The Press.
London, England, 1853-06-11 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

subsequent concession to the Romanists in
'29, shocked the People. From all sides a de-
mand for Reform arose, and much of the ex-
citement in '3l sprang—we repeat it emphati-
cally—from the disrepute east upon Parliament
by the anti-Canning Protestants having turned
into pro-O'Connell Emancipationists in '29.
Thus the Duke of Richmond was called to
that Cabinet in which the consistency of Earl
Grey was powerfully supported by the energy
of Mr. Stanley, in guiding the debates of the
Commons. While we were all thinking of
Reform, they were calculating at Rome how
the spirit of Popery could wring more by cla-
mour from the Parliament of England. Hay- •
ing ousted fifty Protestant members from the
Irish representatives (1832), the Pope de-
manded the confiscation of the Protestant
Church. In a moment of weakness the Whigs
wavered, and would have allowed the Papacy
to insert the wedge, but for the determined
conduct of Mr. Stanley, aided principally by
the Duke of Richmond, Lord G. Bentinck, and
other friends. A Conservative party was then
formed, the landed interest and the defenders
of the Church uniting with apparent cordiality.
'4O arrived, and the famine in Ireland, like the
clamour in '29, suggested to Sir Robert Peel
the policy which he reduced to system of—
surrender !
Mark some consequences never before stated
clearly !
While we were debating in '46 and in later
days, the Whigs saying that the repeal of Protec-
tion belonged to theni, the Peelites whispering
it was theirs, and all Manchester shouting that
it was Mr. Cobden's, the Pope and his Cardinals
calmly surveyed our discordant Senate. They
saw our traditionary code of party politics can-
celled, and they beheld our once famous par•
liamcntary system impugned in its wisdom
and impedeci in its working. Then was
the hour for the Jesuits to strike, and aid the
Gladstonian philosophy in its Puseyite " de-
velopments." In the midst of our discords,
from the council chamber of the Inquisition
the Pope hurled his Hierarchy at our free
monarchy, an act of audacity from which the
last of the Stuart sovereigns recoiled. He did
it, too, with a cry for civil and religious liberty,
and the Peelites in both houses—the present
Premier—the Viceroy of Ireland—the member
for Oxford, and some quondam followers of the
Duke of Richmond and Lord Derby in '34, cried
" Hear ! hear !" to his Holiness. But Lord
John thought of the writings of Milton and
Locke, and the deeds of another Russell, and,
sounding the tocsin at Durham, pointed out
the Pupal ambuscade. England Was indig-
nant ; she ought not to have been surprised.
The Pope remembered '27 and '29. He
thought of the Lichfield House compact, and
its considerable success, and he saw the con
cession to Mr. Cobden in '4O. Taught by his
Oxford correspondents, he brooded over the
fact, that neither the science of Adam Smith,
nor the system of Pitt, nor the suggestions of
Huskisson, nor the tendencies of the Whigs,
influenced the mind of Sir R. Peel like the
organised clamour of the " League." He rea-
soned that organisation—and the Papacy has
an awful one—could do anything. He thought
that British statesmen would desert the inte-
rests of Protestants, as the Peelites had abjured
the impulses of Party. When 'lnconsistency
was set up for public worship, he thought that
other idolatries might be restored in Peel-
ridden penitent England. But then as ever
the Papacy was at war with the Providence of
England. The British people with the Bible
in their hands overpowered the Pope and his
Cardinals, and his Jesuits in and out of Par-
liament—and his piecrust promises. with
sugared sophistry—with all his Oxford per-
verts, and all his Peelite partisans.
Our readers will now see how the morals of
British PARTY can have a wide European sig-
nificance. They will see how the Peelite
system of surrender to panic can detract from
the moral power of Parliament, amongst the
nations. Much remains for us to say on this
grave subject. but we ask them now to ponder
well upon the following question :
What would the state of the Protestant ('hare h
he now if Lord Derby had not taken his stand in '3.t
against reckless concession. and insisted On retain-
ing the Irish Church in lien of those " securities"
which, in the panic of '29, Sir Robert Peel had