The Sun.
London, England, 1822-06-01 00:00:00

begin to create agitations, the end of which no'
person living can foresee.
" My Lords, the people of this country are
jealous—wiselyjealous, I will say—of their li-
berties ; and of no part of them more jealous,
nor with more reason, than of their Religious.
Liberty. What the influence of Popery is upon
that, and every other branch of public free-
dom, though not perhaps remembered as it
ought, can never be entirely forgotten ; or, if it
were, a few authentic documents from history
will have the power to restore and re-animate
the recollection. If, during all the various at-
tempts which have been made to throw power
into the hands of those whose first duty it is
to employ it against every thing which they call
heresy, the body of the people have hitherto re-
mained passive, it is because no circumstance has
yet occurred to make them apprehend that the
whole ambition of the Roman Catholics can or
will be gratified. They have beheld, particu-
larly in this House, a bulwark which has always
hitherto stood firm against all dangerous efforts
of encroachment. Should they once be disap-
pointed in this hope, which I trust will not now
happen, then will their alarm commence. Then
will they begin to calculate, with much anxiety,
how many similar steps will be wanting, or how
few, to throw down all the defences, in which,
till now, they have felt security.
" But if ever they shall see, first a few Roman
Catholic Peers introduced into this House, then
a larger swarm into the House of Commons;
when it will thus be rendered probable that they
will be admitted also to the highest offices of the
State, and the most secret Councils of the Sove-
reign, then, my Lords, it will not require the
agency of such a mad fanatic as drove the multi-
tude to fury in the year 1780, to cause a partia+
frenzy among the lower orders, the feeling will
he general, among all who value their religious,
or even their civil liberties : then will discord
begin, such as hitherto we have known only by
history, and perhaps not even by history ; nor
will any thing less than the complete victory of
one or the other party ever restore our present
tranquillity.
" I know, my Lords, that many Members of
both Houses reckon much upon the quietness
hitherto observable among the lower orders, and
the inertness, and apparent indifference, that
has pervaded many other classes. But be as-
sured that these appearances are fallacious. How-
ver little many (alas ! too many) may feel for
::ny thing that merely concerns Religion, there
are too many interests touched and affected by this
complicated question to suffer it to pass unno-
ticed or unfelt. Supposing, what is contrary to
all probability, that the successive acts of Eman-
cipilion (as it is falsely but artfully called)
should proceed without creating much alarm,
what must we expect when their inevitable con-
sequences shall begin to be perceived, and felt?
How will PrOtestants regard each other, when
the Priests of Rome shall beard the Ministers of
the once Established Church in every street ;
when their pomps and procession,, on every great
festival, shall seem to reproach the modesty of
reformed worship ? What will the politician feel
when all the arts of seduction shall be openly
employed to draw back the people to that faith,
which has every thing to captivate the senses,
and whose darker features are now lost to them
in the shadows of antiquity ? What will he think
when every popular election in Ireland, and
many in some parts of England, shall he carried
exclusively in favour of Papists ; or if not car-
ried, contested on both sides with ail the fury of
religious animosity ? (low will the Financier
exclaim, when the whole Protestant Establish-
ment of Ireland shall be thrown back upon his
hands to pension, and. preserve from starving
in this country ? Yet that all these things must
happen, in a rapid course of succession, requires
so little sagacity to perceive, that it is much more
difficult to understand how they should not be
foreseen ; or how the self-flattering notion of li-
berality can so far have blinded a large propor-
tion of our most upright and sagacious Legisla-
tors as to conceal from them time prospects of such
obvious and certain results.

" Are these then measures of peace and fra-
ternity? Rather are they the ripe and almost ,ger-
minating seeds of discord, ready to be scattered
over a sail but too well prepared. Such plans may
seem, indeed, and may he sincerely intended to
unite us, but they will only mix discordant ele-
ments, which soon must of themselves burst into
combustion. . Between reformed churches, and
that
.which refuses and hates to be reformed,
there never can be cordial union. The very ex-
istence of one is a standing reproach to the
other, a reproach that is always felt. While
either retains an undisputed command over the
other, they may continue in peace; but make
them politically equal, and they must fight, if
not, like the dragon-born soldiers of Cadmus, to
the extinction of both, yet certainly till one
or the other shall be destroyed, or rendered in-
capable of further contest. In this mode of re-
turn to peace and tranquillity, this process so
often exemplified by conti.nding sects, in every
part of the world, what horrors must prevail, the
case is too.common to permit us to doubt ; there
is only this latitude left for conjecture, that as
every new contest of this nature has its peculiar
features of mischief, so this also might produce
such atrocities as the world had never before
witnessed.

" Such being my deliberate opinion of the
measures now contemplated, of which the pre-
sent BilLis only the first and easiest step, I
feel justified in asserting that never was a plan,
so speciously held forth as promising to unite a
people already living in civil harmony, so preg-
mutt with every opposite e%il, as that on which we
now deliberate. Having said this, I esteem it
superfluous to expatiate further. if lam right,
the question is decided ; if wrong, I must be
convinced of my error by very different argu-
ments from any which have hitherto been urged,
in this or any other deliberative assembly."

The Cornet mentioned in the Foreign Jour-
nals of late, was last night, between nine and
ten o'clock, seen from Covent Garden-market,
and other parts of the metropolis, in the South-
West.