The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-08 00:00:00

SATURDAY EVENING,

the most lamentable consequences. Such was the toloration
of the Church of Rome. Hon. Members of that House had
often expressed themselves mcst anxious for education, but
he for one was opposed to the education which was sanctioned
by the Roman Catholic clergy ; but he was favourable to
sound education, as the only means of encouraging the pool
wretches of lay Roman Catholics who were enslaved by the
clergy of that persuasion. There was unfortunately a wid€
distinction between the education given at the schools of the
Roman Catholic priests and that given at other places of
education. So long as, and to whatever extent, they pos-
sessed authority, nothing in the way of education would be
communicated, except that which was calculated to enslave
the spirits and the mind of the laity. The object of every
other sect was to give, by means of education, the greatest
possible amount of information ; to let in as much light as
possible; but the reverse of that was the aim of the Roman
Catholic priesthood. The declaration of that body now
was, that the Queen's Colleges in Ireland were to have no
students, and Cardinal Wiseman claimed ecclesiastical rule
in England ; yet, in the face of that, Hon. Members were
placing him on the same footing as a Dissenting minister.
Did any Dissenting minister speak of disposing of the crown
of England, or say that people would be damned if they did
not rest "on the rock ?" In this system, the bishop was
the slave of the cardinal, the priest of the bishop, and the
people of the priest. Further, he would ask was the House
prepared to sanction the extension of the monastic system in
England, of the conventual system, of those secret prisons
in which young females were confined? But they were all
considered essential to the development of the )eligion of
Rome. Englishmen must remember that the Pope never
altered, never abandoned any of his pretensions; and would
they tamely submit to the proceedings of those scoundrels
who went about the country stealing away their children
under the pretence of their baying taken vows? Even in
Bavaria, which was a Roman Catholic country, no one was
allowed to take vows for more than three years. Again he
would ask, would they allow the monastic institutions to be
multiplied in this country till they attained such a height as
that their inhabitants would, as clergy, claim immunity from
civil obligation, and until, as in the time of Bede, there would
not be men enough for the service and defence of the country ?
Another object of this measure of the Pope's was to take
away all trust funds from the English courts of law, and to
place them under the sole management of Archbishop Wise-
man. That was the real gist of the question.—(Hear.) The
money was the thin g.—( Hear.) It mattered very little whether
they called Dr. Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster or
Archbishop of England; but to take the property of Roman
Catholics out of the hands of our courts and get it into their
own—that was an object worth attaining. The Catholics
could do nothing themselves. They must receive the sacra-
ment every Easter; they must do penance for every word
they might utter against the appropriation by the clergy of
these trust funds. He saw a Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr.
Baines) who was about to introduce a measure fer the pro-
tection of poor girls in workhouses; but he could assure the
Government that the poor girls in convents in this country
required protection quite as much.—(Hear.) A few years
ago a remonstrance was signed by 13 archbishops and
bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, complaining of the
persecution they endured from the English Government.
Their ground of complaint was, that by the statute of mort-
main the Government would not allow a poor Papist, at the
last hour of his existence, to give some of his land for the sal-
vation of his soul. But did the House see the petition of the
Roman Catholic priests against the bishops, in which the
former complained that the bishops "got the death-beds,"
and that they (the priests) got nothing from that source ?
(Hear, hear.) The assertion that the Papal bull was not
attack upon the Queen's supremacy could only arise from
real ignorance as to the nature and extent of the Queen's su-
premacy. If they went back to the earliest times they
found that the Queen was held to be, in the coronation ser-
vice of Edmund the Confessor, which was very much like
that now in use, persona duplex. She was Vicarius Christi,
which declared her spiritual, and not her temporal supremacy.
The Sovereign of this country was persona mixta—a priest
upon his throne. She was prayed for in the Liturgy at the
head of ecclesiastical persons, and not of civil governors. She
received tithes as an ecclesiastical person, and was anointed
with oil, which was a symbol of spiritual, and not of temporal
government. Thus every assertion of spiritual authority in
this country was an attack upon the Queen's supremacy.—
.(Hear, hear.) He doubted whether we should not be obliged
to have a great many more Acts of Parliament to snake this
question fit in with the present framework of society. He
doubted whether the Government could beat back the Papal
aggression by anything of the kind now roposed. The
priests, he feared, would slip through their fingers, and carry
their measures in spite of them. But if the overnment
found that the view of the Queen's supremacy which he had
just asserted, and which was now the law of the land, was
no longer tenable, then let them have the manliness to repeal
it ; but don't let it be expunged from the statute-book at the
dictate of this insolent prelate.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. E. B. ROCHE said that whilst the last speech was
being delivered he had almost fancied himself listening to one
of the minor canons in Exeter Hall. It was quite clear, what-
ever were the peculiar religious opinions of the Hon. Gentle-
man, that he did nut hesitate to

" -- rush in where angels feared to tread."
—(oh, oh.) The Hon. Member then proceeded to notice the
speech of Lord John Russell, which he said was entirely
unsuited to the measure he proposed to introduce, and was
a sort t,f homage to the vile spirit of religious discord and
sectarian bigotry. The Noble Lord's Bill, however, fell very
far short of what might have been anticipated from that
speech; and he (Mr. Roche) was glad of it. Still he found
fault, and very great fault with the measure, even as it
sec. 3, was sufficient to meet any aggression such as that
stood, and contended that the Act of Elizabeth, cap. 2,
which had been stigmatised by the Noble Lord; and that
though the penalty. was repealed by an Act of her
present Majesty's reign, the offence was retained, and
the act of Cardinal Wiseman could be punished as a mis-
demeanour at common law. The Bill of the Noble Lord was
therefore quite unnecessary. But the Noble Lord con-
descended to propose its extension not only to England,
where there had been a cases belli, but to Ireland, where
there was no necessity whatever for any measure of the
kind. Beyond that it was a retrograde movement, because it
was an attempt altogether to ignore the existence of the
Roman Catholic Church throughot the empire, although that
Church had been virtually recognized by this House and by
successive Governments, not only in the colonies, but in Ire-
land itself.— (Hear, hear.) What was the fact with regard
to the manner in which they had treated the Roman Catholic
Church in Ireland, not merely by Acts of Parliament, but by
the conduct of the executive? They had recognized the titles
and dignity of their hierarchy in the Bequests Act, and a
local Act—the Dublin Cemeteries Act. One of the sections
of the latter empowered his Grace Dr. Murray, as Archbishop
of the diocese of Dublin, and his successors in that see, to
appoint a chaplain for the cemetery to which the Act re-
ferred, and to revoke the appointment in case he should see
sufficient reason for so doing. That was a direct recognition
of the spiritual jurisdiction of Archbishop Murray over the
diocese of Dublin, and pro tanto, a recognition of the supre-
macy of the Pope. Let them look to the conduct of the execu-
tive in Ireland also. He might, in proof, revtrt to what had
been mentioned the other night by the Hon. and Learned
Member for Sheffield in reference to the Queen's visit to
Ireland. On that occasion, for the Lord Chamberlain's
office in Dublin, a list of the personages was issued who
should have the entree to the Court. In that document
the Roman Catholic Primate and the Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin were mentioned immediately after
the Protestant Primate and the Protestant Archbishop, and
took precedence of the Protestant Bishop, and also of the
Duke of Leinster and her Majesty's blinisters. Any exten-
sion, then of the proposed measure to Ireland, thereby,
ignoring the authority of the Catholic Church in that king-
dom, was a retrograde movement on the score of civil and
religious liberty. The Bill was, in fact, a direct censure
upon Lord Clarendon and the executive in Ireland for their
conduct on that occasion. The Noble Lord talked of pro-
secution. If anybody were to be prosecuted, it was the
Irish executive; not that he recommended the prosecu-
tion of Lord Clarendon for giving their proper titles to the
Roman Catholic Bishops in Ireland, and thus acknowledg-
ing the position of the prelates who had been elected to
that high rank by the united voice of the Catholic
people of Ireland. They were entering upon a wrong
course in going, as they were by this Bill, to re-enact
habandoning their own
t Lorde penal w y
Lieutenant,
l laws—they st ha
he d
in werewrongin
abandoning
their own pledges and
principles. If they passed the proposed measure they would
want an Act of indemnity for Lord Clarendon. The Noble
Lord had shown no cause for extending the measure to
Ireland ; he had made out a strong case for England, but
with that he (Mr. Roche) had nothing to do. He cared
little for Cardinal Wiseman; he cared little whether he ac-
cepted the invitation of the Noble Lord to go and reside in
Rome or not; but with respect to Ireland they were
committing a bad act in extending the proposed measure
to that country, for which course no cause had been shown.
It would have been but an act of prudence en the part of
the Noble Lord to have paused before he rushed into a con-
troversy like this, which was likely to degenerate into a reli-
gious
were in his power to change the feelings of indignation
on the pu
partte
of and
the scramble.
Irish
people,(Mr. Roche) wished it
which the measure would
dis
provoke, and divert their attention to the industrial re-
generation of their country ; but
as he feared he could
not, he warned the Noble Lord that he was entering upon
a course from which he would shortly find it very agree-
able to diverge. It was not yet too late to withdraw the
measure—or at least to strike out of it all reference to
Ireland.
Mr. MOORE said that the Noble Lord at the head of the
Government had delivered a speech on Catholic history,
which would have done honour to him had he filled the
chair in one of the Queen's colleges in Ireland. The Noble
Lord had undertaken to prove that there was a spirit in
Popery, the full development of which was dangerous to the
Government there-
fore became the duty of the State to interfere and prevent
it. To establish and
thatto the
ew,
referred to the conduct
vi, community,he lead and that it
of despotic Governments in ancient and modern times, and
in substance led them to the fundamental principles of
free-will. The Noble Lord, however, had omitted the case of
America, though it was the only one that was at all analo-
gous to our own. America was a free country, and the Pope
might send as many cardinals there as he pleased; but if
they disobeyed him they would be punished; and if they
attempted to put their hands into other people's pockets
they would be restrained. The Noble Lord had referred also
to the acts of Catholic p
middle ages, with a
view to show that the Catholics of those days would have
resisted the attempts of the Pope to nominate bishops. In
those days, however, the bishops were not only spiritual
11 relates in the •
prelates, but they were also temporal potentates, having con
siderable jurisdiction under the law of inheritance, and
those of marriage and bequests. The Bishop of Durham,
for instance, was not only Bishop, but Prince Palatine of
the County, and the laws were administered under him and
inr
ehl et
i name.
amlt
princes,
nothing from the State but slight and obstruction. That,
was, indeed, the very pedantry of bigotry, But he was
with absurd
poor
Catholict to
p the case of those
priests, who received
com-
plained that the Noble Lord and his party did not come into
court with clean hands. They had done nothing for these
people, and would let nothing be done for them. That dog
in the manger sort of policy would not do. They must
choose between alliance and non-intervention. The Queen
was one of the greatest Catholic potentates in Christendom.
Let the country acknowledge her to be so, and there would
then be little difficulty- with Romanists, but whilst she was
bound to protest against the religion of a third of her subjects,
the reason for such a course pinto be a contradiction in term:,
end the course itself an lerable persecution. The
people of England, they were told, felt that there had been
a great demonstration on the question, and that their will
had been definitively expressed. But was that so? Why
as to the unanimity of the movement, it was, at best, a
war of opinions between two-thirds of the community and
the other third. They had been told of a terrible storm
but had met with nothing but a Scotch mist—a drenching
drizzle of scurrility and cant, from which oppression might
be deemed relief' and persecution shelter.—( Hear, hear.)
And with regard to any decision of a popular character upon
this question, he could only say that if the confessional were
esteemed by them of more importance than taxation, the
infinitesimal progress of Puseyism than the giant strides of
crime, or Popery than pauperism, then he thought it high
time that the House should assume its noblest functions and
its highest responsibility—that of asserting against the wild
voice of a three months' agitation the steady, conscientious,
and consistent development of public opinion during more
than half a century. The Noble Lord's notorious letter to
the Bishop of Durham was aimed at something more than to