The Sun.
London, England, 1834-03-11 00:00:00

tertained, end cnneeientiously so, a diffvent opinion upon
that subject•—of whom he b,',eyed the lion. member
,er St. Andrew was one.—(Cries of " Hear, bear."'
With this preliminary he now begged to say that tie
chance of obtaining the committee should not at all b
diminished by any want of exertion on his part' He
wished the committee to know whether he ought to
he in that house or not, for if a committee were appointer'
and the construction they might put upon the oath we:•
different from that which he in his conscience thought to
ought to take, that instant he would leave the house. He
would not consent to he there with the slightest infringe-
ment upon the sacred obligation which he had taken at
the table before which he then stood.—(Hear, he .r. )
This was certainly a subject of considerable controversy
amongst the Cethnlie botly—lie meant the oath taken by
Catholics. There was in this country a publication called
the "Catholic Magazine"—it was little known, perhaps, to
the members of that house, because it contained very little
matter except that which touched upon the Catholic
Church. It was edited by a very learned friend of his,
and a controversy had been going on for some months pant
in that work as to whether Catholics could with a safe
conscience take that oath, some imputing to it the mean-
ing which the hon. member for St. Andrew's imputed to
it; but the great majority differed from that construction.
He need not enter into what those constructions were ;
there was a controversy upon it, and that was enough for
him. He wanted to take no oath, hut an oath free from all
controversy, whose meaning should he so distinct that nn
man should he able to differ about the meaning of it.
He wanted not to equivocate with himself, nor did he wish
to equivocate in the presence of his God, and he wished
to have this contrever-y put an end to by a division of
that house. There was nothing in the oath which
prevented a Catholic member from voting as his judgmen•
should direct him OM the subject of the temporalities of
the Church of England, and he got rid at once of those
who considered it as any guard on the subject of the tern.
poral authority and temporal emoluments of the established
church. There was no controversy upon that point.
It might he interesting to consider for a moment why
there should be any oaths of a di•tinctly religious nature.
Was there, he would ask. any reason why religious dis
tinction should be thus marked ? Every body knew,
that up to the reign of Elizabeth, except for one short
period of the reign of King Henry the Sixth, there
were no oaths taken by any member of Parliament. In
the reign of Henry VI., an oath was taken by every
member of Parliament that he would do his utmost en-
deavours to keep the peace of the country. The wretched
Pate of the times had caused this, and the inoperative na-
ture of the oath caused it to be abandoned. The difference
of religion in the time of Elizabeth introduced the present
system. By the Ist of Eliz ibeth, c. 1, P. 9, the oath of
supremacy was enacted, but it was not required of any
member to take the oath till the sth E., c. 1,
s. 13, when, for the first time, the oath of su-
premacy was required.—(Hear, hear.) But at that
period the great majority of the peers were Catholics,
and a clause was introduced into the act by which the
lords were excused from taking this oath. It was not re-
quired to he taken by the members of both houses till the
reign of James I. The oath stated in abstract terms that
the King was head not only of all temporal causes and
things, but of all spiritual causes and things. This was
channged at the revolution, and why ?—because no tole-
ration or liberty of conscience would be granted in Scot-
Ilnd till the oath was altered. No member of the Presby-
terian church would swear that the King was bead in
spiritual affairs, and, accordingly, to meet their scruples
the oath was altered, so that it became a mere oath of ne-
gation, of spiritual dominion in any foreign prince, pope,
or prelate. It was no longer an oath of supremacy, but a
denial of any spiritual jurisdiction. This satisfied the
Presbyterians, and combined the churches of England and
Scotland—the consciences of both were satisfied, and
from that period to this the oath had remained unalte-ed.
But that was equally repugnant to the Catholics, for
while they could not admit the supremacy of the crown
they could not acknowledge the church of Scotland. In
the Irish parliament, during the reigns of Elizabeth, Charles
I. and Charles 11., it was not necessary for any member
of the Irish parliament to take the oath of supremacy. It
was quite true that at the restoration in the month
of M.y, 1661, a resolution passed in the Irish house
of Commons that the oath of supremacy ought to
be taken, but that turned out to be a dead letter
until the revolution. The English parliament in the
13th and 14th of William, passed an act, not for England
at all, for England was not mentioned, obliging the
Irish Parliament to take the oath of supremacy and ab-
juration, and from the 2d of William and Mary up to
1782 those oaths were required in Ireland although they
were not taken. An act was then passed giving efficacy
to all the laws passed in England with regard to
Ireland. But be was certainly not now going into any
controversy upon the omission of legislative sanctions
which were taken for granted up to the year 1829. He
was going through this historical sketch merely to show
that it was not necessary in the House of Commons that
any religious oaths should be taken. They origi.
nated in religious dissensions, and when those dissen-
sions ceased there was no more occasion for them-
In 1829, considerable alteration was made. In that
year an act was pasaad, which established the oath which
was at present taken by the Roman Coman Catholics;
and by the same act another very excellent alteration was
made by striking out of the oath taken by Protestants, the
declaration that the worship of their fellows, the Catholics,
was impious and idolatrous. That was an excellent altera-
tion, for it would not have been pleasant to have
sat and heard the old oath administered. There were,
however, still some strange anomalies between the
oaths taken by the members of that house. On one
side of the Board he saw three oaths that were
required to be taken by the Protestant, while on
the other side, he found only one that the Catholic was
required. The Protestant was called upon to abjure the
house or Stuart, while the Catholic was not. Now,
be had always understood that, in point of politics
he would have thought that the Catholics were the class
of persons who were most likely to have a leaning that
way; he should have thought the commonsense view of
the matter was, that that oath should have been
extracted from the Catholic, while the Pro-
testant should have been exempted from it.
Protestants were also called upon so swear that they would
never bear any alliegance to any descendant of James 11.
Now how stood the fart? Why, that no such descendant
was in existence. Was not that taking God's name in
vain? Would it not be more in accordance with
the spirit of the present day that all members should be
required to take one oath only, tbat of allegiance to the
crown ; that was an oath in which all could join—no
Protestant would refuse it, and no Catholic had the
slighest objection whatever to it.—(Hear, hear, hear.)
That Catholic oath in its former part was an oath of
fidelity and allegiance. He saw no objection to that,
though it was certainly different to that adopted by Pro-
testants. The Protestants and Catholics did not equally
swear upon the same subject. He was as ready to testify
his allegiance to the heirs of the Princess Sophia
being Protestants, as if the oath had been ad-
ministered to him ; but there was a part of the oath
which he considered a complete insult :—" And I do fur-
ther declare that it is not any article of my faith that any
princes excommnnicated by the Sea of Rome may be de-
posed or murdered by their subjects, or any person what-
soever." Why should the Catholic be called upon to
swear be should have no objection to make the
declaration—(hear, hear)—and what right, he would
ask, bad the house to insult him by calling upon
him to take such an oath. Was it possible, be would ask,
for any man to be so destitute of mural feeling as to con-
sider that he bad a right to murder any man because
the Pope bad excommuuicated him.—(Hear.) In his
opinion, the oath would be no sanction to any man
who believed in anything so monstrous and unjust.
He called for a committee to inquire whether such an
oath was necessary ; if it were, he would bend his neck
to the yoke—he would submit. But he denied that it
was necessary, and therefore be considered it im-
perative on him to call the attention of the house
to it. He had the most ineffable contempt for
the doctrine implied in that oath. Regarding that part
of the oath wherein the Pope's jurisdiction is renounced,
he (Mr. O'C.) had no objection. He would pledge his
most solemn sanction to that—but if it were necessary to
swear resistance, even unto death, of any civil interference
in those realms, there was no protestant half as anxious
as he (Mr. O'Connell) was to take such an oath.—
(Hear, hear.) But what dread did any rational
person entertain of the temporal power of the pope?—
Heaven help the maniac who could imagine that the
pope, who was trembling for his own small dominions,
could put the temporal authority of those kingdoms into
jeopardy. Was it not a sensible thing to think that those
realms should at any time be invaded by a regiment of
Cardinals, and a squadron of Friars turned into riflemen ?
The oath then went on—" And I do swear that I will
deefdd to the utmost of my power the settlement of pro-
perty in this realm, as by law established." That pre-
vented his making any alterations in the law regarding
property, but it was an undoubted fact that that law
had been frequently altered. He could mention an in-
stance in which, by an act passed during the last year, a
gentleman became the inheritor of property to the amount
of 40001. a year, which be could not inherit as the