The Sun. — 1819-01-13 (London, England)

PROTESTANT PETITION IN FAVOUR OF THE CATHOLICS OF IREJ,4ND. " Fr OM a Correspondent, in reply to an."lrtiele which appeared in our last, entitled ' Catholic Petition.' " The purport of the Petition in favour of the Catholics is not to open the Throne to Princes of that religion.—This is not the plain..inference. -This is not the obvious intendment. It is a farfetched inference not worth the carriage ; and from the suggestion of such extreme cases, there might much more reasonably be inferred, an affectation of fear, or a deficiency of argument. " The words total and unqualified' refer entirely to the liberties of the subject, not presuming to meddle with the limitation of the. Crown, which stand perfectly secure, and firmly esta7 blished by the law of the land, moil the ilous.e of Commons, the House of Lords, and the King or Regent, by an act of political suicide, consent to the repeal' of those acts, that ascertain the form of the monarchy, without, at the same time, encroaching on the•essence of the Constitution. " The Constitution is to be distinguished from the Government. The Constitution is not radically,or cssentielly,eit her Protestant or Catholic*. It is to be known and acknowledged by the great •and fundamental principles of public and personal freedom, embodied in Catholic Magna Chatta, that sort of fellow which will not brook sovereign power') and other confirmatory documents which sanction an equal distribution of civil rights through all classes of freemen. The Constitution withdraws its countenance from exclusiv. privileges ; and laws, particularly the penal laws, are too often only exclusive privileges, the tribute of all, to the advantage of a comparative few. I! is then to the total repeal of these laws that the Petition is directed, without ever advert- 1 ing to,' or having a thought of adverting to, the limitations established by Acts of Parliament on the head of the British Government. " But, Were We. to conceive that all the three estates bid become converts to Catholicism, had abjured the Protestant religion, and abrogated tie Protestant succession, still do I assert, that the British Constitution might exist in its essence and substance, although with this change of the religion of the Monarch. .• " The term unqualified,' which might at first Sight appear an unnecessary addition to the word • total,' was meant to express theAisapprobation of the petitioners, respecting the qualified and conditional bill of repeal, introduced into Parliament under the title of Canning's Bill, a revival of which may be suspected, but which is so obnoxious to the Catholic Laity, who resolved, that • as Irishmen, and as Catholics, they never could consent to any dominion or controul whatsoever, over the appointment of their Prelates, on the part of the Crown, or of the Servants of the  "By the words total repeal' are then to be understood, explicitly, the admission of the Catholics to ail the civil privileges and capacities of other citizens. without any exclusion from offices of trust And emolument in the State, or, in other words, what the huthor of the Caveat Card calls universal toleration,' although 1 hold up my bands against the term toleration,' which in it/ selt means nothing more than suspended persecution .  By the words unqualified repeal' is to be understood a protest, •on the part of the petitioners, against those conditions, modifications, and reservations, lately proposed and rejected by the Catholics of Ireland, which tended to place their church dignitaries under the influence of the Alinistry of the day, and to render,permanent, as of old, a political servitude Under the pretext of a religious scruple: " In short, the Protestantism of the King is established by the coronation oath, and by the law of the land, and securely upheld by the three estates-of Parliament- ; but the deprivation of Millions of the rights of citizens (the sole Object of the petition), is contrary to the principles and practice of the Revolution ; and to proscribe a nation is not necessary for the existence of any church, or for the head of the church of England. The Throne will be best fenced' by the incorporation of the Catholics into the State ; and its strongest bulwarks' are not the keeper ofthe King's conscience (a phrase which George the Third deemed almost ludicrous), or the Commander of the Forces, or the Viceroy, or the Primate, but the principles of the Revolution put into practice,, and the validity of Acts of ParliaMent which have established the Protestant Succession to the Throne of the United Kingdoms.\ "It is really/diverting to see how nutty bugbears have been,made.to stalk, with threatening aspect, over this stage of controversy. First came Bnonaparte with „his truncheon ; then the old man the Pope,iswith his tiara ; and after these spectres have passed ,away, comes on the King, or Regent, iu his sole attribute, as Defeilder of the e. the Catholic Faith, and as fierce es the Eighth. Henry' before ,his .conversion. :I,lese: barely possible cases are evoked, a little before the break of day,-by the witcltery.ofimagination, that, in %visiting to 'terrify others, begins to be terrified itself. They disperse—,Behold the suet Wile» the augurs wished.to seop.t.lte progress .of the itornan Comitia," one. of the College was  "al.eipost ze„atous Protestant in the nation ought to wish that.aViiiiist.ihipid sudeeett to the Throne, with site)) Widtatibris.Th!i-wohlit rendef this tration free and independent, t t t,,ttrotestmut. antnbest Prince without any."...—• T rCki FA:. of .'„iALTOWN.  deputed to say that the time was not propitioue. ‘vov ? The chickens do not peck as if they were hungry—a raven croaked to the left—the liver of the ox just sacrificed was spotted—and, hark ! some one sneezes amidst the crowd—the assembly must be dissolved, re-infeeta' and 4 sine die,' it was done once and often, but, at last, the charm dissolved, the spoil was broken, and the freedmen of Rome, who had been rigorously excluded from civil and military honoims (whatever might be the merit or fortune of their sons), who had been esteemed unworthy of a seat in the senate, and the traces of whose origin were not allowed to be completely obliterated to the third or foiirth generation, those freedmen became FREEMEN, hi the real sense of the word. They contributed to sustain the glory of the Roman empire, and to retard its fail.