The Sun.
London, England, 1835-07-13 00:00:00

Croker in a second article, next quarter, equally rabid
against the Irish Corporation Commissioners. The
old night-hag knows the system in both countries.
The Corporation Reformer, in its curious exhibition
of Mr. Croker as a corporator in Bodmin and Alde-
burgh, omitted to state that the Right Hon. ex-Secre-
tary was forced to seek an asylum in the representation
of those two rotten boroughs between the years 1821
and 1828, when the Tory University of Dublin se-
lected him Al a Protestant champion. Since the Re-
form Bill, Mr. Croker has shown his sense by retiring
from Parliamant ; and we should hope that he will also
retire after these exposures from his avocation of a Mu-
nicipal Reviewer.--Morning Chronicle.
When politicians, for the sake of party objects, en-
gage in discussions upon what is usually designated by
the single name of Popery on one side, or Protes-
tantism on the other, there is a point beyond which
no friend of religious freedom—that is to say, no con-
scientious and consistent Protestant—can accompany
them. Many of the articles of obligation or belief,
purely religious, held by Papists for instance—
such as the real Presence—the worship of the Virgin
—the number and nature of the miracles recorded by
their Church—however we may condemn one, or all of
them, as in the highest degree erroneous, according to
our own understanding of what constitutes essential
Christianity—are innocent of any such traceable ope-
ration upon the temporal state of well-being of other
Christians, as would justify the Legislative Power of
a Protestant people in molesting, interfering with, or
any wise disturbing those who entertain such
errors. True it' is that Popery has never conceded
so much—true that toleration of any doctrines but
its own, even the most abstract, and apparently re-
mote from all social influence, is held by the Popish
church in abhorrence—that proselytism, even by coer-
cive means, is insisted on as a rigorous duty for the
sake of exercising it as a substantial right—and that
dissent from the doctrines of the Church of Rome,
without the least ostensible reference to political inte-
rests or to worldly objects, has at all times and under
all circumstances been reprobated by that church as a
crime to be put down by ecclesiastical authority. This
characteristic of Popery has been so much a portion of
its whole frame, and so inseparable from its liabtual
action; and the fact is at the same time so notorious,
that the loud pretensions lately made by certain Re-
'lrish demagogues to a respect for 44 liberty of con-
science," as an indirect means of furthering the power
aimed at by their priests of persecuting and utterly
crushing that liberty, appear to us among the examples
of artful hypocrisy the most pitiful and revolting on re-
cord.• This, nevertheless, be it remembered, is no rule by
which the actions of Protestants ought to be regulated.
If infallibility be laid claim to by the Popish 'church,
and a right founded thereon to direct the consciences
of all mankind, we, Protestants, build our dissent
from Popery on the free exercise of individual judg-
ment, and we must not practise the tyranny we con-
demn by meting out their own measure to the Papists.
In so far, therefore, as what are termed Popish " su-
perstitions" have become, or may become, the subjects
of public disputation and opprobium amongst Pro-
testants, let them be ever such able and learned men, for
the sake of merely stirring up national hatred against their
adversaries, we are not amongst the approvers of such
attempts, and would cordially rejoice to see them, one
and all, relinquished. Truths, the most humiliating
to those who differ from us in religious opinion, it
may be perfectly indefensible for Protestants to
make topics of public denunciation in popular as-
semblies. It is not the most vulnerable branch of
Popery—it is not that against which the assault
can be directed with the most obvious justice, with
the most irresistible appeal to the sympathies of a
free and jealous nation, or with the plainest and most
ample support from every principle of political justice.
We have been accused, quite falsely (the falsehood
of a charge being in the eyes of certain slanderers its
favourite ingredient), with palpable and unblushing
disregard of truth—we have been accused of holding
up the religious doctrines of Popery to the general
reprobation. The instances of this offence on our
part have been drawn from some recent articles,

wherein we noticed the abominable tendency of the
professional duties prescribed to Romish priests, as
illustrations of the cruel and demoralizing methods by
which they are accustomed to gain a despotic power
over the minds of their flocks, and to mould, -or at least
bias, the fiercest wills,. in conformity to the instructions
and secret designs of the confessional. It was not to the
devotional point of Dens' s Theology that we ever took
the trouble of inviting our Protestant and politkal
readers. It was to the horrible manner of enforcing a
familiarity with, and agross attention to, subjects through
which no human being ought to usurp the privilege of
staining,indelibly the imaginations of his fellow mortals.
It is physically impossible that the inquisitor into do-
mestic life, after the vile fashion inculcated by books
like that to which we have adverted, should not be more
a' corruptor of the guiltless, than apreceptor to the un-
taught. 'We have heard, and we know what we affirtii
to be true, that in numerous cases women have 'de-
clared their first teacher, even of the alphabet of vice,
to be the priest who confessed them. His is indeed
too frequently the serpent's part, and the tree of know-
ledge to which he introduces the innocent is loaded
with the fruit of death. It is this dreadful power de-
rived from auricular confession by the menial of a
church on whose fiat depends absolution or punish-
ment immediate and eternal, from one whose decrees
go forth without control, without appeal, setting all
human laws, authorities, influences, and maxims at
defiance—this it is which chiefly filled the grave 'and
reflecting mind of the late Lord Grenville with dismay,
and determined him to regard as inadmissible and
frightful, any extension of power to the Romish laity
which should not be accompanied by some effective
pledge or barrier against the, perversion of that
power to purposes invariably held sacred by the
Papal church, through her inevitable ascendancy
over the spirit of her laymen. The practice of
auricular confession alone, said Lord Grenville,
was replete with danger to any free society. In
fact, with it there can be no freedom of conscience.
Things temporal, no less than things spiritual, are all
within its dominion—for there is no question, however
purely political or social in its nature, which priestly
insolence, arrogance, and dexterity do not contrive to
make, some how or other, " stuff o' the conscience,"
as bearing upon the interests of religion. When we
add to this privilege the power of excommunication—
no empty form, as with us Protestants—but a real
outcasting from all the intercourse of life, and from its
comforts—when we recollect, moreover, the right
usurped by these confederated bashaws, •of bellowing
out even from the altar the names of those among the
congregation who presume to disobey their mandates
upon any and every question -relating_to politics, gene-
ral or local, and especially when such commands have
been issued in furtherance of a system of " passive
resistance" to the laws—when it is in evidence, under
a thousand forms, that the proclamations of the altar
have been made subservient to the nonpayment of tithe,
to the desertion of landlords, to the intimidation of
electors by savage violence, that in short, every priest
has his own parochial parody on the " Death's head and
cross-bones of the agitator, and has worked it with no
less skill and boldness than the great apostle of sedition
himself, our English and Protestant readers may judge
what sort of political game that must be which is
played by persons calling themselves statesmen, and of
which it is the Sole intelligible result to throw into the
hands of a priesthood so constituted, so actuated, so
trained to the work of virtual insurrection and subver-
sion, an unprecedented mass of political power. We
repeat it for the hundredth time, it is not the " doc-
trines" of the church of Rome, for which we care
one single farthing. It is the terrific church govern-
ment of Popery which we deprecate, that govern-
ment which has from time immemorial declared
war against every other -dominion but its own on
-earth, and which verifies to a tittle the boast of Archi-
medes and. the sarcasm of Hume—using " the other
world for a lever; whereby to move this world at its
will"-the Most tremendous engine for enslaving
the heart of man, and barring the progress of society,
that ever yet existed. The only form of political
government which can stand at all against the spirit
of Popery is a military despotism, and of that
there is but a precarious chance depending on the
greater or less mental vigour of the Monarch pro tem.
pore. Then, can it be any thing short of frenzy. to intro-
duce into Ireand a measure equivalent to that of corpo.