The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-28 00:00:00

THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND •
TORYISM.
ELECTION TACTICS OF LORD JOHN MANNERS. i

In their present desperate attempt to clutch at the
spoils of office, the Tories are driven to the employment
of every shift hat they think likely to be, in the smallest
degree, useful to their case. We last week exposed at
some length the disingenuous tactics, and the beautiful
disregard for truth, of their old and hardened leader,
Sir Robert Peel. We have now to occupy ourselves with
the shifting and crafty behaviour of one of the callow
birdlings of the same black and voracious brood.
Looking about on every side for the means of snatch-
ing their prey, the Tory leaders have inveigled a young
lord, by name and title Lord John Manners, and brought
him as a raw but hopeful recruit, to swell out the
ranks of their candidates. Having caught him, they
send him down to Newark, to succeed Sir Thomas Wilde,
and to reap the fruits of that infernal system of
corruption and intimidation against which the Solici-
tor-General has struggled so long and so manfully. Not
content with this, finding their young recruit apt and
useful to their hands, they resolve to turn him to yet
better account. They accordingly clap a few tawdry la-
bands in his hat, transform him into a regular recruit-
ing sergeant, and send him down amongst the Papists,
to beat up for fools and knaves to drink Sir Robert's
health in the bounty-money which that crafty chief, un-
able to pay his troops after they have enlisted, dispenses
so liberally, to entice them before they have enlisted.
The pamphlet to which we alluded last week, we
take to be a proof that the Noble Lord needs a few
Catholic voters in and round Newark to insure his
return ; that the iron visage of the Duke of Newcastle's
tyranny in that ill-fated. borough needs to be decked out
with a few flowers of artifice and delusion, to make its
attractions complete ; and, lastly, that some hopes
are entertained of its being possible to kill two
birds with one stone, by catching a few foolish stray
Catholic votes elsewhere with the same artifice which is
intended to serve its first turn at Newark.
Lord John Manners we imagine to be one of that
party whom the world calls Puseyit,es. We have so often
professed our respect for the motives and intentions of
some of this party, and our cordial good-will to them
all, so far as they are sincere, that we shall not be sus-
pected of any unfriendliness towards them if we reso-
lutely and promptly protest against the propriety of any
person--even though he be an inexperienced and "rather
soft" Tory lordling—abusing our generosity and for-
bearance so far as to make it subserve a very unfair, and
rather vulgar electioneering stratagem.
The request to Lord Edward Howard to vote against
himself, is amusing and characteristic enough ; but the
same exhortation, addressed to the whole Catholic body,
is still more amusing ; it is positively funny. It is im-
possible to •hit upon a more astounding absurdity than
that of trying to persuade the Catholics of Great Britain,
on the ground of some mongrel principle, to take part
against their own self-preservation ; against religious
freedom for their poor ; against the religious and ortho-
dox education of all of them ; against the salvation of
our Irish brethren from—it may be massacre—is cer-
tain to be the most brutal and loathsome injustice ; in
a word, against a great struggle to prevent either
the re-enactment of the penal laws throughout the
empire, or the administration of the laws now existing in
the spirit of the penal laws. This is certainly one of
the most modest specimens of assurance that it has ever
fallen to our lot to encounter ; and as these propositions
are—though in some sort verbally disclaimed, yet in
reality—urged by the young man* with a vast degree
of lofty dignity, and a most coxcombical assumption of
superiority, backed even by offers of favour and good-
will if we should be so fortunate as to please him, we
will venture to use the greatest plainness in explaining
to the Catholics of Newark why we think it their bound-
en duty not to be gulled by the honeyed language of
the noble candidate, but to poll every Catholic elector
against him at the Newark poll-books.
His Lordship desires us to adopt the suicidal policy
we have just decribed, on the ground of its being impe-
ratively demanded of us by a certain principle. And
what, let us ask, is this imperative principle ? Oh, it
is to " stand upon the old ways ; " to " keep up the old
English aristocracy ; " to " preserve what little re-
mains (I speak not now of endeavouring the res-
toration of aught that has been lost or neglected)
of old-fashioned charity and social intercourse between
the higher and the lower classes ; " to withdraw
from the fellowship of the Atheist, the Democrat, the
Dissenter, and the Leveller ; " to " unite ourselves to no
party ;" but to " act upon our principles unfettered by
any ties ;" and, finally, to simport a Tory candidate as
readily as a Whig candidate, provided the Tory candi-
date will promise—(and we can believe his promise—for
Tory candidates are a false and perfidious race upon the
hustings)—to secure for our priests " permission to ad-
minister the rights of our religion in workhouses and
prisons ;" and we suppose, though this is not mentioned,
full and impartial justice in all respects for all Catholics
in every part of the empire. If we had done this in past
years, says his Lordship, if the English Catholics " had
spoken out," " the piratical expedition from the Isle of
Dogs might have been averted ;" and along with it " the
failure of Charles the Fifth" of Spain, which our cha-
ritable author " lays at the door of the English Roman
Catholics."

His Lordship's call upon us to separate from atheists
is indeed a call to separate from all parties. The Tories
have as large a share in atheism as any other party that
ever breathed, and they have had it for a longer time ;
nay, the atheism which has been let loose in these
latter days, and has spread such frightful devasta-
tion over Europe, first issued from the kennel of the
Tory pack. The first cry of atheism in England
was a Tory cry. All through the last century the
main upholders of Tory principles in England were
atheists or sceptics. All through the last century the
Act-of-Parliament-begotten establishment was defended
by Tory atheists and sceptics. Lord Herbert of Cher-
bury, Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon—the
line stretches out from the days of James the First to
the threshold of the present century. From these Tory
philosophers it was that Voltaire, Rousseau, and their
later followers, drank that pernicious and damnable in-
spiration, the frighful effects of which have for a time
frightened the atheists whom the establishment encloses
within its gates, or numbers among its well-wishers,
from an open avowal of their profligate and degrading
tenets. We never heard of the Tories proclaiming their
aversion to an alliance with atheism, until their gentle-
manly atheism had given birth to a democratic atheism
of an honester breed, which impartially toppled down
earthly kings as well as the Heavenly ; Prelates as well
as the God of whom they are the Ministers. Even
now, at this very moment, we are in doubt whether,
if we were to join the Tory party, we should not
be joining as many secret and hypocritical atheists,
as in joining the Liberal party we should have to
j'*in bold-faced and avowed atheists. It is so hard
to have to choose between atheism pure and atheism and
hypocrisy conjoined, that we quite approve of his Lord-
ship's advice to form an independent party, and to yield
ourselves up unreservedly to neither of the two factions
in this Protestant country.

As to forsaking the company of levellers and
democrats, as his Lordship wisely advises, we
have the same difficulty as before ; or rather, we
have the same reason to applaud his exhorta-
tions to us to be independent. We have as great an
aversion to levelling as his Lordship ; we have quite as
warm a love of " old-fashioned charity and social inter-
course between the higher and the lower classes ;" and
we have done the little that lies in our power to shame
the unchristian aristocracy of this country out of their
shameful violation of these old English principles ; nay,
we have gone even further than his Lordship, who, it
seems, would be content with the preservation of the
small remains of Christian feeling which now form the
last link between the noble and the ignoble, while we aim
at " the restoration of all that has been lost or ne-
glected," as the only means of warding off the most fear-
ful convulsions. But then, on the other side, we know
full well that if we were to join with the Tories, we
should form no junction whatever with old English feel-
ings and principles. It is precisely because we love to
stand upon the old ways that we hate and loathe from
our inmost souls the pestilential novelties of Toryism.
It is precisely because we venerate—as a whole—our
old English aristocracy, and the majestic and compre-
hensive Constitution, which with their aid, the Church
founded,—conservative as it was of all the natural forces
and powers of society, of democracy as well as of
aristocracy, of the people as well as of the King ; pro-
tecting all, but restraining all within their proper
limits—it is precisely because we venerate the old Catholic
monarchy, the old Catholic aristocracy, the old Catholic
democracy, the old Catholic priesthood, the old Catholic
Constitution which loved all these, and trusted them all,
and bound them up into one coherent and harmonious
system, that we abhor and detest the monstrosity of that
modern Toryism which had its birth (in the days when
the foundations of anarchy and Protestantism were being
laid) in the adoration that, in defiance of gospel and law,
authority and reason, was offired up to the bloated sen-
sualist and tyrant whose execrable offences formed the
basis upon which the Protestant Establishment was built.
Levelling we dislike; democracy, as an exclusive system,
we dislike; aristocracy and monarchy, as exclusive sys-
tems, we dislike also. But we take leave to tell his Lord-
ship, that we consider Toryism and Level-ism (if we may
coin a word) as merely different and opposite symptoms
of the same moral pestilence, to the putrifying influences
of which our modern sects and parties have all owed the
misfortune of their birth. As it is impossible, then, for
a Catholic who really loves and understands the good old
times to love Levelling so it is equally impossible for
,
him, and for tho same reasons, to love Toryism.—Tablet.

* We have never been so happy as to hear the name of Lord
John Manners mentioned before the last fortnight, and there-
fore we must crave pardon, if we are in error in supposing
that the present delinquent is the John James Robert Man-
ners, who, according to the peerage, was born in Dec. 1818,
and, therefore, at the present moment, wants just half a year
of being 23 years of age.

---
COLONEL OIBTHORP AND THE ODD FEL-
LoWs.—Colonel Sibthorp, on Monday night last was pro-
posed as a member of the City of Lincoln Lodge of Odd
Fellows. The ceremony of initiation proceeded unin-
terruptedly until the gallant gentleman was required to
give the pledge, " I will never wrong a brother, nor see
a brother wronged, but in all cases will apprise him of
approaching danger." To this he refused to respond,
declaring that lie could not bind himself down to the
principles of the lodge ; and, with many professions of
loyalty to the Sovereign, he took his hat and retreated,
leaving the btethren in =ant-neat at the sudden change
in his determination, particularly as the fulfilment of the
pledge demands nothing repugnant to morality or right
feeling, to which the Colonel is so keenly sensitive.
Many affect to wonder at the matter. Why should
they ? The Colonel most likely deemed that he was to
be permitted to insinuate himself into the body and
Toryise it ; but finding a bar to his purposes, he could
not leap it ; his conscielice would not allow him to vow
not to injure a brother 1 when he knew that exclusive
dealing, and every other practicable species of vindic-
tiveness, were the elements of Tory " principles !"
Lincoln Mercury,