It is because the Catholics divide their allegiance, because they place their church above the authority of the British Crown, because, in the appoint ment of their clergy, and their general Church government, they make themselves the subjects of a foreign power, and refuse allegiance to the sovereign of this empire, that the political combination which we have described has existence. Once more we repeat, for it cannot be repeated too often, that it owes its existence to the Catholic Clergy; to them it is indebted for revenue, election-monopoly, union, and every thing on which its vitality depends.

And now are we still to be told, that the divided allegiance of the Catholicsthat allegiance which they confess they render to the Pope of Rome-affects merely religious doctrines, and has nothing to do with civil government? The man who will assert this, after looking at the present state of Ireland, must be either wholly insane, or one of the most abandoned disciples of falsehood in existence.

It is idle to tell us that the Catholic elergy are only acting in this manner to obtain the removal of the disabilities. That they can so act for ANY political purpose, is a proof perfectly conclusive, that the divided allegiance affects, in the most vital manner, civil government. They could display and exercise the same power for the overthrow of the Church, the repeal of the Union, and various other political objects. To the members of the Catholic Aristocracy, who pretend to regard the charge of divided allegiance as an insult, we will observe, it is not necessary for us to be assured that they would obey the direct commands of the Pope in political matters. We say not, that what is now passing in Ire land results from such commands; we will acquit his Holiness, and ascribe it wholly to his Irish vassals. But we will ask these men, if they and their plebeian brethren do not obey, in political matters, the clergy which the Pope directly and indirectly appoints? We will ask them, if it is not in obedience to the tyranny of the clergy that the mass of the Catholics contribute to the "rent," vote as they do at elections, and combine themselves with the Association? And we will ask them, if it is not because they make themselves the slaves of the Pope in religious matters, that their clergy

VOL. XXIV.

possess both its power and its incentives to act as it is acting? It signifies not, whether the spectacle which is to be seen in Ireland flows from the direct commands of the Pope, or from the allegiance, in matters of churchgovernment, which they render him, and refuse to their lawful sovereign; it still flows from their divided allegiance, and it demonstrates that it bears on the essentials of civil government. It proves, beyond ques tion, that this divided allegiance has the most baleful influence on the general political conduct of the Catholics.

There are advocates of emancipation who make themselves excessively merry whenever the Pope is mentioned by their opponents. They irreverently call him a bugbear, an old woman, &c.; and scatter compassionate witticisms without number on all who fear his power. The pleasantries of these people have been hacked for so many years that they are now pointless, and they merely prove the profound ignorance of those who use them. Apprehensions are entertained, not so much from the direct authority and intermeddling of the Pope, although on this point he might be made a potent engine of evil in the hands of foreign governments; as from the effects which the allegiance they render him, separating it from any intermeddling of his own, produces amidst the Catholics. Were we to concede that this allegiance is, in regard to himself, a mere nominal matter, still it enables the Catholics to place themselves above the sovereign authority; through it they make themselves other than his Majesty's subjects. Whether evils are produced by the Pope's commands, or by the use which is made of his name, their effects are equally pernicious. Through the authority with which he is invested, the Catholics, to a dangerous extent, render themselves independent of the Government, and place themselves above its control; therefore he is a formidable personage.

In so far as the discipline of any religion bears upon political conduct, it ought to be under the control of the Government. Toleration has its limit in regard to creeds. If the founder of a new religion should make it an article of his faith, that goods and women ought to be possessed in common, the defence would avail him but little

3 G

in a court of law, that he purloined his neighbour's property, or seduced his neighbour's wife, from a principle of religion. If restriction be thus justifiable in respect of creeds, it is infinitely more justifiable in respect of discipline, which cannot properly be made matter of conscience. Discipline, or church government, is, in its nature, political as well as religious; therefore the Government has a clear right to decide what it shall not be, if not to dictate it. The Catholic bishops and priests are public functionaries, and how far the exercise of their functions has influence in political matters, is rendered abundantly evident by the present state of Ireland. They are practically at this moment almost exclusively political functionaries. There could not be a more barbarous and destructive error than the one which holds, that, in the appointment and conduct of these men, the Government has no right to interfere that there ought not to be any authority in the land to prevent them from abusing their despotism in the most fatal manner.

The Protestant of the Established Church gives to the Government the appointment, directly or indirectly, of his clergy, and the power to regulate the general discipline of his religion. He gives to the Government and the laws the power to exclude dangerous men in regard to politics, from influential office in his Church; to restrain his clergy from perverting their religious influence into an instrument of political mischief, and to prevent the members of his religion from becoming a lawless and destructive political combination. In political matters, he places his Church under the regulation and control of the Sovereign authority. That the Government ought to possess the same power in effect, if not in form, in other religions, is unquestionable. If the rights of appointing the Heads of the Catholic Church could not be conceded, it ought to have the power of preventing all improper men from being appointed; if it could not be intrusted with influence in the appointment of the inferior clergy, it ought to be enabled to prevent by law all from officiating who might use their religious authority for political pur poses. It is a fundamental principle of the constitution, that the Pope has no jurisdiction in this country; and

the exclusion of all foreign jurisdic, tion is a vital part of national independence. If, from motives of expediency, the Pope should be permitted to exercise any jurisdiction, it should be exercised under the vigilant inspec tion and control of the Government. The latter should possess ample means for preventing it from becoming politically injurious. In all matters the Government should have full power to restrain the Catholic Church from being guilty of pernicious political conduct. If there be any man whose reason is so weak and blind, that it cannot convince him of the truth of this, let him look at Ireland, and there he will find conviction. It is because the Government does not possess such power over the Catholic Church-because, in regard to this Church, it is not a Government-because this Church is placed above it, and exercises to a large extent sovereign authority-that Ireland is the disaffected, convulsed, lawless, ungovernable Ireland that it is.

What the Protestant surrenders to his lawful rulers, the Catholic refuses. The latter insists on enjoying all the privileges enjoyed by the former, without surrendering the smallest part of that destructive power which his church possesses. If his demand be granted, the case will stand thus.

While the Catholic minister or legislator will have the same power as the Protestant one to legislate for the Established Church, and to originate or support any measure in Parliament calculated to accomplish its ruin; the Protestant minister or legislator will be prohibited from legislating for the Catholic Church, or supporting any measure that can affect it.

If a Catholic obtain any of several ministerial offices, he will have the appointment of many clergymen of the Established Church; and if he hold an influential place in the Ministry, he will have great influence in appointing the Heads of this Church; but a Protestant, whatever office he may fill, will be prohibited from interfering in any way with the appointment of the Catholic clergy.

If the Catholics, either alone, or by the aid of allies, obtain the ascendancy in the Cabinet and Parliament, they will have in their hands the appoint ment of the Heads of the Established Church, and many of its inferior clergy, and they will be able to carry any

measure for its overthrow they may devise; but the Protestants will not, under any circumstances, be able to touch the appointment of the Catholic clergy, or injure the Catholic Church. While the latter will render the Aristocracy powerless, monopolize a very large number of seats in Parlia ment, and have its members completely under its dictation on every question; the Established Church will be destitute of election influence, and will scarcely be able to return or con trol a single Member of Parliament. While the Catholic Church will have a large part of the legislature completely at its command, will be the most powerful political body in the United Kingdom, will, in all probability, hold the balance between Parliamentary parties, and thereby be able to dictate to a part of the Ministry, and influence to a great degree the whole; the Established one will have no direct weight as a political body, and it will have no control, and but little influence, in the legislature and cabinet.

If the Catholic Church hold the balance, as in all probability it will, in Parliament, the Catholics will possess the ascendancy in power; they will generally be to a greater or smaller extent in office as Ministers; while the most attached friends of the Established Church will be constantly excluded from office for their attach ment. The Protestants who may hold office with the Catholics, will be either Whig enemies of the Church, or trimming, traitorous Tories, ready to sacrifice it on all occasions. An effect bearing some resemblance to this has been already produced by the Catholics and their partizans. Our belief is, that in the formation of the present Ministry, that party, which may properly be called the Eldon one, was excluded from the Cabinet principally from its zealous attachment to the Church, and hostility to Catholi

cism.

While the members of the Established Church, and the Protestants generally, will be subject to any law that the Government, Catholic or Protestant, may devise for restricting them from making their religion an instrument of political power; the Catholics will be wholly above the control of the Government, and they will be at liberty to add any thing to

their present baleful system of church government, which may be calculated to make their religion omnipotent over the political conduct of its followers. The Catholics will practically have a code of the most effective laws for rendering their religion irresistible in politics; while the Protestants will be practically prohibited by the laws of the realm from deriving any political power from their religion.

While the Protestants will be thus restricted from drawing any aid from their religion in retaining political power which is fairly their own; the Catholics will be enabled by theirs, not only to preserve their own legiti mate political power, but to usurp that of the Protestants. At elections the Protestant religion will have no weight with the Protestant tenants and servants of Catholics; while the Catholic religion will be irresistible with the Catholic tenants and servants of Protestants.

In Ireland the Catholics, by means of their religion, deprive the Protestant landlords of the votes of their tenants, tradesmen, and other dependents, they compel many Protestants to give them political support, they strip the Protestant Aristocracy of political power, they destroy the political influence of the Government; and the Protestants, with property, rank, interest, and every civil tie in their favour, are powerless against them in politics. In proportion as their religion may extend in England and Scotland, they will draw from it the same political omnipotence. They derive these overpowering advantages, not from the abstract doctrines of their religion, but mainly from its discipline-from its code of civil lawsfrom party immunities, privileges, and power, which the Protestants are prohibited by law from possessing.

In a country like this-a country in which every thing depends on party power-a country in which that party which possesses the greatest control over the votes of those who elect members of Parliament, must of necessity be the governing one, and must hold the power of doing whatever it may think good with the laws, constitution, and population; we ask what are we to think of these intolerable demands of the Catholics? They crave no equality; they claim no equitable share of privilege; they call

for exclusive power to enable them to plunder the Protestants of their honest political property; they insist on being permitted to set up a Catholic despotism, to convert the Protestants into their slaves. If any Minister could be found to grant these demands, he would-we speak deliberately deserve to lose his head on the block, as richly as ever traitor to his country deserved such a punishment. If there be any Protestant so inconceivably simple as not to perceive the real nature of the demands, let him look at Ireland. There, through exclusive church-laws and privileges which Protestants are not allowed to possess, the Catholics rob the Protestants of their legitimate political power, and trample them under their feet. What the Catholics do in Ireland, they will do in England and Scotland with the same means. We ask him if this ought to be; we ask him if he be prepared to consent to a change of law which will enable the Catholics, through exclusive privileges, to rob the Protestant landlord of his votes, to deprive the elector of all freedom of choice, and to strip the Protestants of political power, in order to fill the Cabinet and Legislature with men of their own religion? Once more we insist, for it cannot be too strongly impressed on the minds of our Protestant brethren, that the Catholics demand in reality exclusive privileges of the most ruinous and degrading nature to the Protestants. To demand that their Church shall be placed above the Government, while the Protestant Church is effectually under its control, when this will give them party laws and powers which are prohibited to, and which render them irresistible in politics against, the Protestants, is to demand such privileges. It is self-evident in reason; it is made matter of overwhelming demonstration by the state of Ireland.

It is not necessary to explain further their duty on this point to our Protestant fellow subjects. "The march of intellect" has not yet moved them to cast from them the sacred privileges bought with the blood of their ancestors, and constitute themselves the inferiors and political bondsmen of the Catholics. When they hear O'Connell protest that the Government and Protestants shall not possess the power to intermeddle in the smallest degree

with his Church ; and in the self same breath declare that when he is made a legislator, he will exert himself to the utmost in despoiling and destroying the Protestant one-when they hear the Catholics as a body protest the same, and declare that the Pro testant Church shall be robbed, cut down, re-modelled, hacked to pieces, and done any thing with by themselves-they see what the Catholics really ask, and they have not to deli berate on reply. When they look at the portentous fact, that by the ty ranny of Catholicism, their brethren in Ireland are plundered of their privileges, and made the political slaves of the Catholics, they feel as their fathers felt before them, and point, as their decision, to the sword. Never will these demands be granted. Never will the Englishman stoop to the ig nominy and slavery. His pride and independence may bear the insult conveyed in the act of demanding, but they will protect him from farther degradation and injury.

The exclusive Church laws of the Catholics prohibit the circulation of the Protestant Scriptures and other religious publications; they prohibit the mass of the people from becoming acquainted with the Scriptures; they prohibit the Catholics from sending their children to Protestant schools, and from entering Protestant places of worship; they prohibit all freedom of individual judgment in religious matters; they suppress the liberty of the press, and religious liberty; and they bind the people to ignorance, superstition, bigotry, and disaffection, which yield every imaginable evil to society. Yet these laws are to be above the authority of the Government; they are to annul and supersede the laws of the realm. The Catholics are to possess exclusive privileges for enabling them to gain political ascendancy, when they supply proofs that they would use this ascendancy, not only to do every possible injury to the Protestant religion, but to destroy right and freedom, and bring every possible ill on the community.

And now what reasons do the Catholics assign for denying the lawful and necessary supremacy of the Government in matters of such momentous importance? They say they will not suffer the Government to interfere with their Church and exclusive laws,

merely because it is a Protestant one. This is worthless, because, should the disabilities be removed, the Government would be, constitutionally and practically, a Protestant one no longer; it would be one compounded of Protestantism and Catholicism. Whatever might be the established reli gion, the laws would be made and administered, and the sovereign authority would be exercised by Protestants and Catholics jointly. The executive, composed, in all probability, partly of Catholics, would be responsible to the Protestant and Catholic Parliament for the exercise of its authority in the Catholic Church; and the laws for regulating the political conduct of Catholicism would be made by such a Parliament, and administered under its inspection.

The Catholics, therefore, prohibit the State, on account of its religion, from exercising its authority among them on matters of the first importance to itself; and yet they rail against it, because, on account of their religion, it excludes them from certain of its offices. They exclude the Protestants, on account of their religion, from intermeddling with their Church; and then they complain of being robbed of their rights, because for their religion the Protestants impose on them a like exclusion. The State and the Protestants are just as much deprived of their rights, and persecuted on religious grounds by them, as they are by the State and the Protestants. The exclusion of which they complain, is the offspring of, and balance to, the exclusion which they insist on: it, in reality, merely places them on a level with the Protestants, and prohibits them from possessing destructive advantages over the latter. Their demand of "unconditional emancipation" is made in violation of every principle of right and justice; it is an audacious demand of exclusive immunities and privileges, the granting of which would be degrading and ruinous alike to the Protestants and the empire.

On the ground, therefore, of right and justice, the Catholics have no claim whatever. So long as they insist on the exclusions they imposed on the State and Protestants, they must, on every principle of right and justice, be excluded as they now are. We will now look at what is urged in favour of

the removal of the disabilities on the ground of expediency.

As the Emancipators represent that the frightful state of Ireland is produced by the disabilities, we will ask them how the removal of the latter can operate as a remedy? Is this removal the only thing that can bring the Catholics into the field of politics, as the opponents of the Protestants? Not one of them will reply in the affirmative. Will they say that the Catholics merely clamour for eligibility to sit in Parliament, without wishing to use it; and that if it be conceded, they will never become candidates at elections? They will not venture to assert this, unscrupulous as they are in assertions. It may be taken as a certainty, that if the disabilities be removed, Catholic candidates will be op posed to Protestant ones, to the farthest point possible, at every election.

When the contest has been between one Protestant and another, the priests in late years have monopolized the votes; can it therefore be expected that they will be neutral, when it is between Protestant and Catholic? Will the wretched freeholder be more obedient to his landlord, and less the slave of his priest, when he has to decide between Protestant and Catholic, than he now is, when he has to decide between Protestant and Protestant? No reply shall we gain from our opponents. The removal of the disabilities must inevitably carry election strife and fury much farther than they have yet been carried-assail the power of the Protestant aristocracy where it has not yet been assailedcomplete the destruction of the landlords' influence amidst the Catholicsand utterly expel all Protestants from seats where the Catholics possess a majority. The removal involves these questions:-Shall Ireland be represented in Parliament by Protestants, or by Catholics? Shall the Protestant Aristocracy retain the seats it now possesses, or surrender them to the Catholics?

This cannot be doubted, if there be any truth in experience. Yet we are gravely assured, that if emancipation be granted, the priests will lose their political authority, and cease their political labours, the landlords will regain their influence over their tenants, the bonds of society will be no longer