, consult for its safety and defence, cannot, on the principles of the British constitution, be intrusted with the legislative powers of the state." Now we say in reply, that if twelve-thirteenths of those who are summoned to Parliament can, with a sound conscience, consult for the safety and defence of the Church of England, it is a matter of very little practical importance whether the other thirteenth can or not: and we say that the verbal inconsistency which you point out is of no moment whatever, because the safety and defence of the Church of England will always depend on the virtue, spirit, and integrity of those who are assembled in Parliament, not on the wording of the writ by which they are called together we say moreover, that if we can only maintain the consistency of this writ of summons, by keeping Ireland perpetually on the eve of civil war, we have not that acuteness of sensibility to the consistency of writs which will induce us to pay the price; and, finally, that if the Catholics in Parliament should oppose this "one of the principal ends of holding it," they will be powerless; if they should not interfere in the matter, they will be harmless. I have brought the point as nearly as possible to arithmetical calculation, which is in all cases the perfection of argument.

You proceed further:-"A plausible answer is sometimes suggested, that whatever may be the doctrines of the Roman church itself, its lay members, those at least who would be likely to sit in Parliament, will trouble themselves very little with theological points, but will suffer all questions respecting the church to go on pretty much as they do at present. Sir, I certainly will not insult the members of a different communion," (this is indeed a point on which you are studiously cautious,) "by speaking, or thinking, so ill of them, as to suppose that, if they hold the doctrine of their church in this particular it will be perfectly inoperative." So far every thing is pretty clear. Some people think one way,

No one who knows any thing of English society can doubt that, if a question touching exclusively, or even principally, the interests of the Church of England, were agitated in a parliament containing Catholic inembers, those gentlemen would take up their hats and walk out of the House.

and you think another; and you proceed to sustain your mode of thinking by the following argument. "On the contrary, those who really hold it," i. e. the doctrine of exclusive salvation, “must -feel every inducement and temptation to act on it," i. e. to act on the doctrine of exclusive salvation; "their spiritual instructors will be ready enough to apprise them of this duty," i. e. the duty of acting on the doctrine of exclusive salvation; and their own passions will make them very willing to acquire the merit of obeying it," i. e. of obeying the duty of acting on the doctrine of exclusive salvation. "In a church which keeps so accurate a ledger of each individual's merits and demerits, and allows so large a premium on acts of obedience to itself, we may be quite sure that there will be no want of inclination to comply with so easy a demand,” i. e. to comply with the easy demand of obeying the duty of acting on the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The above is as complete a specimen as I have often encountered of the figure of speech called rigmarole, a figure in which I should be unjust if I did not say that you very seldom indulge; and with which I am sure you would not have favored us here, if you had any very definite meaning to express. To act on the doctrine of exclusive salvation. Why, in the whole range of doctrines held by Christian churches, I cannot conceive one more completely inactive-the word act being taken as you must intend, in a hostile sense. The doctrine that a Catholic may kill an excommunicated person without incurring guilt, is so far an active doctrine, that it gives licence to the passions, to which, in speaking of it, you refer: the doctrine that such a deed is meritorious, is a directly active doctrine,' holding out the rewards of religion as an incitement to murder. But if we hold that a man cannot be saved out of the pale of our church, to what bactivity can that tenet excite us towards him, except an attempt for his conversion? and it does not create, nor even very materially augment, our propensity to that attempt; for if we do not hold that the man cannot be saved out of our church, we at least must hold that he will be much better saved there than elsewhere; that if the odds are two to one against him in our church, they are ten to one in another; or that, whereas our church may place him in the highest heaven, another can only land him in the third; and in proportion as we think our church good and other churches bad, will be the strength of our inducement to attempt conversion; so that the Protestant doctrine of superior salvation probably does not vary materially in point of activity from the Catholic doctrine of exclusive salvation. Not being able to ascertain what it is to act on the doctrine of exclusive salvation, we must be content to remain in similar

I believe that the Roman church never held either of them.