The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-29 00:00:00

members should not, he thought, be so exceedingly anxious
to find out little faults in the conduct of statesmen unused
to the difficult position they held. It was essential to the
establishment of freedom that the ecclesiastical power :
should be subject to the civil. (Cheers.) Without that it
was a delusion to talk of their liberty. Their liberty was a
sham. They had no liberty while they were slaves of the
priests. There were those in that house who could re-
member, as he could, the return of Louis XVIII. to
France, where he found a priest who had been convicted
of cutting his mistress into twenty pieces. (A laugh.) :
An hon. member laughed ; he appeared to think :
that a good joke, and that was the way some persons treated
ecclesiastical delinquencies. (Hear, hear.) It was seven or
eight years before the French Monarch, with all his power,
dared to execute a righteous judgment on that priest.
(Hear, hear.) No sooner had Sardinia subjected the
priesthood to the civil power, by making them amenable to
the same laws as civilians, than every member of the As-
sembly who sanctioned that change was excommunicated,
and remained excommunicated to this day, and the author
of it died without receiving the sacraments of the church.
(Hear.) To Protestants those things might 'appear very
trivial, perhaps ridiculous ; but Roman Catholics were
aware of the dread with which their co-religionists in that
country regarded exclusion from the privileges of the
Church. About that time a Jesuit Confessor of the mother
of the present Emperor of Austria got about him and made'
him vow that if he lived to govern he would restore the
rights of the Church in Austria by a Concordat. The
words embodying that vow conveyed a lie. That Concor-
dat gave to Austria a position which no part of Germany
ever had before—complete subjection to the Council of
Trent. By it the whole of the youth in that country were
placed exclusively in Jesuit schools. Not a single Protes-
tant in Bohemia or inlany of the Danubian provinces could
be received into the civil service of the country without a
certificate that he had been educated in some one of those
Jesuit schools ; and as Protestants refused to send their
sons to be taught there they were practically excluded from
the civil service. Those Jesuit priests fomented the re-
bellion in Lombardy, and the Pope backed them. He
(Mr. Drummond) eontended that it was impossible to keep
that country free unless some decisive steps were taken to
control the power of the church. (Hear ) It was not a
mere question of territorial aggrandisement. From the
year 1848 the ecclesiastical power had put forth an in-
fluence throughout Europe which it had not before dared
to do since the French Revolution. There was not a single
State in which they had not done it. He was uet finding
fault with the Pope for that. His (the Pope's) declaration
the other day was manly and honourable—namely, that it
was his duty rather to deny than forego his principles; but
he (Mr. Drummond) said those principles were incom-
patible with the freedom of that country. (Cheers.)
About that time the Bishop of Mayence excited the whole
of the priests of Baden to rebel against the Grand Duke.
He imprisoned many of them, but to little purpose;
and at last things came to such a pass that he was
obliged to appeal to • the Pope. Again, in the
Rhenish provinces tho priests claimed the right of
searching every house and seizing books obnoxious to their
creed, as well as newspapers of every kind. Look also at
France. When the Emperor prosecuted M. Montalombert
for writing and publishing a panegyric on England he let
all the rest who were in the habit of abusing England go
free. (Hear, hear.) He encouraged the one, and depressed
the other ; and the Univers had declared over and over again
that the existence of Protestant England was incompatible
with the improvement of the human race. Again, M. Co-
querelle, a well-known Protestant clergyman in Paris, had
been silenced—or at least ordered to take care that in his
sermons he said nothing offensive to Popery. At various
other places the use of the Holy Scriptures had been entirely
forbidden, on the ground, as was alleged, that they were
opposed to the religion of the majority. {No, no, from
Mr. Bowyer.] The hon. member had better be cautious.
(A laugh.) He had better read the last Pope's Encyclical
letter to Poland, in which Roman Catholics were expressly
forbidden to read the sacred Scriptures. (Hear.) Either
he (Mr. Drummond) had told a falsehood on that subject,
or somebody else had. He held in his hand the Pope's
letter, which said, " It is unnecessary to remind you how
repeatedly the Church, by the mouth of the Roman Pontiff,
has forbidden her children to read the Bible in any vulgar
tongue whatever. [Mr.. Bowyer—There is something else
besides that.] "His Holiness Pope Clement VIII. has,
moreover, declared that no bishop whatever is at liberty to
permit Bibles of the above description to be kept or read."
It was notorious that, out of that house, there was scarcely
a man to be found to deny that that was the teaching of the
Roman Catholic Church. (Hear.) Again, there was the
childstealing—which they had all heard was going on
almost everywhere. (A laugh.) It was practised in Ireland
the other day. The truth was that the power of the Papacy,
which was now growing at a greater rate than it had done
for many • years past, was incompatible with freedom.
(Hear.) If the Roman Catholic laity were to be emanci-
pated from that ecclesiastical slavery they must do it for
themselves. This he knew, that England, as a Protestant
country, cauld not meddle with any good effect. Now,
as this must be the main business of the congress, Eng-
land, as a Protestant country, ought to keep out of it, be-
cause she could do no good. There were fidgets on all sub-
jects. There were private fidgets, county fidgets, and poli-.
tical fidgets, and there was on the part of many people to
do what sailors called "shove in their oar where there was
no water." (A laugh.) It was a very dangerous thing for us
to meddle in the settlement of a question which was essen-
tially religious, with which we could have no legitimate
concern, which must produce irritation, and in which our
views could never be fairly listened to, and this, he thought
was an additional reason why, he did not mean that the Go-
vernment should have its hands tied by any resolution in
that house, but why it was not good policy for us to inter-
fere in this congress. (Hear, hear.)
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER agreed
with the hon. gentleman who last addressed the house, that
the debate had not exhauited all the subjects of varied inte-
rest which it suggested. He was glad that the case of Sar-
dinia had been so fully considered and gone into. He was
not speaking of the foreign policy of Sardinia, but with re-
spect to the internal government of that country there had
not been one word too much said, The difficulties with
which Sardinia was surrounded were enormous. Onthe one
side there was the principle of absolutism, and on the other
side- there was the principle of revolution. In matters eccle-
siastical there was the absolute dominion of the Pope on
the one side, and the principle of religion on the other side.
Still Sardinia steered her course with sagacity and success,
and her conduct claimed the gratitude of every lover of
order and liberty. (Hear, hear.) Having said so much with
regard to Sardinia, he desired to follow the speech of the
right hon. gentleman the member for the University of
Dublin (Mr. Whiteside). It was not, for the first time, that
the right hon. gentleman went into the history of 1848.
He referred to documents,, he made ample quotations, he
dwelt emphatically upon, and judging by the cheers which
proceeded from the gentlemen behind him, there was ample
demonstration of the fact, that his statement had been re-
ceived with gratification. (Hear.) Now he (the Chancellor
of the Exchequer) did not in the slightest degree intend to
question anything but the accuracy of the right hon. gentle-
man, and he hoped that the valuable time of the house which
had already been so largely occupied with this subject, would
not be again taken up with its consideration. The right hon.
gentleman, among other accusations which he brought
against the noble viscount at the head of the Govern-
ment, made rather a good humoured accusation. He
stated that his noble friend had made game of the
Pope. (Hear, hear.) Now he (the Chancellor of the
Exchequer), when he heard that statement, could not help
remembering a memorable sentence uttered by ',the right
hon. gentleman in a speech which he delivered on the sub-
ject of the College of Maynooth, a sentence redolent of the
humour of the right hon. gentleman's nation and of his own
good humour. (Laughter.) Addressinghis Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects he said, " I assure my Roman Catholic fel-
low-subjects, that with respect even to the Pope I wish him
nothing worse than a Parliament like the Parliament of
Piedmont to keep the infallible man from going wrong every
day of his life." (Laughter.) When the right hon. gentle-
man made such statements, he ought to administer, with
commendable mercy, his punishment on those who happen
to disapprove of the Government of the Pope. •(Hear, hear.)
The right hon. gentleman had, unintentionally no doubt,
but most entirely and completely misrepresented the case
of 1848, on which he so liked to dwell. The right hon.
gentleman said that in the month of May, 1848, Austria
offered to the British Government, that if the British Go-
vernment interfered to restore peace, Lombardy should be
rendered independent, and Venice should have a free con-
stitution; and the right hon. gentleman added, that at that
period his (the Chancellor of the Exchequer's) right hon.
friend the Secretary of State, had received a letter, or had
the means of knowing, that Sardinia would be satisfied with
that arrangement. The right hon. gentleman's accusation
against the noble lords (Palmerston and Lord J. Russdll)
was that in 1848 they had neglected the golden opportunity,
and postponed the settlement of the Italian question, and
that having done so once one year they would do the like
again. Now, did the noble lords act as had been suggested ?
Was it the fact that they so acted ? The right hon. gentle-
man's statement was grossly and entirely untrue. There
was no such offer from Austria, but a document was received
from Baron Hummelauer expressing his own individual
opinion with reference to Lombardy and Venice. On the
23d May, 1848, Baron Hummelaur sent to the Foreign Sec-
retary a document stating that while the Lombardo-Vene-
tian kingdom was to continue under the sovereignty of Aus-
tria it should have what might be called a free constitution.
That was the proposition of the Austrian Government. It
made no distinction between Lombardy and Venice. It did
not sepa:re-te Austria from anything at all. But said the
hon. gentleman, " I did not quote the letter of May 23—1
quoted the letter of May 24." But was it likely that Baron
Huntmelauer having made a proposition on the 23d, would
on the 24th make a proposition diametrically opposite ?
There was unfortunately no written answer to that paper of
the 23d of May ; but there was an answer written on .the
24th of May which showed truthfully what occurred,, and
it appeared from that that the noble lord, the Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, had represented to Baron Hum_
melauer that the terms submitted in that paper were not
satisfactory, and it further appeared that Baron Humme-
lituer drew up a fresh paper, in which his noble friend and
that distinguished diplomatist agreed. (Hear.) That do-
cument was dated the 24th of May, and by its terms it was
arranged that Lombardy should be freed altogether from
Austria--(hear, hear, and cheers)—and that the Venetian
State was to be a free State under a new constitution.
(Cheers.) The right hon. gentleman opposite, then, was
not correct in his representation.
Mr. WHITESIDE explained.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER—The
right hon. gentleman said there mut have been an official
communication from Austria. Then the right hon. gentle-
man must have road the covering letter. Now he would
read, if not the whole, at least an abstract of the covering
letter—" Your lordships may rest assured that the Impe-
rial Government (meaning France) entertains precisely as
the Government of the Queen, and as those of the Council
(meaning the Cabinet Council.) I shall returnimmediately
to Vienna, and urge the expediency of those terms being
accepted." (Hear, hear, and cheers.) So, then, it is evi-
dent that the right hon. gentleman had fallen into a great
error in believing that that was a proposal from Austria
which was no proposal at all. (Hear, hear.) The right
hon. gentleman said it was an Austrian proposal.
Mr. WHITESIDE—I said it was submitted by the
noble viscount as the proposal of the Austrian Government
to Sardinia.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER—If that
be so, it was a gross error to send it at all. The right
hon. gentleman was entirely mistaken. The right hon.
gentleman said that that proposal was acceptable to Sar-
dinia. Now, what were the opinions and declarations of Sar-
dinia on the 24th of May ? Why, he had here two letters on
the subject, both of them received on the 24th of May. The
first letter declared that Austria must evacuate Italy
(hear, hear, and cheers)—and the second said that no nego-
tiations could be entered into except on the complete eva-
cuation of Lombardy by Austria. (Hear, hear.) His hon.
friend the member for Dundalk also objected to the British
Government going into a congress. Now, with respect to
the hon. member for Dundalk, he confessed ho did not share
his fears ; but he thought his hon. friend's fears really
were, that by some possibility !,ha British Government, if
they went in to the congress, might be able to do some good
there. (Laughter.) He hoped that ueither the Government