# A Warning Voice to the Inhabitants of Bilston

Anonymous handbill issued in Bilton (then in Staffordshire), England, in the 17th century.
A Warning Voice to the
Inhabitants of Bilston,
And Its Vicinity
A Reply to the Rev. W. Leigh's Papistical Address to Them
On the Catholic Question.
Friends and Countrymen,
With all due deference to the official characters of your Clergyman and Magistrate, I beg leave to offer you a few remarks upon the Paper which he has recently caused to be so extensively circulated among you, in favor of the Roman Catholic claims; and with a view of deterring you from signing a Petition to Parliament against further concession to those daring Intruders.
He tells you First, "that it is contrary to all his notions of Justice that any man should he deprived of his civil Rights and Privileges, on account of his Religious opinions."
As a Clergyman, and Magistrate, he ought here to have told you, that Popery is not simply a religious system; but an Hierarchy founded on human policy, and inflamed with an insatiable thirst for universal dominion, both spiritual and temporal—that every Papist has sworn allegiance to a foreign Tyrant, whose power he acknowledges to be so far above all Temporal Sovereigns, that he can hurl them from their Thrones, and dispose of their Crowns at discretion; and that the bloody history of this church furnishes numerous, and appalling instances, of the exertion of such power in Excommunicating Monarchs, absolving their subjects from their allegiance, and shedding Rivers of Innocent Blood.
Before your Rev. Magistrate had represented Popery to you in the garb of Innocence, and a Papist eligible for offices of high trust in a Protestant state, it was incumbent upon him to have shorn off the frightful Crest of the Popes Supremacy, and emancipated the great body of Papists from mental bondage, restoring to them the right of private judgment—giving them to feel a personal responsibility in an oath, and showing how he could bind them to keep faith with Protestants, providing such obligation clash with the interests of Popery; while their infallible councils forbid it.
Till this is done, it is in vain for your faithful Pastor to attempt to gull men, that will think for themselves, with pretentions like these.
He asks you secondly, "whether you fully understand what is meant by Catholic emancipation?" and then presuming on your ignorance, with an air of Priestly gravity, recommends you to shut your eyes, and let others see, and judge for you.
As a Clergyman, and Magistrate, he should not have left you in ignorance, but informed you that the Roman Catholic does already enjoy a full Religious toleration; and that Emancipation is a mere Stalking Horse—a word fraudulently employed to impose on the generous feelings of Britons, to whom the idea of slavery is so abhorrent; that the True Intent and meaning of this word, so applied, is Papistical domination! or a Political Ladder on which to climb to such Ascendency.
If therefore your Faithful Pastor shows an abject willingness to do servile homage, and kiss the cloven foot of his holiness of Rome, cease not my Fellow Countrymen to oppose the arrogant demands of Popish domination with Rational and Manly Firmness—Rallying round the Throne of your Monarch with loudest. Protestations, and earnest. Petitions against the pending evil.
I am, my Fellow Countrymen, with all due respect,
A. Real Protestant.
Slater, Printer, Darlaston.
This work was published before January 1, 1929 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 95 years or less since publication.
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