The Sun.
London, England, 1839-07-17 00:00:00

diminish, and shares not in the angry passions which
make our enemies so bitterly assail us.—( Loud cheers.)
You have- a noble purpose le meeting to-day, for
- bigotry is accumulating, rehgeeras rancour is augment-
ire, the Wesleyan Methodists are abroad.—(Loud
cheering.) The Establishment—.he Philp: ti's.—(Laugh-
ter.) 'What an appropriate name ! They will find the
I pot does not contain so much honey as hitherto. The
' Archbishop of Canterbury—the heir of Shaftesbury
who invented the Titus Oates plot.---,(Laughterh) Your
ancient enemies are abroad. Toryism, - that triumphed
over the liberties of the ' people—that diminished
their franchises and augmented enormously their
burdens—Toryism that has lived on. the spoils
' of the people of England so long, has loosened its ficgers
for a time and thrown them off, hut it wants to return,
as the ravens of the air, to the carrion ; it wishes to re-
turn to the public plunder, and the only way it has of
returning is that of raising the foul fiend of a No Popery
cry.—(Hear, hear. hear.) it is exciting the bigotry
of the honest Englishman and the honest Scotch-
man ; as to the bigotry of the faction in Ireland,
they need not rouse that.—( Vehement cheering.)
They want, by the •foulest of means, to obtain the
most unworthy of objects. Am I exaggerating when I
say that this cry has been raised from one end of the
country to the other? Do not you find that the news-
pepers—the milk-and water of the Post has a little
prussic acid in iet when it talks of Catholicity—(A
Laugh)—is net the dawdling absurdity of the Morning
Herald—that most ludicrous of papers—(Great laugh-
ter)—awakened into something like vigour when it
mixes some of its celours and dips its pencil in b'gotry ?
And as to the Tinges—(Great groaning)—that disgrace
to the literature of the country—Oh I wish 1 could
see again the vile character nun 'called the Irish
priests "surpliced ruffians !"—(Cries of " Shatne.")
And what think you, one of the writers of the Trines,
(Eneas Maedoeneli) lied actually the impudence to come
to the dcor- to be admitted to-day. I am glad he did
I not come ia,lie would have been put out so fast.—( Hear,
and laugh.) But the bigotry of the country is aroused,
and rising. When there was a contest, the day before
yesterday, et leswich, what was the title and the cry of
the stupid Tory who succeeded ? Why, bigot- y aid the
assailing of the Cetholies.—(Hear, hear.) Why it was
only last week that a Catholic medical gentlemen
who had been for twenty years attending a perish,
and who had every claim to be elected as physician to
an hospital, having served it gratuitously—(Hear, hear)
—he expected to be elected as a matter of course,
but they set up another man who bad only obtained his
degree two or three years. They procured several men
who had promised him their support to stay away, and
others treacherously voted against him, and it Was ac-
tually circulated that it was not safe to leave Protestant
patients in the hands of a Popish physician.—
( Hisses.) And this in England, and these things
are passing around us, and this spirit is in-
creasing I flow are you to meet it ? Wlll your ac-
quiescence in it slifilinish it ? Oh, no. Bad passions
augment by acquiescence. The way to meet it is to
oppose and confront it boldly—to meet in open day—
and here we are hurling defiance at our opponents. You,
Sir, have very properly called on this meeting to keep
themselves within the bounds of moderation and pro-
priety. I have this to say for myself, that however
strong I may have been in many of the speeches
I have made, and I wish some of them had been stronger
—( A laugh)—in attacking the enemies of uh. creed and
my country, and I believe I have made more speeches
than any other saving man, and I know I have been ca-
rlumniated more than any ten living men—(Hear, hear)
—yet there is one calumny which has never been even
uttered against me. I sty it b. Lily, and I defy any
man to produce the accusation, however false. I have
never been accused of saying one word derogatory to the
religion of any other human being, and I am not in-
clined to commence it now.—(Cheers.) The tenets
of- every Protestant I respect, the conscience of the
Dissenter I respect, and whether it be consistent or
inconsistent is nothing to me, it is not my business to
enter into the qeestion.—(Hear, hear.) Nay, more, I
have scrupulously, and I feel it my duty scrupulously
to avoid imputing to any man a tenet which he does
not avow.—(Cheers.) I don't believe there is a greater
crime than for any Christian to tell another, who says
I do not believe in that doctrine, " Si:, I don't be-
lieve
you."—(Hear, hear.) That is a mode of dealing
I most emphatically condemn. It is not my practice,
•or that of the Catholics, to use that language—do they
act so to us?—(No, no.) What is the entire nature of
the assaults to which we are subjected ? It is not Ca-
tholicity, but a spectre which they raise up and call Ca-
tholicity—they are not our tenets,- but doctrines which
we repudiate as they do.—( Hear, hear.) We have
this advantage then over them, that we do not impute
to others anything but what they avow, and the still
greater advantage of being assailed for that which we
do not believe and freely reject.—( Hear.) and if
you ask what has carried so many of late into
Catholic Church, you will find it is that their atten-
tion having been called to the subject, and being
honest and sincere in their belief of what they have been
told, they are led to examine and to inquire even by
these very calumnies. People begin to say, "Is it possible
that the Catholics believe in these absurdities—is it not
strange that they should place credence in these unac-
countahle contradictioni to common sense ?" They
then inquire—they look into Catholic books, and they
find not a word of these doctrines. Thus cured
of one error, they rid themselves of the rest after-
wards.—(Cheers.) The great exhibition of bigotry
on the present occasion has been education. And I now
take the situation in which we relatively stand. First
there are the clergymen of the Establishment. They
say " We have an 'Establishment,' and we must have
the money of the people, and then we will teach them as
we please."—( Hear, hear.) I say to them, " My good
Sirs, eou have money enough already."—( Cheers.)
Then there are sevetal of' the Dissenters, and they say,
'• Oh very true ; gh.e money to the Establishment, but
Rive us our share—they are entiCed to a good deal, but
fie hate Pepery as much as they—give us our share.
( Hear, and laughter.) It is our money—it is the money
of ihe pulelic." Tina ; but who is the public?- Is the
_Establishment olone the public ? Are the Dissenters
alone the public ? I come in as a Catholic, and say, I
am the public also.—( Loud cheering.) And yet they
insist upon excluding us from what is the money of all
We are ready to accede at once to the proposition, the
so meth as is the money of the Protestant let the Pro,

testant have the benefit of it—so watch as is the :none

of the Dissenter 3 lot :he Dissenters have the benefit o

—but so much as
sis the money of the Catholic it is

sick:thin; and robhcry to deprive the Ci,tho:ic of the
benefit of it.—( Loud cheers.) That is the pcsition in
which we stand—they :ay make education exclusive ; we
say ;rake it universal. They say, " you are fond of igne-
rance"—we maintain that we love light. They sayyou are
Catholics because you are uninstructed and ignorant.
Wo say you are Protestants beeause you don't under-

stand oat ho!icity— ( Hear,hear)—and if ignorance makes
us Catholics, pray, why do you not pour the light of

educatio., upon us and make us Protestants as fast as

you can ?—(Che:rs.) Out comes then upon me Doctor
Philpotts and the Archbishop of Canterbury—(Hear,
i.ear)—and they say we want money, because at the
R• formation little was done for the poor. These are the
words of Dr. Philpotts and the Arehb,shop of Canter-
bury ; and then says the Archbishop, we educate a great
deal at present. I meet them on both the points.—
( Hear.) Where was he educated that he does not
know this fact—that a great deal was done for the poor
—yes, that they were robbed, spoiled, and plunch.red—
Cciat what they had was taken away—that the reforma-
tion was the plunderer of the poor, because it tonk
away that property which was in trust for educating,

clothing, and feeding the poor of this country. 2-:
(Cheers) There was no Poor-law before the Re-
formation. "Surprised that the Reformation did not
do something for the poor!" Why, does not the
Archbishop of Canterbury know that among other
plunder at the thine of the Reformation there were

—.-
lands with which the charitable Catholics bad endowed
110 hospitals, not to mention the monasteries, priorie,.,
and convents—there were 110 hospitals in which the
poor were taken care of, and which were all too little
for the greedy colrtiers of Henry the Eighth. " As-
tonished!" why they turned out the sick from these
110 hospitals—they sold their beds and bedsteads—
they- tock possession of the land—they sold even the
glassi of the windows and the frames, and they left ruins
to stand as a mark in future times of the piety and
clarity of the Catholics, and of the plunder and de-
struction of the sick poor by the Reformation.—
(Hear, hear, and cheers.) The money applied for
the purpose of educating the people then was about
1,700,000/. Where are all the people educated by
this money now ? Are they in Kent ?—( Hear, hear.)
Let me take the Archbishop to his own Cathedral—and
I don't know if he ever was in it—(A laugh)—that
Cathedral, in which the great Saiut of the English
nation shed his blood, when he placed his hod,/ as a
shield between the tyrant, Henry the Second, and the
people of England.—(Hear, bear.) Oh, there was a
time when 100,000 Englishmen sought the shrine' of
St, Thomas A'Becket to do homage to his name,
The Cathedral is still there where is tle.
shrine—where are the pilgrims, and where are its re-
venues ? Gone to instruct the people, I suppose.
I will now take him there, and in the spot wher., the
assassins s'ood when they clove down the sainted Pre-
late—under the very shadow of its lofty walls—from
that spot I would point to the next farm but one, where
the people were so educated that Sir William Courtenay
persuaded them he was the Saviour come again to re-
deem the earth.—(Hear, bear.) I would show him
that their education and intelligence, under the foster-
ing care of the Establishment, was such that they gays
up the Archbishop and followed a madman, even to the
death---(Hear, bear)—and yet the Archbishop, who
ought to blush crimson red, when the education
of the poor is mentioned, talks of all that was dole
for the poor at the Reformation, when within view of the
Cathedral from whence he derives a title, and 22,000/.
per annum, I don't know bow many thousands of the
ignorant and besotted peasantry followed a madman as
a saint and a Redeemer.—(Chcers.) I have stated in
the House of Commons publicly that in England, before
the Reformation, there were 55,000 churches, and
42,000 chantries and free chapels of case. That is to 1