The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-05 00:00:00

THE

SUN,

Murray, without mentioning Archbishop of where.
The Roman Catholic prelates of Ireland were centitiu-
ally addressed by the authorities of this country; for
instance, the Archbishop of Armi4h was called the
Lord Archbishop. The Archbishop of Dublin was
addressed by hie title, altanugh it was in the face
of a peal Act of Parliament. An Honourable
Member behind him had favoured him with a paper,
being an order ramie by her AiajEsty, showing the
precedence which she was pleased to grant to parties
who had the right of entree to the Castle. The order
was, first the Primate of Ireland, then the Lord Chan.

cellor, then the Archbishop of Dublin, and then the
Roman Catholic Primate, Po that he came before all the
Protestant bishops.—(Hear, hear.) Here we had
a man acknowlecipd by her Majesty's special
order as a Roman Catholic Archbishop. Now
he (Mr. Roebuck) would beg Hon. Members to mark
what this proceeding on the part of her Majesty's Go••
vernment was. There was a❑ Act of Parliament
against tl-is very thing, and yet the Queen had entirely
vut aside the authority of that Act. Her Majesty's Minis-
ters must be taken to have been aware nt• this ord-r. It
must hie bcon known to the Right Hon. Baronet the
Secretary for Ireland, as the order must have issued
from his office.
Sir WILLIANI SOMERVILLE- was understood that
he was not aware of the fact to which the Hon. Memoir
alluded.

Mr. ROEBUCK said he could not help thinking that
some one was answerable for the act. What he wished

to impress upon the House with reference to this subject
wa,, that this was a proceeding of the Government,
land that the document relating to it was
so public that it wan a most important
fact. He (Mr. Roebuck) believed that the Roman Ca-
tholics had with the most perfect innocence and without
objection on the part of any one, always excepting the
Hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Ox
ford, assumed these titles. The true history
of this transaction was that it was an act
which had long been contemplated by the Roman
Catholics. As early as the year 1847 they
contemplated the assumption of these titles. He (Mr.
Roebuck) held in his hand a Roman Catholic Directory
of the year 1847. In that directory, under the
head of the " London Directory," was the name
of the Most Reverend N. Wiseman, D.D.,
Archbishop of Westminster. Ho (Mr. Roebuck) might
be told that he was not Archbishop of Westmin•
ster. Tho fact was, that it was the intention of the
Pope to have made him an Archbishop, but then
came the revolution, and he was obliged to leave
Rome; but when he came back he made him an Arch-
bishop, and the Directory was published in anti-
cipation of the appointment. It could not be
doubted that our Minister st Florence was aware of all

this. When reople talked about Acts of Parliament and
przemunire, and invading the Queen's authority, it would
be well to bear in mind that Government had exposed
themselves to the effects of that penal and mys-
terious Act of Parliament for sending a re-
presentative to Rome.—(Elear, hear.) In the
year 1829 the late Sir Robert Peel stated that he would
not interfere with Roman Catholics, or with the Wes-
leyans, or any other religious body. What difference
was there between the Roman Catholics and the Wes-
ley ens with respect to their arrangements? He had a Ro-
man Catholic directory and a Wesleyan directory in the
one he read under the head of the "London Directory,"
the Most Rev. N. Wiseman, D.D., Archbishop
of Westminster, and in the " Wesleyan Die
rectory," the Rev. John Mitchell, G. P., President of
the Conference. If he (Mr. Roebuck) chose to
call himself an archbishop, or chose to parcel
out England, what harm was there in it? If he chose
to call himself D.D., "Ass," or anything else, there
would be no more Larm done than the Ca-
tholics had done by assuming these titles.
It must be remembered that there were 8,000,000 of Ca-
tholics, one third ot the whole population was of hat faith,
and at a time when, by lapse of time, they were forgetting
their ancient prejudices and living in peace with
each other, was it worthy of the Noble Lord who
had so long been an advocate of civil and re-
ligious liberty to aid a feeling which had its source
in religious hate ; was it worth his while for
the sake of a flattering popularity, to lend his
name to a movement which was nothing more than
the old Puritanical bigotry breaking out in the nine-
teenth century. Upon the other subjects of the Address
they all seemed to be of the same opinion, and had it
net been for this unfortunate dispute they would not
only have passed the Address unanimously, but perhaps
something more.—(Cheers.)
Sir R. INGLIS said, when the Hon. and Learned Gentle-
man asked what was meant by Papal aggression, and when
he attempted to throw ridicule upon the proceedings on the
part of the people of this country for the last three months,
he (Sir R. Inglis) would ask whether, it such proceedings
had taken place in any other country in Europe, war would
not have been the inevitable result? When the Hon. and
Learned Member spoke of Papal aggression as almost beneath
contempt, he would ask whether the Hon. and Learned
Gentleman did not know, from history, that there was no
country in Europe in which such a measure as that which
the Pope had now attempted to inflict on England would not
have met with universal reprobation ? The partition of
England by the Wesleyan Methodists admitted of no com-
parison with that attempted by the Pope. Did the Wes-
leyan Methodists, or any other religious denomination in this
country, seek to usurp authority over the consciences of the
people, or any other kind of jurisdiction? The Pope treated
England as a country of infidels; as if she had no Crown or
Church, but that the people were as heathenish as the
natives of Otaheite before the missionaries had Christianized
them. He had, in fact, ignored the existence of both the
Crown and the Church of England. Would such an aggres-
sion have been attempted in Russia? If the Pope had
presumed to address such a brief to the inhabitants of
that great empire, the Emperor of Russia would
have said that every Russian ship in the Black Sea and in
the Baltic should have ran to the port of Civita Vecchia, and
within three months the Pope would have been compelled to
retract every indignity and insult cast against his sove-
reignty and his people. With respect to the language
adopted in the Royal Speech, he considered his Noble
Friend's letter of the 4th of November to be the text of that
Speech, and, though the text was somewhat diluted by the
commentary, yet he believed that the writer of it would be
found equal to the language he had himself used.—(Hear.)
The amount of Protestant feeling and principle which had
lain latent to an extent no one expected had been strongly
aroused by the occasion, and he hoped the movement would
not terminate with the people themselves, but in the action
of the Government. The addresses which had been pre-
sented expressed something more than attachment to the
Throne—they showed the attachment of the nation to the
Protestant religion and to the Church Establishment.—
(Hear.) The Hon. Member for Sheffield censured the Go-
vernment for saying too much ; but he (Sir R. Inglis) cen-
sured them for saying too little. He hoped, however, they
would not be deterred by any remarks of any Honourable
Member from acting up, not only to the letter, but to
the spirit, of the' Noble Lord's communication to the Bishop
of Durham, which had struck such a fire into the very heart
of England.—(Hear, hear.) From the body to which the
Honourable and Learned Gentleman belonged (Mr. Roe-
buck) one of the most remarkable addressee to the
Throne had emanated, and no class of the community, great
or small, had refrained from stating their indignation at the
attempt of the Bishop of Rome, and from calling for the
protection of the Government. He was surprised the Hon.
Seconder (Mr. Peto) had left almost untouched that great
question, for no persons could be more interested in it than
the Dissenters of England. The Church had protected dis•
sent—her existence was essential to the religious freedom of
the people. He would justify his vote for the Address on the
ground that Government were held bound by the letter of
the Prime Minister to give the Church that protection to
which by law and custom she had been for centuries entitled.
The Church was an essential element in the very constitution
of England, and whatever weakened the Church, impaired
that which, under God's blessing, had been the chief source
of the greatness and glory of the country, and so long as
that Church should be permitted to remain, so long he be-
lieved would England grow in all the elements of social
grandeur, and continue to afford an example to all the nations
in the world.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. J. O'CONNELL was happy that the party with whom
he acted were not under the necessity of offering even the
semblance of disrespect to the Crown by moving an amend-
ment to the Address. The Royal Speech claimed their alle-
giance and the support of the friends of religious liberty, and
he would cheerfully respond to both those claims. He
denied that the Hon. Seconder was correct in his inference
that prosperity was returning in Ireland. Much had been
said about the territorial allotment of England by the Pope
among the new bishops; but, it they looked to the instru-
ment appointing the vicars-apostolic in 1840, they would see
a precisely similar allotment. The Hon. Baronet said the
Popewo u
ldnot
shuapvpeovsieng nturtehdatontothbate sttreupei,n
way
ictounnottr3
but England. a,
proud last for England to see she was so free that she did
not set restrictions of any kind on religious freedom ? Would
the Hon. Baronet wish England to follow the example of
Russia? But when the Hon. Baronet made that statement
he forgot the case of Ireland seventy years ago, when the
Pope made appointments to sees without reference to the
civil power; though it was quite true, notwithstanding
what English history said, that he always sought the sanc-
tion of that authority whenever he could obtain it. As to
the conduct of the Noble Lord in the matter, he could not
add anything to what had fallen from the Hon. Member for
Sheffield. After the letter he had written, in which he had
gro-sly insulted the faith of his Catholic fellow-countrymen,
it was expected that he might have attempted to carry out
-what he threatened; but, as the Noble Lord had shrunk
back, he would but earn the contempt of every friend of civil
and religious liberty for the gross, unwarrantable, and
wanton insult he had offered to the practices of the religion
I of a large body of his fellow- subjects.
Mr. A. B. HOPE said that no one could feel more in•
dignant than he did at the manner in which the heads of the
Roman Catholic Church had proceeded in that matter, and
at the way in which their organs in the public press had
spoken of the extinct see of Canterbury, and had completely
ignored the existence of the English Established Church.
As a member of that Church, be was ready to fight to the
last against such aggression. But they were not assembled
in that House as members of the Church of England ; they
were assembled there solely as representatives of the citizens
of England—of a country pre-eminent throughout the world
for the intelligence and enlightenment of its inhabitants,
and above all for their enunciation of the great doc-
trine of liberty of conscience. Now he could not help
thinking that those who advocated measures of extreme
rigour upon that subject took the Tudor and Stuart view
of liberty of conscience—a view which would lead to the
hurrying of Cardinal Wiseman to the fires of Smithfield,
and to the cropping of the ears of the Hon. Gentleman
who had seconded the Address. They had in recent
times repealed the abominable Test and Corporation Act,
and had passed other measures calculated to ensure to the
professors of every creed the great right of religious liberty;
and it would now be too late for theta to adopt the practice
of religious intolerance. In the recent measure, which had
been so much denounced, the Roman Catholics had strictly
conformed to the very letter of the Emancipation Act of
1829, which allowed their prelates to take their titles from
any town or city which did not give its name to a bishop of
the Established Church. He believed that the religion
which he professed was based on truth, and he did not, there-
fore; think that its safety could be endangered simply be-
cause Cardinal Wiseman had changed his title. He looked
upon the speech of the Hon. Baronet the Member for the
University of Oxford as a great blow to our Church Estab-
lishment, and for his part lie certainly did not share in the
apprehensions which the Hon. Baronet had expressed for the
safety of that Establishment. Let them stand on the broad
ground of justice, and he should have faith in the Crown of
England and in the Church of England.
Mr. ANSTEY said that in consideeing that question they.
should bear in mind that a great diffeience exieted between