The Express.
London, England, 1852-06-17 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDA Y, JUNE 17.

TUE proclamation for the suppression in public of
the costumes, ceremonies, and processions of monastic
and religious orders belonging to the Roman catholic
church, is both a serious and a suspicious document;
—serious as involving an alteration in the spirit
in which the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act has
hitherto been carried out, suspicious in regard to the
precise time at which it has appeared. In either
view, it needs explanation from the ministers of the
Crown. It has come upon the public by surprise
It is not a measure of police which was very obviously
required or loudly demanded ; it may indicate and
prepare the way for measures of substantial inter-
' ference with freedom of religious worship and ob-
servances ; and, without explanation, there is nothing
to show why—if absolutely necessary—it might not
have been safely postponed for a month, when it
would at least have been free from the imputation,
now sure to attach to it, of being another elec-
tioneering device of a government wanting a parlia-
mentary majority.
That the Roman catholic priesthood—encouraged
tithe infidelity of so many ecclesiastical traitors of
church of England—are inclined to aggression,
and even occasionally offensive aggression, is true
enough. In most of oar considerable towns,
they are raising chapels, presbyteries, religious
bathes, and nunneries ; and when or whence the
money comes to pay for all this is a greater
puzzle than how Frenchmen daily dine so hand-
somely in Parisian cafes. They have converted
low dancing-rooms into sacred oratories; they crowd
together in small and inconvenient houses near their
chapels; they issue into our streets in long black
gaberdines and broad-brimmed low-crowned hats ;
and altogether they are a coarse, ill-favoured, imper-
fectly-washed, and diesgreeable invasion. But so
are many political refugees; nay many sound pro-
testant. are dirty and repulsive enough in their
looks. That the Roman catholic clergy are numerous;
that they are sinister in their aspect; that they are
troublesome from the tail of dirty boys that follow
them, acd that they are suggestive of the grand cru-
sade Rome is carrying on against religious freedom,
is, however, no sufficient ground for persecuting
them; and the margin between proclamations and
persecutions is in such matters apt to be very slender.
All this disagreeable show represents a real dan-
ger; but not because priests walk the streets, parade
themselves ostentatiously, and look askance. But
because every ono of these men is a soldier at once of
a despotic religion and of a foreign court ; eager to
gain converts to the one and subjects fee the other. And
the way to meet and resist them and to drive them
back, is not to exhibit any fear or apprehension of
their success on a large scale ; but to diffuse educa-
tion—to extend popular enlightenment—to cheapen
books and newspapers—to expose and refute the priests'
teaching—to beat them in argument—to appeal to past
history to prove in what thew triumph, if they got
one, would end—and to show how they are connected
and allied with (and probably paid by) foreign des-
potism out of the realm, to disturb our domestic peace.
Now the least show of persecution, of substituting
legal force or violence for reasoning, will,all experience
testifies, indispose a very large proportion of the
community to the nee of the better weapons against
what, we repeat, is a real danger, and induce
many to sympathise with those so attacked. The
spirit of the statute to which ministers in the
proclamation have appealed was one of peace and
conciliation; it is a hazardous policy to convert it
into the work of repression and police. It was
meant to be the Magna Charta of the political rights
of our Roman catholic fellow subjects; it is dan-
gerous work to make them hate and detest their Bill
of Rights.
The policy of Rome in these displays—which
, are increasing rapidly in France as they are
gradually oozing out in England—is to accustom and
to familiarise people to the ceremonial part of the
'tarnish faith—to induce them (after the novelty is
destroyed, and their repugnance to such shows is
gone) to inquire into the doctrines of the church
which indulges in them. Then, no doubt, the super.
subtle Cardinal thinks his game will be easily
caught. On no other principle can these large im-
portations of Itomish ecclesiastics, out of all propor-
tion to the amount of our Roman catholic population,