The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-15 00:00:00

worth the while of the country to have such an agitatiim on
this subject. front one end to the other—how it could be
worth the while of Parliament to be thus discussing it, hav-
ing postponed all financial arrangements, and other mere
important questions, was more than he could answer, and he
would leave to others to explain; but he did not conceive he
should be doiue his duty by those great principles of civil
and religious liberty, it he did not enter his protest against
the Bill before the flouse.—(Cheers.)
Sir It. II INGLIS said that his Hon. and Learnel Friend
who had just sat down had concluded his elaborate and in-
genious, but. he wee bound to add, his fallacious speech, with
the expressio i of an opinion, in which he (Sir R. H. Inglis)
entirely concurred, and to which it was not, therefore, neces-
sary that he should further advert. Neither would he be
tempted by the allusion made to himself to enter into a
consideration of what he might have formerly said on the
question of the system of education which had been intro-
duced into Ireland by the Government of Sir R. Peel. It
was enough for hi.n to say that he had not renounced the
opinions he had formerly expreesed upon that point. But he
should observe that his Hon. and Learned Friend had, in his
opinion, proceeded on a great fallacy in all his historical re-
ferences. Hie Hon. and Learned Friend had talked of the
Episcopal Protestant Church of Scotland, of the Free Church
in that country. of the Wesleyan Confzrence, and of the
possibility oft Free Episcopal Church springing up in this
country; and then his Hon. and Learned Friend had asked
whether they were prepared to legislate in any one
of those cases. But there was an essential differ-
ence between those cases and the act of aggression
whic t they bad then to c insider. All the relig ous commu-
nit es to which hi 4.110 n. and, Learned Friend had referred

f rmed a system of internal o'ganisatiem, and were dependent
on r o parties except their own volun ary ass ciations.—
r Hear, hear.) But the body with which they had then to
deal was one, owing at least a divided, if not an entire,
allegiance to a foreign power, - (Hear, hear.) He had him-
self held i his hand that day a petition from the Wesleyan
Conference, in which the petitioners stated that they refused
to recognise the Sovereign of another state as the fountain of
honour and authority in this country. It was that fact
which constituted the great and fundamental distinction
between the cases to which his Hon. and Learned Friend had
referred, and the case on which they bad then to decide. In
order to show the peculiar position occupied by
Roman Catholics in this and in other countries, he had
only to quote a passage front the eminent person who had
to govern the spiritual affairs
been sent over by the Pope
of England. " The Catholics," said Dr. Wiseman
or Bishop Wiseman, " are not, and never have been, merely
a collection of persons holding certain opinions in
common, but they are a systematised and organised
religi us community, rVesenting here the Cs-
tholic Church of tee univer,e."— (Hear, t ear.) The
fact was that the Roman Catholics of England could never
be treated as a distinct re ligious body, such as the Wesleyan
Methedi,ts or the members of the Free Church of Scotland-
They were portions of a general system, which, to quote the
celebrated apostolical letter, " revolved round the centre of
unity." They had always heard that the Church of Rome
whether it expressly sought or not to enforce its claim—
did in effect assume that it possessed a right over every baps
tiaedperson in the Christian world; and when that cuminl
stance had been referred to en a late occasion, an Hon. Mem-
ber added, "And so it ought." -And'then, again, the Noble
Lord who had moved the areendinent which they were then
considering bad told them that his Church claimed every
baptised soul. They should remember, therefore, that they
had to deal with a Church which admitted no salvation out
of its limits, and which, in eonsequeneee very justly and con-
sistently claimed the care otevery person who had ever been
baptised. He hardly liked to follow the Noble Lord in his
reference—a reference which must have been painful to
himself—to the number of Roman Catholic Peers who
had resisted the aggression made by the chief of their
religion; and he would not quote their names.
But this he would say 'of them, that, while they
were pre-eminent in rank, they were not inferior
in.talent and in character to those whose address had been
presented by Mr. Langdale to Dr. Wiseman. The Hon.
Gentleman who had seconded the amendment had referred
with peculiar pleasur' to What had fallen from his Right
Hon. Friend the Member for Ripen (Sir .1. Graham), and
from a Noble Earl in another place (the Earl of Aberdeen),
upon that subject. But the 'Noble Earl in question, and his
Right H n. Friend too, if he was not much mistaken, had
spoken of the aggression itself in language as strong as that
of his Noble Friend at the head of the Government,
or as that of any Member of either House of Par-
liament. The Hop. Gentl man the Membe for the city of
Dublin (Mr. Reynolds) sh tad not, therefore console him-
self with the vote of his Right Hon. Friend, and forget the
countervailing character ()this speech in reference to the ag-
gression which had given !;tee to the Bill. The difference
between his Right Hon. Friend and those who were dis-
posed to deal with the case by legislative enactment, was
not as to the character of the aggression, but merely as to
the mode it which it should be met. There were persona
who thought that it ought to be met with all the powers
of he law, while the-e were others who thought that such
A mode of proceeding would be improper lid ins fficient
But they were both opposed to, that measure which had
roused the country from oue en of it to the other. The
eight Hon. Baron,t the Member for Marylebone (Sir B.
hall) had told them of Ite number of persons who bad
signed the petitions presented against that act of aggression,
ant of those who had signed the address .re her Majesty—a
number greater perhaps • ban had ever before signed any
similar documents. And What was the body from which the
first and most important expression of opinion had emanated ?
Why, it was that distinguished body of which his Hon. and
earned Friend was himself a member, and of which he and
another were the only two who had not signed the address
agreed to upon the subject,. (Hear, hear.) Then again, that
important and influential, and by no means specially bigotted
body, the attorneys and stdicitors, had, to the number of
6,b04 joined their supplications to those which had proceeded
from so many other quarters, praying thateffeetive measures
might be taken to meet that act of Papal aggrcssi.n.
Whether the measure then under their consideration was
adequate to the attainment of its professed object he would
not then stop to inquire. All he desired to state was, that he
would receive the least instalment in respect to a principle.
The principle for which he contended was contained in the
Bib, and he should, therefore, support it. But at the same
time he was quite ready to admit that lie was not satisfied
with the general conduct of her Majesty's Government upon
the subject, any more than he was satisfied with the parti-
cular measure thee before the House. On the 22J of October

last, the first news had arrived in England of that which the
Pope had decreed on the 29th of September. Was there no
mode by which her Majesty's Government could have met
that aggression, except by the Bill they had introduced into
that House on the 7th of February? -(Henn)
His Hon.
Friend the Member for N ewark (Mr. J. Stuart) had sug-
gested on a late occasion that there was a constitutional and
obv ous course by which the mind and will of the Crown
might have been made manifest to the Court of Rome;
and that was by a proclamation. A proclamation from
tie Crown might or might not, according to its
subject-matter, have a legitimate influence in this
country; but with respect to foreign countries, a procla-
mation of the Crown was as full and sufficient an
exponent of the will of the Sovereign power among tie as
any Act of Parliament to which the Crown was a consenting
party. In a well-known case the Government of Brazils had
entirely disregarded an Act of Parliament passed in this
country, and had stated that they had nothing to do with
our internal legislation, which could not regulate their con-
duct. He said, therefore, that, so far as foreign countries
were concerned, an Act of Parliament could not have more
force or validity than a proclamation from, the Sovereign.
He believed that her Majesty ought, in the first instance, to
have met that aggrerion on her Crown and dignity, on the
independence of her realms,:en the integrity of the Church,
and on the faith and conscience of her people, by issuing
at once a proclamation t and let him say, that as in
Rome the proclamation of the hull In Cana Domini affixed
to a church in that city was held to be a proclamation to
the whole world, so a proclamation from her Majesty,
wherever it was affixed, might be held to convey to he
Sovereign of Rome the determined will of the Sovereign of
this country to resist any act of aggression on his part.
But there were other modes in which the will of the Sove-
reign of these realms might have been conveyed to the
'Sovereign of Rome On the 29th of February, 184 e, a Bill
bad been brought down to that House for regulating our dip-
lomatic intercourse with the Courteof Rome. That Bill had
not received the Royal assent until the 4:h of September
following. It had been forced through the Upper House
with breathless haste, but it had been suffered to remain six
months in that House without any effort, or at least without
any serious effort, having been made by the Government to
ensure its adoption. During that time the people of England
bad expressed almost unanimously their opposition to the
measure; petitions, sighed by not less than 3,500 members
of the parochial clergy of England, had been presented against
it; and he believed that if her Majesty's Government had
consulted the feelings of the people of England, they would
never have thought of pressing it forward. They had,
however, pressed it forward, and the Royal assent had subse-
quently been given to the measure. But what had they done
since? They had by their own mode of proceeding precluded
themselves from that most ebvioire course of entering into
diplomatic intercourse with the Court of Rome under the
provisions of their own Bill, and they had suffered the
Bishop of Rome to perpetrate an act of aggression which
had excited among us all that indignation, while
by the common intercourse of diplomitic life they
might tia,e explained to the Pope their views, and have in-
duced him to withdraw his proposition.—(He4r, hear.) But
after her Majesty's Government had tailed to proceed in that
matter, either by a proclamation or by diplomatic intercourse,
they had a third alternative open to them. Her Majesty
had a fleet in the Mediterranean, and there were such ports
as Ancona and Civita Vecchia in the Papal dominions.
Those ports or at least one of them, might have been oppor-
tunely visited by leer Majesty s forces, and representations,
diplomatic in their language, might have been conveyed
through the admiral commanding the fleet—(Herr, hear,
and laughter) upon the subject of the act of aggression, in
the same way in which France and Austria had taken pos-
session of cities and fortresses in the Roman territory for the
purpose of conveying their diplomatic views.—(hear, hear,
and renewed laughter.) He saw 110. rearm why England
could not do what France and Austria had done more than
once. But if a proclamation. at home had failed -if diplo-
matic interference had. failed if armed intervention had
failed in securing the object of her •
Majesty's Government,
then her Majesty might have referred to her faithful Com•
mons—to the representatives of her faithful people in
Parliament assembled, and have endeavoured to
persuade them to pass an enactment commensurate
with the danger and the difficulty of the crisis. It Govern-
ment had to take the law as their alternative, instead of a
oroclamation, or diplomacy, or war—it the matter could not
be settled without legislation, then, he said that Parliament
ought to have been summoned at once; for if the case de-
served the attention of parliament at all- •if it deserved it
in b February, it deserved it in October, 7 - and he could see ne
reason to 'justify her Majesty 5 Ministers from seeking the
counsel of Parliament
in Feb
February. which
ought not to have
induced them to have asked it when the insult had first been
offered. But in considering the question, they should look
first to the law as it was, and then to the law as it ought to
be. Now, it appeared that two of the first lawyers in Eng-
land, his Honourable and Le.arned Friend the Member fer
Newark, and the ex-Lord Chancellor of Ireland, had dis-
tinctly stated it as their opinion that the law, as it already
existed, had been violated by that act of Papal aggression,
and he believed that opinion was also entertained by many ,
of the highest authorities upon the subject—by Dr. Twiss, by
Mr. Butt, and by Mr. Warren. It was certainly the opinion
of the collective wisdom of the bar. Now he wished to know
whether her Majesty's Ministers had consulted the law offi-
cers of the Crown upon that subject, and le more especially
whether they had consulted the law advisers of the Crown
in Ireland, who would, no doubt, have correctly represented
to them the difficulties of legislating upon the question for
that country. If they had not consulted the law advisers of
the Crown in Ireland, then they had, in his opinion, been
guilty of a neglect of their duty. Ile readily admitted that
by the legislation of the last few years the atatutable pe-
nalties had been withdrawn from Acts of an cashier period
bearing upon that subject; but he had yet to learn that the
penalties at common law ettached to such proceedirg, had
been repealed. Ile Lelieved that in that matter her Majesty's
Goveroweee might have appealed to the existing state
to the law, with as much certainty of success as
anything that was contingent could supply. But if they
...had not done so, they ought at least to have taken counsel
of Parliament at the earliest possible moment. And yet,