The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-08 00:00:00

Tilt DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM'S LETTER.

TO THE GENTRY, CLERGY, AND FREEHOLDERS OF THE

HUNDREDS OF BUCKINGHAM, .ASHENDON, ANO COT-

TESLOK, IN TUE COUNTY OP BUCEINGIIM.
ROME, 'NIARCII 12, 1629.

GENTLEMEN—Through the medium of the public
Papers, I have learnt that a meeting of the inhabit-
ants of the Hundreds of Buckingham, Cottesloe,
and Ashendon, has been called, to express their
opinions against the admission of Roman Catholics
to the enjoyment of political privileges and power.
Had I been in England, I would most certainly
have attended that meeting. Had my health per-
mitted it, I would ere now have been at my post
in Parliament, to have given my vote personally, as
I now must do by proxy, in favour of that measure.
By the same channel of information, 1 have as-
certained that at the meeting thus held, certain re-
solutions were put, a petition to Parliament was
agreed to, and an address to his Majesty was carried.
Had I been present, I would, most assuredly, have
opposed them all, and for these plain reasons :—that
I never would have consented to resolutions, which
in themselves involved absurdities, neither would I
have agreed to a petition to Parliament, or an ad-
dress to the Throne, which represented as true what
I know to be unfounded. I take the proceedings of
the meeting from the .IVlorning Journal, the only
British newspaper communicating what passed that
I have been able to have recourse to here.
The first resolution states the Constitution of our
country " to have been settled at the Revolution."
I have been bred up in great respect for the wisdom
of our ancestors, and have always thought that the
Constitution of England consisted in the establish-
ment of our three Parliamentary Estates :—in the
trial by jury,—in the liberty of the person of the
subject,—and in the other provisions of the Great
Charter, as recognised by the Bill of Rights. If I
am wrong in this belief, I have high authority to
justify my error; for in that case Hampden, the boast
of our county, must have idly spilt his blood in a vain
defence of mistaken principles. If I look back to
times in which these blessings were granted to us, I
find that those times were Catholic, and that
those who gave them were Catholic Monarchs, and
Catholic Parliaments ; in many cases Catholics con-
tending against the Pope, and maintaining, in defi-
ance of his authority and power, the liberties of
their country.
Your first resolution, therefore, contains a mis-
statement of a fact; your second involves an ab-ur-
dity. The King, as first magistrate, takes no oath,
save to defend our institutions as established by law.
The King can neither make nor alter the Constitu-
tion of England : it is treason to say that he can.
The laws are in the power of no monarch of Eng-
land. But what the three branches of the legisla-
ture can together make, they can together alter;
and what shall so have been declared law, the King
by his oath is bound to maintain, and none other.
You will probably agree with me that the late Earl
of Liverpool was a tolerably stout opponent of the
Catholic claims, and he, in Parliament, and in my
hearing, declared, that he was decidedly of opinion
that there was nothing in the Coronation Oath
which could or ought to prevent the King from ac-
ceding to the repeal of the laws of which the Ca-
tholics complain.
You were told that his late Majesty had declared
to a noble relative of mine, that " he had courage
to lay his head upon the block, or to retire from his
throne to a cottage, hut that he had not the courage
to break his oath." The story was calculated to make
an impression upon you : it purported to convey the
solemn opinion of a monarch whose memory you re-
vere, given hy him to a statesman, who, I may say, is
proudly b itisted of by nu! country. I say this with-
out fear of being considered unduly vain of my vene-
rated relation, for Lord Grenville's character is
under the safeguard of the history of his country.
But the whole story is utterly untrue.
It is a pity that those woo relied so much upon
this appeal, did not take the obvious means which
presented themselves before they made it, of ascer-
taing its correctness. It would at least have saved
them from the awkward dilemma of maintaining a
fallacy by aLi v4n6ing what, on proper inquiry, would
have been found to be 4p untruth. In your address
to the Throne, those in whose laigtoTical hands yon
have placed your faith have been singularly enfortti-
nate, That Address consists of but three para-
graphs; anti whilst each of them contains a mis-
statement, the third in7elves an absurdity in addi-
tion to an untruth. The &Ist states that it was
f‘ the glorious Revolution of 1688, whereby the Ca-
tholics were evitided from all political power in the
Government of these re4lins." Now, the Act which
did this was pa s,ed in the reign of Charles 11. I
advise your historian to correct his first error, In
the second paragraph, the means tined now by the
Catholics to obtain a revision of the laws of which
they complain are described as " violent and un-
constitutional."
.

Now, as these means consist only of a recommen-
dation from the King to his Parliament to take the
situation of his Catholic subjects into its " Consitiee
ration, with a view of ascertaining whether the laws
affecting them may pot be repealed without injury or
danger to our Protest,tuir, establishment," and of
Bills brought in by his reponsible Ministers in pur-
suance of that recommendation, to be considered lgy
Parliament, the allegation that those means are un-
constitutional artl violent, may be seditious or foolish,
but cannot be true. The third paragraph declares,
that " it is utterly impossible for Roman Catholics
anti Protestants to legislate in harmony together;
and that, to make the attempt, would be to risk the
blessings whisk we now enjoy."
It is a pity that the zeal with which your petition
was pressed upon you did nqt allow of the history of
your country being examined before it was com-
mented upon. Had that preliminary and precau-
tionary step been taken, it would have been disco,
vered that the attempt thus deprecated had been al-
ready made, and, according to the highest Protestant
principles, not without some succese. It would have
been found that Catholic Lords did sit in Parliament
with the Protestant Peers long after the Reforma-
tion,—that they did legislate togetlipr for the benefit
of the country, and that it was owing to the votes
and the ,exertions of the Catholic Peers that the Pro-
testant Bishops were recalled to Parliament after the
Restoration, in the yew 1661. But if it be true that the
collision in Parliament of ectholic and Protestant
Legislators would only risk the Loo of the " bles-
sings ;ve now enjoy," surely it must be the limit of
the Proteatents3 as history proves to us, first, that
the Catholic Legislat.ors li4 legislate in such a man-
ner as to give us the 56 1)14,411W which we now
enjoy ;" that, in conjunction with PrntMant legis-
lator, they were the means of restoring our parlie,-
mentary welacy ; consequently if any risk now be
run of losing tinJap blessings, it is more likely to be
incurred by the Proteg/ents who would endanger
them, than by the Catholics, whpase ancestors erected
them. So much for your address to the throne.
The petition to Parliament includes all these
mis-statements, and all the fallacies of the resolu-'
tions and the address, 7,0 b an absurdity peculiarly
its own. It« prayer is, not tbitt parliament shall
continue to exclude Catholics from poger if,n4 poli-
tical rights, but that the laws to which the Re-,
man Catholics have for the last 130 years been sub,-
ject may not i,i repealed, es the best and safest
means of preserving the 131-C!ettant
.r
!fethligion and
Government of the county f." Now, is prayer
granted, the whole of the Catipliie Penal Code
mast 4.e re.-enacted! Every Parliament 3ebkeh has
sat since tile Ite•?,/plution, and has repealed any poi.r,
tion of that satigun,a.ry And tyrannical code, must be
declared to have committed trrz...-.:eon against the Con-
.atitution ; and even our late re-,it.; 1 Monarch,
whose firm adherence to his oath is so strongly pre-
sented as an example to be followed by all his sus.
cessors, must be declared to have violated that oath,'
inasmuch as during -his reign a Catholic Bishop
(Cbelloner), and other Catholics, having been tried
for' their lives for saying mass as priests of the
Church of Rome, under the law at that time exist-
ing, a bill was brought in by Lord Mansfield to repeal