The Express.
London, England, 1851-05-28 00:00:00

TO COMIESPONDENTS.

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 28.

MANES to the M'IIALE squad, government is
likely to get through the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill- it h
large majorities. Thanks to the mode and tone of
resistance of this same squad, the bill itself, against
ministerial hope, will be more stringent. There is
no one who has observed the progress of opinion
upon the question but must have seen how
easy it would have been at one time to have
carried a clause or an amendment, exempting Ireland
from the bill. But the tact and eloquence of Messrs.
ItErNottis, MOORE, and 12in.tvras have nailed the
Roman catholic church in Ireland to the same con-
ditions as that in England. We arc far from thinking
those conditions definitive. Were this to be the
final and determinate settlement of the relation be-
tween the state on one side, the Roman catholic and
proteatant Charches on the other, we should be inclined
to echo much of Mr.MILNER GIII.SON'S denunciation of
anomaly and injustice. But we look upon the
present as a state of war, of open belligerence be-
tween the successors of LEO and those of LUTIIER,
between foreign dietationists and native supremacy.
Were peace, present and future, to be obtained by
submission, we should probably counsel submission even
Ito ltomish titles and Romish tenitorial divisions. But
when these are but the first maximums, of war, the
mere trumpet sounds,—a proclamation investing the
sacerdotal generalissimos with authority, we are
certainly for taking the field forthwith against them,
I denying their authority, denouncing their spirit, and
repudiating their laws. When the Romans amongst us
I consent to be plain F:nglish subjects and fellow-citizens,
then we should be willing to treat them on a footing
of peace and equality: But as long as they come
mounted on papal chariots, claiming the jurisdiction
'of the middle ages, we say, let us proscribe the
pageant, and desecrate the idols.
Mr. WALPOLE, however, makes the mistake of re-
garding the present as definitive legislation, and he
would establish as a permanent rule, that no Roman
catholic bishop should put forth territorial authority,
or even territorial titles in England. Whereas in
Ireland he would not only overlook their do-
ing so, but absolutely sanction it. This is
certainly the simplest way that has been
' yet devised of letting down the protestant
church in Ireland ; fur, having done so
much with regard to authority and supremacy, Mr.
WALPOLE could not oppose any legislation, follow-
ing up the same principles with regard to church
property. We cannot, however, believe that the
arrangements between the church, or between the
English state, representing as it does by law the
protestant church, and the Roman catholic church,
can be anything else than a compromise. And no
compromise is ossible, if you set out by making one ,
party waive all its rights and the other shake off, '
of its own authority, every one of its disadvantages.
We do not say but that many of the disadvan-
tages under which the Roman catholic church la-
bours in these realms are either tolerable or just ;
but we do not arrange and create ail laws and rela-
tions at once by reason or by generosity. The posi-
tion of the Roman catholics is the result of several
centuries of history, of party struggles, constitutional
campaigns, dynastic rivalries, hotly-contested fields -)f
b ittle. All these leave results the more durableperhaps
the more free the people, and to be removed and
remedied as they can. The protestants of this
empire came as early to a full sense of the injustice
of their ascendancy me the catholics themselves. But