The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE PITBLiC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—We sincerely regret that Lord Derby
and the Conservative peers should have thought fit
to reject the very reasonable bill for altering the
Roman Catholic oath which had passed the other
house. To maintain the last remnant of religious
disabilities, to encourage the jealousy and suspicion
which live in the forms of political oaths, to dignify
with the name of policy the enforcing of petty
restrictions which irritate and annoy, while they are
confessed by those who defend them to give no real
security, are acts unworthy of a party which aspires
to govern. If any one doubts the existence of real
difference between the two great parties in the State
he may reflect on the conduct of the Government
and the Opposition with respect to the Roman
Catholic Oath Bill. It is in such questions of prin-
ciple or political sentiment, even more than in
matters of practical administration, that the real
distinctions of party appear. All those pretensions
of the Conservatives to real liberality which Mr.
Disraeli and one or two of the more astute advocates

of the party have put forward may now be estimated
at their true value. The present session has shown
the Liberals true to their tradition of removing, as
rapidly as ignorance and prejudice will allow, all
the odious distinctions of the past, while those who
follow the lead of Lord Derby have proved that they
will not relinquish any right which they still possess
of exacting useless though offensive pledges from
those who differ from them. Very little can be
added to the arguments for or against this bill which
has not been already urged during the progress of
the measure through the Commons. A right judg-
ment on questions like this is arrived at rather by
considering leading principles than an historical
examination, which is often merely a compilation
of irrelevant and insignificant details. We cannot
find that Lord Derby threw any new light on the
matter by his retrospect to the days of 1829, and
his dissertation on the opinions of Protestants and
Catholics at that epoch. What Parliament has to
decide is whether a certain form of words, which is
strongly objected to by Roman Catholics in this
year 1865, shall be any longer exacted from them.
The only right method of coming to a conclusion is
to consider whether the importance of the object to
be attained and the efficacy of the oath to insure it
counterbalance the grievance inflicted on the Roman
Catholics by the form of the oath. Everything else
is beyond the mark. Thus, when Lord Derby tells
the House of Lords that in 1757 the Irish Catholics
desiring the elective franchise declared through their
Bishops that they had no design upon the Estab-
lished Church ; that in 1792 they declared them-
selves to be perfectly satisfied with it ; that Mr.
Grattan wished to strengthen the Establishment ;
that Mr. Plunket would never have attempted any-
thing against it; that the Roman Catholic Bishops
of 1829 entirely assented to the present form of
oath, and did not find anything offensive or unduly
restrictive in it,—he shows that he is well informed
as to the phases of this controversy, and has at
command materials very interesting to the historian.
But they really in no way guide us to a practical
decision upon the matter. The circumstances and
ideas of the present generation are very different
from those of the past. How can it possibly bar
the rights of the Catholics of the present day that
more than a century ago their oppressed and
broken-spirited ancestors made such or such a
declaration ? Grattan and Plunket were eminent
men, but we must guide our conduct by the ex-
perience of our own age, and not by the opinions
which they, with less information than we possess
and under the necessity of disarming prejudices
which we have survived, expressed 40 or 50 years
ago. Sir R. Peel and the Irish Bishops of 1829
spoke each for themselves and their followers ; as
men thought and believed they expressed the feelings
of their contemporaries, and the settlement they
made contented their generation. But that is no
reason that we should fear to approach the subject
with perfectly unbiassed judgments. With the
debates of 1829 or the long controversy which pre-
ceded them we have nothing to do. All we have to
consider is the text of the act, and whether it is in

accordance with the interests of society in the pre-
sent day. If circumstances and men have changed,
the law should change with them. No one, we pre-
sume, will deny that, whatever Catholics may have
felt 36 years ago, the present generation does really
complain of the oath. With respect to some parts
of the form there seems to be no difference of opi-
nion, for Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli have stated
that they would be ready to relieve Catholics from
repudiating the doctrine of murdering excommuni-
cated Kings and disclaiming the practice of mental
reservation. But we entirely agree with the majority
of the House of Commons, who thought that some-
thing more must be conceded than this. There is in
the substance as well as in the form of the oath what
may be justly objected to. It is enough to say that
a Catholic member of Parliament is, according to
the general interpretation, bound to refrain from
speaking or voting according to his deliberately
formed opinion on a certain class of subjects. Thus
the fundamental principle of representation is vio-
lated. Not only the member himself, but every one
of his constituents suffers a diminution of their
rights. The house is presumed to consist of 658
members, but by the operation of this oath, if
strictly interpreted, it is made to consist on certain
occasions of so many members less, and a number
of constituencies, comprising Protestants as well as
Catholics, are virtually disfranchised. But to meet
the Conservatives on their own ground, we would
ask, do they really believe they give any real
protection to the Irish Church by making the
Catholics swear in the present form? It is a fact
that of the Roman Catholics in Parliament a large
number, perhaps a majority, do not interpret the
oath so as to debar them from voting on mat-
ters relating to the Irish Church. They may say
that the " present Church Establishment as set-
tled by law within this realm" means the whole
Anglican Establishment, and that it would
not to be a subversion of it nor a disturbing of the
Protestant religion if the Irish temporalities were
reduced to a narrower limit or taken away altogether.
So that all that is gained, so far as the House of Com-
mons is concerned, is to neutralize the votes of less
than a score of Catholic members. Is not more lost
by keeping up irritation and discontent among Catho-
lics than is gained by removing the adverse votes of
a few scrupulous men among their number ? Let it
be remembered that no one but the member is
bound, the whole Catholic population may agitate ;
and even the Catholic members may, when out of
the house, do as they please, and harangue from
the platform in their non-Parliamentary capacity.
This is surely a greater danger than the other, for
if the Irish Church is to be overthrown it will not
be by the votes of a few Catholic members given in
Parliament, but by the combined efforts of the Irish
Catholic population and the English Liberals. The
Caholic vote in the Commons will have little weight
in the matter. It is of no use, then, to tie down the
Catholics when the real inveterate enemies of the
Irish Establishment, the English Radicals, are free
to vote as they please. From them will come the
blow whenever it is destined to fall. These consi-
derations seem so plain that it is difficult to conceive
how the leaaders of the Conservative party should
have taken so invidious a course for so useless an
object. That, however, is their own affair. The
result of the discussion must be to convince those
Catholics who have been coquetting with Toryism
for some time past how little of the good will of
the allies they have gained, and how small their
chances are of governing England in conjunction
with Lord Derby after they shall have succeeded in
driving from power the party which befriended
them in days when they were prostrate and suppliant,
and which under Lord Russell and Lord Grey en-
deavoured last night to relieve them from a form of
oath which they justly feel to be offensive.
PosT.--The House of Lords has by a substantial
majority thrown out the Roman Catholic Oath
Amendment Bill. That such would be the case
was anticipated, but the result will not on that ac-
count be the less regretted. It is so rarely that the
Upper House of Parliament refuses its sanction to
measures which have been carried successfully
through the. House of Commons, that it cannot
fairly be accused of abusing its privilege of negativ-
ing the decision of the other branch of the Legisla-
ture, but it is no doubt matter for reflection' that the
occasions on which the right is exercised are invari-
ably those on which some religious principle is sup-
posed to be at stake. The House of Lords has now
been brought to assent to the abolition of Church
rates, and the marriage of a man with his deceased
deceased wife's sister, the admission of Jews to Par-
liament, and now it refuses to endorse the decision
of the House of Commons in favour of the amend-
ment of an offensive oath at present imposed on
Roman Catholics by virtue of theiEmancipation Act
of 1829. On questions of this kind the Episcopal
bench manifest an astonishing unanimity, and last
night its members, without an exception, recorded
their votes against the proposed bill. e had on
a recent occasion to notice the extreme liberality
with which the majority of the members of the
Lower House have begun to regard all questions of
this kind, and expressed our opinion that they cor-
rectly represented the feelings of the nation. The
rejection of the Roman Catholic Oath Amendment
Bill betrays a prejudice, indeed we might say a nar-
rowmindedness, which, to say the least of it, runs
counter to the current of public opinion at the pre-
sent day. The arguments which it is in the power
of both the promoters and the opponents of this
measure respectively to advance have already been
so thoroughly canvassed, that the recapitulation in
the House of Lords of the more material portions
of the speeches delivered in the douse of Commons
calls but for little comment. Lord Derby is, how-
ever, entitled to the credit of having furnished at
least one additional reason for rejecting the bill.

There is, he said, no grievance. The Roman
Catholics do not themselves complain, and therefore
it may be taken that they not only acquiese in but
substantially approve of the form of oath which,
under the existing law, they are obliged to accept on
admission to Parliament. Postponing for the
moment the consideration of the accuracy or other-
wise of the statement, it may be observed that the
opponents of the bill in the Upper House were for-
tunate in obtaining the Earl of Derby as the re-
presentative. It was needle' for him, when opening
the speech with which he moved the rejection of the
measure, to remind the House of Lords that he had
on every preceding occasion, during a political career
of upwards of forty years, given his voice in favour
of religious liberty. When the Roman Catholic
Relief Bill of 1829 received the assent of Parliament,
the Earl of Derby was one of the majority which)
to quote his own language, " forced that measure
on a reluctant Sovereign." But this being so, one
may possibly feel surprised that the Earl of Derby
should now refuse to assent to what is in truth it
supplementary act of relief ; but it is not easy. to
discover in it any proof that the bill itself is intrin-
sically objectionable. It is an error, Lord Derby
contends, to suppose that Roman Catholics object
to take the oath in the existing form, and in support
of this view refers to the admissions of Roman
Catholics previous to the Act of 1829, and to the
opinions expressed by Plunket, the most eloquent
and firm advocate of Catholic emancipation. But
however valuable such admissions might be if Roman
Catholics were now, as in former times excluded
from a share in the Government, they cease to be
applicable when the issue is raised whether the con-
ditions under which Parliament was willing nearly
forty years ago to relieve Roman Catholics of their
then existing disabilities should still continue to be
imposed. Lord Derby admitted that the Act of 1829
does not embody a contract, and if this be so it is
certainly difficult to understand why the Roman
Catholics of the present day should not be entitled to.
disregard both the admissions and the arguments a
their fathers, and ask that the grievance of which
they complain should be judged on its own merits.
The cardinal fault lying at the bottom of all the
arguments advanced by Lord Derby and his fol-
lowers consisted in the narrowness of the point of
view on which alone these arguments could be con-
sidered tenable. It is
.needless to repeat for the
hundredth time that if a person taking an oath can
be capable of putting any different construction on
its terms than that of which they are obviously sus-
ceptible, it is utterly useless to require him to swear
that he will not exercise that right of secret inter-
pretation. And the same remark applies with equal
force to all those different clauses whose objection-
able character it is as needless to demonstrate as it
would be puerile to deny. Those numerously-signed
petitions for relief may, as Lord Derby stated, hase
been presented to Parliament when the Catholic
Emancipation Act was under consideration, but in
the presence of the unanimity with which the Roman.
Catholic members of the House of Commons eA-
sented to the measure, it is scarcely correct to sal,
that the members of that creed do not consider them-
selves seriously aggrieved on being called upon to take
the oath in its present form. Earls Grey and RIO"
sell took a much higher ground, when, in pressing
•the bill on the acceptance of the House they dwelt
on the expediency of assenting to what appeared to
be the general desire of the country. The Upper
House of Parliament is undoubtedly not bound °
sanction a measure simply because it has met with
the approval of the Lower House, but due regar
being had to the exceptional position which the
House of Lords occupies, it must be conceded that,
unless for what they deem to be very weighty rea-
sons, its members should hesitate before putting their
veto on the demands of the representatives of the
people. The House of Commons had declared by
considerable majority that the oath imposed on Ro-
man Catholics by the Act of 1829 is useless and
highly objectionable, and ought to be repealed. Tile
House of Lords was asked last night to adopt the
same views, partly on the same grounds on
which
the other House had arrived at that conclusion, air
partly because, in the absence of strong counterva''
ing reasons, some deference ought to be shown t°
the wishes of the people. But special and general
arguments proved alike unavailing, and the second
reading of the bill was negatived by eighty-far
votes against sixty-three votes.