The National Register.
London, England, 1815-06-11 00:00:00

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CATHOLIC SECURITIES.

THE NATI,

Le. our atti.udel our measures, our language announce

•-r rds kitions. Let us abjnr' for ever cur vain boast-
. ieg, th • look of contempt, and the habit of menace. Let
assume the useless appellations of grail ma-
s9rere
,;;-;2 people. If we cannot forget our glory,
let re, not be measure!:-ss in its praise ; we have no oc-
ca..on to mention it incessantly and to offer an eternal
challenge= to t'w linnetsr of rations. However moderate,
e never h^ suspected either of fear or of weakness.
Mode-f% snits real power ;it is the dignity of true con.
rage. We have given sufficient proofs of our valour, and
have a right to declare for peace. We may love and

long rot- p,,ace without disgrace', after hating s( long been
fowl' of war, and hariug it still in our power to wage it
socessfully. At the aspect of a people acknowledging its
errfTs, and returned to sound maxims, .confidence
will revive, and prejudice, already weakened, will vanish
bufore calm reflection. It will he seen, that rushing from
a sy stem of self defence to one of agetession, seduced and
most pledv.ed by her successes, Franc,e was carried
away against her own sense of right by the pleasure of
conquering. It will be felt that t!;is passion being sup-
vorted by a system which seemed an excuse for its injus-
tice,
f he self love of France could not allow it to be checked,
ei:h .r it should have gained the object of its ambi-
tion, or should have ascertained the impossibility of at.
taming it. We had too much glory to part with it will-
ingly, awl unless it should he torn from us. We were
ti ,o guest not to wish to become still greater, at the risk
of our ruin. Ft wa- necessary that France should fall in
•order to resume her place, and our reverses were perhaps
more useful to ourselves than to our enemies. The exe-
cution of our gigantic plan to conquer, in order to free the
world is now clearly proved to he impossible. Hence our
passion has no object, it becomes futile and must perish
for want of food. The love of rest and peace is therefore
as natural to us at present, as lately was the luve of agita-
tion aad war.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

ST 111—In the late parliamentary debates on the Ca-
tholic Claims, the entire question of granting or refusing
those claims turned on securitieF. indeed securities are,
in a view of either right or policy, the only rational
point of discussion on this occasion ; for where there
is no danger in granting a man an equal admission to
all the benefits and privileges of a Constitution, which
be contributes an equal proportion to support, there
can be no right in excluding him from it ; and there can be
no good policy in disaffecting a large body of people to the
government, by withholding from them what .there is no
danger in granting. But if grunting this equal admission
wou•d be dangerous, certainly self-preservation gives the
ri,oti and point, out the policy of withholding it; nor is
it at a I wonderful, that Mr. Yorke, Sir. J. Cojllippesley,
ands vt:ral realty honest, benevolent, and in many re.
ap..ets liberal persons should think it dangerous to grant
the Catholic Claims without additional sccurqies, when
Mr. Grattan himself perceives tlr, necessity of them, and
ha.s his alarms at unconditional emancipation. Of Mr.
• •
Grattan, who that admires the splendour of talent, the
brilliairt, the vigorous and the sublime of genius, who that
what is grcatcA to be bet, would not grieve to

REGISTER.

J.UNE

think any thing but unsullied purity, gutarnished pa.
1-ti4otlsnt ? AndV-thougkifiiiust be owned; thartht alarms
are new-born,_ and that the watch-wore way not 44 SeCu_
rifles," when the order of the day was "Xing. over sp:ir
eibu.ses," let not wbat u4s done be foigotten in what is
not done.

But notwithstanding the late decisions in Pat liament
on the necessity of additional securities, let us examine
what this necessity is. First 14.:t us enquire, whether the
already existing securities froM thi!Clitholics towards their
. fellow-subjects are not sufficient, and thee w.hether the re-
quired additional 'securities would not be weakening the
real security towards the f crernment. If the question
appear in the affirmative, it must be allowed, that there
i is not only no necessity for those additional securities,
; but that there is, if not an absolute necessity, at least
i a very weighty force of policy•against them.
The existing securities from the Catholics towards
their fellow-subjects are three-fold ; the moral rules or
principles of their religion, the criminal la.ws of their
country, and their present conduct.
Now where are the moral ruleser principles of the Ca-
tholic religion contained ? Certainly in the Decalogue or
Ten Commandments of God, which, as the order of God
himself, the Catholic religion holds sacred and indispen-
sihle, and never pretended to annul, repeal or alter ;
while it is plain to common sense, that it is the moral prin-
ciples of their religion, and not its speculative points of
faith, direct the conduct of the Catholics towards
their fellow-subjects. A man may believe in fairies, in
genii, in gnomes and sylphs, and not be the less holiest and
fair in all his dealings and transactions with his fellow-
men, though they may not believe in any of his airy
favourites. llis speculative belief of those fanciful beings
has no connexion with his moral principles. The Catholic
.belief of the real presence of the body, and blood of Jesus
Christ in the Eucharist, and of the continual virginity of
his Mother, however absurd it may be, is surely equally
harmless and has equally little connexion with the moral
principles of the Catholics. But the Decalogue says,
" thou shalt not take the name of God in vain," that is,
thou shalt not swear in the name of Qod falsely, " thou
shalt not kill, thou shalt not. steal, thou shalt not bear
false witness, thou shalt not covet thy neighbeur's goods."
Those are the fundamental moral principles of the Ca-
tholic religion ; and whatever may be the old bulls and
musty sheep-skins, which Sir J. C. llippesley, in his anti-
quary researches may'drag into ligh4 they.were, and arc,
and will he always its fundamental moral principles; nor
has any Pope or Council power, nor even pretender to
have power to change them. Besides, not one Catholic in
a thousand, knows any thing of Sir John's old bulls and
musty sheep-skins ; every Catholic, even the most unlet-
tered Irish peasant knows these commandments, and
holds them as the word of God, sacred and indispensible,
and if he is not most honest and most virtuous, it is mot
the fault of the moral principles of his religion. .
The next security from the Catholics towards their
fellow subjects consists in.the criminal laws of the country.
By those laws they are at present as le lir brestrained as their
fellow subjects from dishonesty and from crime. Indeed
their fellow subjects, the Protestants, notwitticta tuliug their
'mutual prejudices and je,aloesies, acknowledge, that in all
their private intercourse and transactions with them% tkey
meet with as much honesty, candour and honour as
amongst each other. In the higher rfioiks.,O.f. society, 11176-
te3tantr, perceive as polished manners, as nice strictne;