The National Register.
London, England, 1817-05-12 00:00:00

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No. 483.—V01.. X.

POLITICAL DisQtTistvoN.

I'IMITSTANT AsCFNUENCY.

The oft ..n.agitated question of Catholic Emancipation
was again brought *is-marl on Friday in the Commons
House, and at three o'clock on the morning of the lid-
lowing day rejected with the fullest assemblage of Mem-
bers that had been witnessed fitr a very considerable
time. Nearly five hundred were present. Four hundred
and sixty-six of these divided on either side, and seve-
ral were observed to pair ofT.
Protestantis►a is triumphant. Much as we are dis-
posed to value the characters of many who have prefer-
rod and supported what arc called the Catholic claims,
therefore it would be disingenuous anti ungrateful in
the members of nut. Protestant Church to undervalue
the success which has thus crowned their common faith,
cemented the best institutions of our ancestors, and dis-
pelled the gathering gloom of superstition's returning
night. England must be saved by her Lexislature.—
Those who understand the real driti of the propositions
which were about to be submitted for the adoption of
the House, supposing the motion for a Committee had
been carried, most be aware that nothing less than the
Hierarchy of Boni° would have satisfied the Aggre-
gates of Dublin, an•i that religious emancipation is but
another name for political domination.
Time was, indeed, when despotism and popery
were considered as synonimous or convertible terms ;
anti if that wholesome dread which hitherto has pre-
served this nation from the re-enthronement of both
subsists in any due degree, the result of Friday's de-
bate, m 1,4114 however consoling in other respects, to
operate by w.ty of caution on all protestant minds.—
Notwithstaaling the comparatively small proportion
which the advocates of catholicism ut present bear in
the representative field, their pretcasions have just
been dismissed by only a majority of twenty-four.
With this instructive and striking fact before our eyes,
what in all probability would be the fate of protestant-
ism, were the privileges of election and representation
to be promiscuously thrown open in this country to
the adherents of the Catholic Church ?
Really the professors of prutestantism are infinitely
more indebted to such persons as Dr. Gaudolphy and
his orthodox friends, than to many of those represen-
tatives whose duty and interest ought equally to
have induced them to shield and support the estab-
Wished Church of England. Dr. Gaudolphy, and
those who think with him, have at any rate the merit
of speaking out : thus sounding the alarm to protes-
tant ears, and ronsing the defenders of our invaluable
faith to exertions which otherwise they might never
have made. Destruction, when once perceived in its
approaches to us, is half-averted.
But let us examine this question in another point of
view. Superstition, says Lord Bacon, is worse than
atheism. It is better, he adds, to have no notion of God,
than to entertain one that is unworthy of him. Surely
it will hardly he denied that the Roman Catholic
Churches have still much, very much, of superstition
in and belonging to them ; and that, as no illiberal
writer remarks to us, their system to say the least
against it, one of the grossest corruptions of Christianity
that its believers are acquainted with. Even with all
the illumination of the present day, will any one ven-
ture to deny that the Roman Catholic Church, like the
Pharisees of old, still attaches quite as much importance
to its Traditions as to the volume of Scripture? We as-
sert this respecting those individuals who are Catholics
at heart, who believe in the superiority of their mother
church, and consider it their duty to extend her sway;
for us to the motley swarm of professors in every
church, whose temples are their spiritual wals,who con-
sider themselves to be christianisai because they sit
sleeping under them, these are not characters to bq in-
cluded in an estimate of any faith.