ancient customs recorded in history, not to put the civil power on their guard, who ought to take especial care that no grand sacrifice should be cele brated at the great temple at Stonehenge. On the same grounds, it is justifiable and right to take adequate measures of precaution against any other religious sect, which, in times less remote, had been known to immolate human victims. May not, therefore, constitutional advantages be reasonably denied to a sect of mad enthusiasts, which might properly be granted to religionists of another description.

But the Roman Catholic is not, as your Lordship supposes, deprived of his civil rights "because he prays for the intercession of the Saints between himself and his Maker, because he recognizes the Pope in spiritualities, and because he believes in the real presence of our Lord in the elements of the Sacrament of the Last Supper." It is because he has an invincible propensity to force these doctrines on the belief of other men.

There is a sort of pugnacious disposition in the human mind, which excites hostility between persons of different opinions, and even between those of different tastes. Voltaire tells us, that the French hate the English because they eat melted butter with their roasted veal. John Bull is not behindhand in his antipathies formed on similar foundations. There may be still found, honest Protestants who feel this sensation towards the Catholics, on account of some articles of their faith. I believe, however, that these prejudices are wearing out on both sides. The most orthodox Spaniard now, scarcely believes that the British heretic is marked with that appendage to his person which Lord Monboddo suspect ed to have belonged originally to the whole human race. I am confident that the more enlightened part of our religious community has no distaste to their neighbours because they differ on speculative points of doctrine. The examination of these opinions properly belongs to the learned Divines of our church-able and ready as they are, to expose and confute error wheresoever they may find it. We Laics may shrug up our shoulders when we hear tradition set up as having equal authority with Sacred Scripture. We may stretch our eyes with wonder when we find

infallibility claimed by pontiffs, whose lives have been stained by the most disgraceful profligacy; or when we read of two or three Popes at the same time thundering their anathemas against each other. We may be inclined to smile at Lord Peter, when he assures Jack and Martin that his "brown loaf is excellent good mutton;" but we will never quarrel with him for his notions, whatever they may be, unless he should insist on our assent to them, and threaten to punish severely all who presume to express the smallest doubt of any proposition he may chuse to lay down. It is to prevent the possibility that such an extravagant exertion of power should thus fetter the human mind-a power which the Church of Rome has for ages been known to abuse-that every barrier against it should be strengthened in this Protestant country.

Eligibility to Parliament, your Lordship observes, is not power; but you must allow that it is the high road which leads to it. Good sense and sound policy dictate the shutting up this avenue against those whom it would be dangerous to admit to a place at the farthest extremity. This is a more safe and easy mode of prevention, than to suffer the competitors to cross and jostle each other in this path of ambition, to their own annoyance, and that of the public.

But your Lordship's arguments go a still greater length, and attempt to show that there is no danger in admitting the Roman Catholics to a participation of the power of the State. If this be proved, there is surely an inconsistency in limiting the crown to a Protestant head. You, my Lord, think there is no inconsistency in this limitation, because it is so fixed by the Act of Settlement. An Act of Parliament, all powerful as it is, cannot make consistent what in its nature is otherwise. If power is harmless in Roman Catholic hands, why should the conscience of the king be fettered any more than that of his subjects? The same reason will apply to the sovereign and to the people. The striking example, however, of James the Second, will serve to demonstrate that there is some danger in this liberality of sentiment, and that the act of settlement was the work of wisdom.

King James, before his accession, declared, in the House of Peers, the feel

ings of his conscience on religious mat ters. He assured them, that his religion was an affair between God and his own soul, which would have no operation whatever on the people of Engand. Even after he had succeeded to the crown of his brother, he made the most solemn professions to maintain the established government in church and state. James was a prince who piqued himself on keeping his word sacred and inviolate. It is worth observation too, that Queen Mary, before she was firmly seated in her throne, had given her Protestant subjects similar promises of protection. How did these royal zealots fulfil their engage ments?-The cruel persecutions of Mary, and the events of James's short but turbulent reign, and his final expulsion from his kingdom, will answer this question. These facts exhibit, in the clearest light, the genius of the Roman Catholic religion, and shew whether it is, or is not, the acknowledged maxim of that church to keep no faith with heretics. The motives of action of its professors may be laudable. If they can believe that there is no salvation to be obtained out of the bounds of their pale, they may easily persuade themselves of the duty of compelling others to come in.

Other sects have either more enlarged views of the divine mercy, or are less anxious about the future fate of their fellowcreatures. Whatever their motives may be, they do not so much torment those who differ from them with the rage of making proselytes.

But persecution, you say, is not peculiar to the professors of Catholicism. The axe and the faggot have been employed by other hands in the cause of religion, and even by Protestants. John Calvin, it is true, burnt Servetus at Geneva; and John Knox encouraged many acts of intemperate violence in Scotland. Men of savage tempers will act like savages. The early reformers had been bred up in the principles of the Roman Catholic Church; and it might be expected that some of those fiery natures, which were incapable of being softened by the pure and mild spirit of genuine Christianity, should apply the same means of extirpating error, which they had learned in that intolerant school. Nor is it surprising that, during the reign of Elizabeth,recentibus odiis," smarting, as they still were, from the ty

ranny of the preceding reign, the Protestants, who had just acquired the ascendancy, should sometimes retaliate on their fallen oppressors. They were however, in general, averse to the folly and wickedness of such a system, and soon renounced the practice of it. The church of England, in particular, has acted on principles more conformable to that religion which was taught by the Prince of Peace. It has been said, in excuse for the barbarities which, in former times, have been exercised under the sanction of the Roman Catholic church, that these cruel persecutions are to be imputed solely to the character of a semi-barbarous age. The Court of Charles IX. of France, polished by the manners imported from Italy by his mother, Catherine de Medici, would not have received thankfully such an apology for the Massacre of St Bartholomew. Whatever may be thought now of the refinements of the 16th century, Louis XIV. the Grand Monarque, that sovereign whose politeness was the model and envy of the rest of Europe, will scarcely be chronicled as a semi-barbarian, when he inflicted on his Protestant subjects, those severities which followed the revocation of the edict of

Nantz.

Your Lordship appears inclined to affix the stigma of persecution upon the Protestants more strongly than the matter of fact will authorize. The massacre of Glencoe, for instance, you have pressed into the service, although it seems to have no connection with religious disputes, the sufferers in that cruel and infamous transaction being political, and not religious victims. The enemies of King William have accused him of being the author of this savage deed; but a full investigation before the Scottish Parliament clearly refuted the calumny against the champion of Protestantism. The fact was simply this:

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A clan of Highlanders, partisans of King James, who inhabited the narrow valley of Glencoe, in the western part of Scotland, had, from various causes, delayed to accept the terms which had been offered to the Jacobites of that country in general, and had not appeared at the appointed place before the time fixed for swearing allegiance to the new King had expired. The chief of the clan had, nevertheless, been permitted to take

the oath a short time afterwards. Not withstanding this, the people of Glencoe were adjudged, by the ruling powers of Scotland, to be liable to that rigorous punishment which the regni novitas seemed to them to require, and they were consequently exposed to the military vengeance of fire and sword. Political animosity, joined to other bad passions, urged on those to whom the execution of these sanguinary orders were entrusted. A party of soldiers were sent to Glencoe. They were hospitably received, and even entertained for several days by the unsuspecting inhabitants. Suddenly in the night, they were attacked, butchered, and their houses burnt by their pitiless guests. A more hateful deed can scarcely be found in the records of human atrocity; religious bigotry has, however, enough to answer for, without being loaded with crimes not its own.

But the most extraordinary position your Lordship has laid down, is that of giving our religion the honour of having King Henry VIII. as our first Protestant monarch! Had it been your Lordship's lot to have lived under the sway of that fierce Defender of the Faith, and you had hazarded such a declaration, if you had escaped the flames which slowly consumed the poor schoolmaster Lambert, who dared to dispute upon theology with his sovereign, or if you had been spared the racks and torments which destroyed the interesting and intrepid Anne Ascue, you would certainly have incurred the penalty of high treason. This royal Blue-beard, after he had quarrelled with the Pope, took on himself the supremacy of the church in England; allowed his people a translation of the Bible; and in some other particulars seemed to take pleasure in shewing his contempt for his Holiness, and his ordinances; but he burned without mercy all those who denied the general doctrines of the church, and, in particular, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist; nor did he less rigorously put to death all those who doubted his right to assume the power of supreme head of the church within his own dominions. To the various species of treason which it pleased him to create, he added that of speaking ill of the King; under which clause your Lordship

would most certainly have been comprehended by the crown-lawyers, had you hinted that your sovereign was a Protestant, which, in his case, would have been synonymous with the hated name of heretic. The Protestants of England are contented to look up to the memory of the mild Edward VI. as their first sovereign and royal patron; they are not desirous of claiming a higher degree of antiquity than truly belongs to them. Let the Catholic enjoy the supposed advantage of priority; but whilst they affect to look down on the novi homines who have, in their opinion, only existed for a few centuries, let these champions of the olden time recollect, that if the doctrines of the Reformation are founded in truth, our religion existed in the times of the apostles; so that the abuses of the church of Rome have not even the claim of superior antiquity to recommend them to the Christian world.

The new opinions and practices of the Roman Catholic church were gradually introduced as her wealth and power increased; and her growing authority enabled ambitious pontiffs, during the darkness of the middle ages, to domineer over kings and their people. Observers of discernment cannot fail to remark, that every institution she has adopted had for its end and aim the extending and confirming the power of that church over mankind. The celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession, the infliction of penance, the granting absolution and indulgence, the high claim of holding the keys of heaven and hell, all tended most forcibly to the same point. Some efforts were made to restore the simple doctrines of the gospel, and to shake off the tyranny of Rome, but with little success, in different parts of Europe. The Albigenses in the south of France, the Lollards, as s they were contemptuously called in England, and the Waldenses, in the valleys of Piedmont, attempted to effect this, but sunk under the cruel persecutions of their enemies.

It cannot be thought extraordinary if some of the doctrines of these reformers should partake of the ignorance of the age in which they sprang up. But their tenets and their principles have been greatly calumniated. Roman Catholic writers have chosen to impute to the whole body of the Albi.

The

genses the absurd notions of a few mad fanatics, who were distinguished by the title of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit. This is one of the pious frauds of the Holy See. It was convenient to vilify those whom they were resolved to destroy. The calumny has been plainly refuted by Mosheim in his Ecclesiastical History, and by other writers of undoubted credit. The abuses and the oppressions, however, of the church of Rome gradually became intolerable, and in the time of Pope Leo X. had reached their acme. The pure flame which was then kindled by Luther, Melancthon, and Zuinglius, spread through Europe. In the southern countries the roots of superstition had taken too deep a hold; in Spain, in particular, the terrors of the Inquisition effectually prevented all free discussion; but in the northern regions the reformed doctrines were more prosperous.

Much has been said of the exertions of our Catholic ancestors in the cause of liberty. In those soils where this spirit is congenial, even the mind-contracting tenets of Rome could not stifle it. The Saxon Catholics in England inherited the love of freedom from their heathen ancestors in the woods of Germany; and whatever British blood was mingled in the veins of the new possessors of this island, infused a portion of the same spirit, which disdained to yield to the arms of the first Cæsar, and which broke out with fresh lustre under the noble but unfortunate Caractacus. In spite of that absolute submission to the will of another, and that total abandonment of free thought, which the church of Rome inculcates, the descendants of such progenitors wrested the great charter from the hands of the tyrant at Runnymead.

But you say, my lord, that the Roman Catholic is the only slave in this free country;-he neither makes laws nor levies taxes through his representatives, having no voice in sending them to Parliament; he is even punished for having the misfortune to be an Englishman; because, if tried for any offence, he is not entitled to a Catholic jury, one-half of which at least would be the right of a Frenchman or a Spaniard, according to the laws of England. If a man cannot call himself free, who has not the first of these privileges, what shall we say of some wealthy persons among our fellow-subjects, who, not VOL. XI.

caring to be troubled with landed property, and having no taste for political squabbles, become voluntary slaves of this description, without once suspecting their unhappy condition? Shall we give this base appellation to those millions of our countrymen who cultivate the soil, who perform the useful part of artisans, who man our fleets, and fill the ranks of our armies? How few of these, according to your lordship's definition, are entitled to the character of free men! Yet these persons have not themselves this morbid feeling. They are in general satisfied that the laws have placed the right of choosing representatives in handswhich have a common interest with themselves;-an interest sensibly felt by the makers of those laws, which bind and guard the whole community. They imagine themselves perfectly safe in this protection;-they think themselves free ;-they boast of it in those popular songs which, over their cups, occasionally recreate their holiday hours;-they are animated by an ho nest pride, whilst they assist in the defence of what they fancied to be their free constitution. There are, indeed, patriots who incessantly labour to convince these ignorant mortals that their happiness is an empty shadow, and who would relieve their mind from this agreeable delusion. We have seen the consequences of these efforts to enlighten, and the unfortunate illuminati have severely felt them. Might not one of these victims to the mania of political benevolence, when on the scaffold, to which the lessons of their philanthropic friends have conducted several of them, exclaim, in the words of Horace's madman just restored to his senses," Pol me occidistis amici!"

As to the complaint against the formation of juries, I would ask the first Roman Catholic I met, who was a man of sense, whether he ever knew or heard of a suspicion being entertained against a Protestant jury for having been improperly biassed against an accused person, on account of his different religious tenets. I would submit to the same arbitration, if he had the misfortune to hold up his hand at a criminal bar, whether he would prefer the foreigner's privilege of a jury e mediate lingua to the usual pannel of English Protestants.

If the Representation were left open

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to Roman Catholics, the opposers of their claims neither say, nor imagine that the benches of Parliament would he filled by members of that church. Their numbers would perhaps be as few as their advocates have stated, who plead their probable paucity as a sufficient reason for denying every apprehension of danger; but we may surely expect that the same zeal which actuated the last of the Stuarts, would urge some of these new senators to attempt the introduction of measures, which, though they might not succeed, would at least inflame the public mind, disturb the national counsels, and grie vously impede the business of the State. It is to repress such useless animosities, not to oppress the Roman Catholics, that the doors of Parliament are, and ought to be shut against them. You assert, my Lord, that there is no law excluding Roman Catholics from Parliament; they are only required to make certain declarations, which are known to be contradictory to their faith; and you ask, if the Catholics may be absolved from their oaths, as their adversaries have asserted, how happens it they are not in Parliament ?

To this I answer, that the law, enforcing these declarations, does thereby expressly intend to exclude them; and although there is no difficulty in adducing instances of Popes arrogating to themselves the power of absolving men from these solemn obligations, it cannot be supposed that such an exertion of pontifical power is of everyday occurrence. Roman Catholic gentlemen have the same sense of honour which regulates the conduct of others -there is no fear of their practising so scandalous a fraud; but even if we could imagine them less scrupulous, they must be aware that it could not be concealed; they would thereby forfeit all pretensions to credit and character, and other means would be soon taken for the exclusion of persons who had thus added to their legal disability a total want of all honest principle.

Your lordship's distinctions on the subject of idolatry are somewhat nice. If your arguments are admitted in their

full extent, there would scarcely be a possibility of supposing a breach of the Second Commandment.

The blindest worshippers of the old heathen divinities probably imagined that there was a sort of real presence of that great power which governs the world, inherent in the stone, the metal, or the wood-the elements of the image of the god before which they bowed the knee. You assure us that they only perform idolatrous adoration to the substances composing the Eucharist, who have no belief in the divine transformation. This is at least a very curious position. I will not dwell upon it, being desirous of avoiding the use of terms which might give offence to our fellow Christians, however their faith and worship may differ from our own; to them I would willingly display the full extent of that charity which is the essence of Christianity, provided always that they may be effectually prevented from driving us into what they think the only right path to heaven.

The desire of using violent means to bring stray sheep into the true fold naturally follows that belief. I must again return to this point of my argument, because it appears to be an irrefragable reason for excluding the Catholics from power in a Protestant country, and because this desire necessarily carries with it a strong wish to possess the means of gratification. Can we see the records of those horrible means of compulsion, by which reclamation has been attempted, which form the darkest blots on the page of modern history? Can we notice the systematic breach of faith with heretics? I mean not in the ordinary concerns of life, but in transactions between the persecutors and their victims. Can we read in the writings of Roman Catholic teachers of high reputation encouragement given in plain terms to the deposition and murder of heretic sovereigns, without forming the firmest resolution to do every thing in our power to shut out for ever the professors of that religion from the possibility of doing mischief in the land of civil and religious liberty.*