communication and occupied with other thoughts, did not advert sufficiently to the circumstance to remember, but the conclusion drawn by his Holiness was of a different character. He read in it the continuance of the policy of non-interference in our spiritual affairs.

"I have now on my table the minutes of 16 separate conversations, held in 1848, with authorities of the Propaganda, on the subject of the hierarchy. They contain in substance whatever passed between myself and those authorities in either private or official interviews. In none of these is there a single hint or allusion to anything beyond the internal and spiritual affairs of the English Catholic body. I have also lying before me copies of seven memorials, which, with the aid of an English priest, were drawn up and presented to the Holy See by the present writer. Upon the basis of these documents the English Catholic hierarchy in its present form was constituted, with the exception of an additional bishopric added in the arrangement of 1850. In no one of these documents is there any allusion to other objects as in contemplation beyond those of the English Catholic body and their hierarchy, and nothing beyond this occupied the mind of any one engaged in making the arrangement. I assert this the more confidently as the apostolic letter embodies the principles of the memorials with one remarkable exception. I had drawn up a memorial on the subject of the titles. In this I had strongly urged the expediency of appointing an Archbishop of London and a Bishop of York, and showed that this was perfectly conformable to our laws. But on this point, and on this alone, I met with a steady and constant resistance, and that resistance was on the ground that it might give offence to the British Government. I was called in by the Commission of Cardinals whilst in consultation-a very unusual course-that I might be able to explain myself more fully and clearly. I heard and shared in the discussion, and urged my point to the utmost. I even quoted your lordship's opinions, and those of other members of the Cabinet, as expressed in Parliament, besides showing the state of the law, and the utility to ourselves of an arrangement which would leave the bishops undisturbed in the positions where they had resided as Vicars Apostolic, and realise better the dioceses they have to govern; but to no purpose. I was opposed on the ground of delicacy towards the Government. On this ground the whole of that memorial was set aside, and this was the only instance in which suspicion of offence arose. The Cardinals resolved to consult the English bishops individually on this point, and in the interval the insurrection broke out in Rome. But for this the apostolic letter would have come to England in 1848, as the public supposed it had come, and we should most probably have had neither excitement nor persecution, for it would have been quietly promulgated amongst ourselves, and without eclat. Will your lordship allow me to point out that the phrase 'Court of Rome' is an ambiguous and offensive designation, as used instead of the Holy See.' It was invented by State canonists and statesmen whose designs were directed against the liberty of the Church. It is of much the same calibre as the phrase 'foreign Sovereign,' It incorporates an error, and is unfair, though your Lordship has not intended it to be so in this instance. Dupin describes a conflict, and takes one side of it; had your lordship read the other side, you would have found the whole of your examples overthrown. Allow me to refer to an agreeable work, which explains the true sense of this term, Court of Rome,'-Cardinal Pacca's Memoirs of his Nunciature on the Rhine. "Your lordship has made much of the opinions of a few laymen and clergymen as indications of the sense of the English Catholics. But are all laymen, or even clergymen, capable of appreciating the fundamental principles of Church government, or of comprehending the bearings of a measure new to them as a reality? To talk of the establishing a local episcopacy independent of State intervention as ultramontanism may serve for amusement to our tyros in canon law, but for what other purpose can such an absurdity be used? Why, the gentlemen who formed the Cisalpine Club' clamoured for a hierarchy as the surest safeguard against ultramontanism. Before collecting evidence against us from among ourselves the inquiry should be made of the witnesses, if laymen, whether they are even communicants in our Church; if clergymen, whether they are engaged in its ministry. Then, if they be right on these points, whether they are discontented or disappointed persons-whether they represent any number of their brethren, or only themselves—and whether they have any particular interest to serve or sympathies to conciliate. Not a single person has yet shown himself opposed to us of whom we or any one might not have predicted the course he has taken. What are a dozen out of so large a number more or less disloyal to the body of which they are members?

,

"I have to thank your lordship for your satisfactory vindication of the Catholic Bishops from the charge of having violated the law. The labours undergone to find out a way of convicting us, so naively related in your speech, have proved our full acquittal. We are not, then, aggressors; for aggression is a crime, and a crime is the violation of a law. The aggression is against us and our Christian liberties. Yes, my lord, I grieve to say it, it is not we who are affected by these acts, unless it be by arousing our pastoral vigilance, filling our churches, diffusing our books, and, according to the reports of our clergy, increasing the number of our converts. The hand of persecution points to one class amongst us, whilst it is another that is made to suffer. The persecution falls upon the tradesmen, workpeople, and poor servantsupon unoffending industry, and the poor seeking their bread. And see how quietly they have borne it all. "But there is one point for your lordship seriously to consider. The hierarchy is established; therefore it cannot be abolished, except through the physical extermination of the Catholic Church in these realms or, which God forbid, through universal apostasy. How can you deal with this fact? You have quoted a legal principle from Jeremy Taylor, which he took, with many others, from the Jesuit Suarez. Allow me to suggest another. Is it wise and in the spirit of a profound legislation to put the religious teachers of a large body of her Majesty's subjects in conscientious opposition to the law-to force them to put the principle of Divine law in opposition to a human enactment-to make their very bishops the incorporation of such a fact? Will it aid the sanctions of the State, and that opinion, which, as your lordship views it, is the best support of law and government, to force us into a position where, standing, as we are bound to do, upon the law of God and our conscience, we are compelled to count for nothing enactments which we can only consider as assaults upon the cause of Heaven and of our souls-enactments which, in fact, come from no divine fountain of justice, but are the offspring of party contests and sectarian dislikes? We can make distinctions between the just and the unjust, and keep our reverence for the former, but to the mind of the multitude the sense of one unjust law which they are obliged in conscience to condemn is a iaint upon the whole course of justice.

"I have the honour to be,
"Your Lordship's very obedient servant,
"W. B. ULLATHORNE..

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY JAMES GILBERT 49, PATERNOSTER-ROW

ROMAN CATHOLIC QUESTION.

PAPAL AGGRESSION.-HOUSE OF COMMONS,
FEB. 7, 1851.

(Continuation of Debate from the Nineteenth Series.)

Mr. E. B. ROCHE could have supposed during the last half hour that he was in Exeterhall, listening to some of the minor canons who held forth in that edifice. It was evident that whatever might be the religious opinions of the hon. member for West Surrey, he was one of that class who did not hesitate to rush in "where angels fear to tread." His speech afforded a slight indication of the evil that this measure of the noble lord's was likely to produce in this country and in Ireland. The noble lord's speech was entirely unsuited to the measures he was about to introduce. He did not complain that the measure was unsuited to

the speech, but the speech was a homage to the fell spirit of religious discord and sectarian bigotry to the raising of which he had been a party. But the measure, although he had grave faults to find in it, fell very short of anything that might have been anticipated from the noble lord's speech. The noble lord had spoken of what he termed the late act of Papal aggression as if it were very little short of high-treason; but Sir E. Sugden had shown that the 13th of Elizabeth was sufficient to meet any offence against the law, such as this had been described to be. He denied that there was any necessity to make the bill applicable to Ireland. In the reply of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the remonstrance of the archbishops and bishops of the Established Church in Ireland, his Grace said that the reason why the Irish prelates had not been invited to join in the address of the English hierarchy to the Queen was, that they had to complain of an aggression which only affected the Church of England. He was warranted, therefore, in saying, upon the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the proposed measure was utterly needless in Ireland. The measure was, indeed, an attempt to ignore the Roman Church in the whole empire, although that Church has been virtually recognised by that House, and by successive Governments, in the colonies as well as in Ireland. When Lord Stanley was Colonial Secretary, the Bishop of Australia, in March 1843, wrote to his lordship to complain of the introduction of a Papal bull exactly similar to that recently issued. This bull constituted a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, and gave that prelate metropolitan jurisdiction in New Holland. What was Lord Stanley's answer to the remonstrance? His lordship directed the Governor to acquaint the Bishop of Australia that his letter had been received, but that his lordship must decline the discussion of the question which it raised. That despatch he (Mr. Roche) thought was sufficiently significant. Did he find fault with Lord Stanley for it? Far otherwise. He thought his lordship, in declining to take any coercive step, acted the part of a sound-judging and discreet statesman. But the measure that was now proposed was a direct attack on Lord Stanley for that conduct, and he hoped his hon. friend the member for Buckinghamshire would be prepared to join with him in opposing it, and in defending the act of his chief on that occasion. But, if the measure was a direct attack on Lord Stanley, and in contravention of our policy in the colonies, what was it with regard to Lord Clarendon and the policy pursued in Ireland; and also of the late Government of Sir R. Peel, of which Lord Stanley was a member? Now, how had we treated the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland? By more than one Act of Parliament and by innumerable acts of the Executive in that country we had recognised the Roman Catholic Church and the dignitaries of that Church in Ireland. The first was the Bequests Act of the 7th and 8th Victoria, c. 96. Subsequently, during the government of the late Lord Bessborough, a committee was appointed by a Queen's letter, to decide who were to take under that act and who were not; and in that letter the Roman Catholic bishops were designated as the bishops of certain sees. They had heard, too, a great deal from the noble lord, and from his supporters in and out of that House, about interference with the Queen's supremacy. What was the case as to the law upon that point? There was an Act of Parliament relating to Ireland which virtually repealed the Act of Supremacy pro tanto; it certainly was only a local act, but it was an important one-it was the Dublin Cemeteries Act. It was passed in 1846, and gave certain powers to "his Grace Archbishop Murray and his successors exercising the same jurisdiction which he exercised in the diocese of Dublin as an archbishop." That was a direct recognition of Archbishop Murray's spiritual jurisdiction in the diocese of Dublin; and, seeing that Archbishop Murray derived his spiritual jurisdiction from the Pope, it was pro tanto a recognition of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope in Ireland; and he defied any legal member of the Government to contradict him, when he said that the Cemeteries Act of Dublin was pro tanto a repeal of the Act of Supremacy in Ireland. Again, on her Majesty's late visit to Ireland, the Executive Government issued, in the Dublin Gazette, a notice that her Majesty was pleased to desire that the following persons should have the entrée of the Castle :-the Primate, the Chancellor, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Roman Catholic Primate, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, the Duke of Leinster, the Cabinet Ministers; so that the Roman Catholic Twentieth Series.-Price Threehalfpence.] [James Gilbert, 49, Paternoster-row. Of whom may be had "The Roman Catholic Question," Nos. I. to XIX.

Primate and Archbishop of Dublin took precedence over the Duke of Leinster and her Majesty's Ministers, the Protestant bishops, and, as an bon. friend reminded him, of the University of Dublin. Then he said that, in extending this measure to Ireland, they were ignoring the existence almost of the Roman Catholic Church altogether, and were taking a retrograde movement as regarded civil and religious liberty. It was no answer to say that, as to what had been done in Ireland, the Emancipation Act had been broken, and that the Roman Catholic bishops rendered themselves amenable to fines. No doubt they did so, but who were the wrong-doers, if wrong were done? Not the bishops, or their flocks, and co-religionists, but her Majesty's Executive in that country, and this bill was a direct censure upon Lord Clarendon and the Executive when the noble lord, in bringing it forward, said that the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland had committed a breach of the Emancipation Act. If, indeed, any person ought to be prosecuted for such breach it ought to be, not the bishops themselves, but the Executive for giving them precedence. But in his opinion Lord Clarendon could not have acted with greater discretion than in giving to the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland the designation of the sees to which they had been elevated, and the House would be wrong in now abandoning their own Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and their own pledges and principles, by now turning on that Lord-Lieutenant, saying what he had done was illegal, and bringing in a bill to compel those right rev. prelates to abandon the titles they had borne. Why, an Act of Indemnity would be required for Lord Clarendon and the other members of the Government in Ireland who sanctioned those proceedings. The noble lord had shown no case for extending this measure to Ireland. He did not think he had shown a very strong case for England, but that he did not regard so much as the former. He knew very little about Cardinal Wiseman, and cared very little about him as an individual-he did not care if Dr. Wiseman accepted the invitation which the noble lord had so hospitably given him that evening to go and live at Rome; but he said they were committing a bad act by extending this measure to the oppression of Ireland. Not only as regarded England, but Ireland too, it would have been more prudent if the noble lord paused before he entered upon this religious controversy; for, from what he saw out of doors, as well as from what he had heard within, and especially from the speech of the hon. member for West Surrey, it was likely to descend into a religious dispute and scramble. He wished he could change that feeling into one of anxious desire on the part of the people of Ireland to apply themselves to the regeneration of their country and the pursuit of industry. He feared not only that he would fail in that, but that every one else would also fail, while the noble lord and those who supported him made aggressions on the Church of Rome. It was not too late, if not to withdraw the measure, to remove from it all that related to Ireland, and he trusted that that course would be taken, for no cause had been shown why Ireland should be included in it.

Mr. MOORE said, The noble lord at the head of the Government had displayed that evening a research in history that would entitle him to fill the chair of history in the Queen's Colleges in Ireland. The noble lord had undertaken to prove that there was a principle in Popery which required repression-that its full development was dangerous to the Government and to the community, and that therefore it was our duty, as it was the duty of our despotic ancestors, to repress the religion by statute. The noble lord cited authorities of despotic countries which would not permit the development of such institutions; but he (Mr. Moore) would ask what were those instances? Asserting the conduct of William the Conqueror, the Governments of the middle ages and the Governments in this country as examples, was neither more nor less than calling upon us to adopt the policy of despotic Governments, and to abandon the fundamental principles of free institutions. The two principles of Zoroaster were not more distinct and antagonistic than the two principles here involved. Despotic Governments of the present time maintained that it was the duty of the State to repress and to prevent the development of all principles they deemed dangerous to the Government and the community; but free countries maintained, or used to maintain, it was not the province of the State to interfere with opinion, and that, on the contrary, the free growth and development of public opinion was the very sap and vitality of free institutions. The noble lord had omitted, as the hon. member for Sheffield had observed, the case of America from the catalogue. America was the only case analogous to our own. That was a free country, and the Pope might send thither as many cardinals as he pleased. If they disobeyed the law of the land they would be punished; if they attempted to subvert any institution of the country they were amenable to the law; but they might call themselves by what names they pleased as long as they kept their hands out of other people's pockets; and they might inculcate the canon law to their heart's content so long as they obeyed the law of the land. But it was said that even in the time of our Catholic ancestors, all attempts of the Pope to name bishops to English sees had been resisted by the Crown and the people of England. Why, in those times, the bishops were not only spiritual prelates but were great temporal potentates. Over the laws of marriage and of inheritance they exercised great influence; and, to hand over to a foreign prince such powers as these would be to surrender to his discretion no inconsiderable portion of the revenue and the judicial and executive power of the country. But there was no comparison between the case of those prelatic princes and that of a parcel of poor priests receiving nothing but a very slight revenue from the country. In the present case, it was not whether the nomination of the bishops should be vested in the Crown or in the Pope, but whether they should be nominated at all. They protested against the nomination of a foreign prince in this matter, but in what position did they come forward-as plaintiffs? Did they come into court with clean hands? Had they fulfilled in every way the duties of Government as to those with regard to

whom they now deprecated foreign interference? Had that wretched man who was convicted the other day for ill-treating one whom he was bound to care for indicted a stranger for giving food to Jane Wilbred, his protest against foreign interference would not have been more preposterous than theirs in this instance. The Sovereign, on her coronation, protested against the religion of one-third of her subjects. The Legislature, upon compulsion, tolerated what it had failed to exterminate. If one-third of the people of this country were not trodden down into helots or degraded into savages it had not been for want of will in the British Legislature. Their temporal rights were acknowledged, but over the whole Catholic population was still maintained a system of ecclesiastical tyranny, of robbery and oppression, which had been condemned by the universal verdict of civilised man. This dog-in-the-manger principle of the Government towards the Roman Catholics of this country would never do; there must be either connexion or non-interference. It was said that, after all that had been said and done in the last three months, to recede now would be to insult the people of England; he would say, that after all that had been done for liberal principles in the last fifty years, to retrograde from those principles now would be a far greater insult to the people of England. It seemed to be suggested that the recent agitation had elicited an unanimous verdict of the people of England against Roman Catholicism, but the verdict was at the utmost merely the opinion of two-thirds of the population against the religion of the remaining third. As to any argument, there had been nothing worthy of the designation. At no one of the hundred and more anti-Popery meetings had there been a single speech characterised by a lucid, statesmanlike, intelligible exposition of Protestant views; not one single scintillation of genius had flashed forth. A grand storm had been promised, but all that was realised was a Scotch mist, drenching the souls of men with a long, dreary drizzle of scurrility and cant. Surely the masculine sense of the English people had not retrograded into the second childhood imputed to it by the no-Popery orators, so that it was losing sight of the stern realities of life in turbid dreams of morbid and unmeaning apprehensions regarding the giant strides of crime as less dangerous than the infinitesimal progress of Popery, Puseyism as more alarming than pauperism, and ultramontane bishops as worse than bankruptcy and ruin. If such, indeed, were the case, then the Legislature must exercise its noblest function, its highest responsibility, and assert against the wild cry of three months' agitation the steady, continuous, and consistent development of public opinion in the last half-century. If the people of England really wished Parliament to resist Popery, the object would not be attained by the noble lord's saying that particular Roman Catholic bishops should not assume particular names. As to the notorious letter of the noble lord, on which all this agitation was based, Papal aggression had been confessedly only a second consideration with the noble lord in penning it. The real object of apprehension with the noble lord was that Protestant Church, which he saw around him, rent asunder by internecine convulsions, like a disintegrated planet-torn to pieces by its High Church party, strongly suspected of a tendency to Roman Catholicism-its Low Church party leaning to Protestant Dissent-and its Church of England party, who cried, "A plague upon both your Houses;" morbidly fearful that between the two the coach would be upset. In this state of things the noble lord had taken the part of turning Church Dissenter himself, setting up the banner of royalty against the banner of the Church, appointing other Church Dissenters to all the vacant bishoprics, snubbing the bishops who did not agree with him, swamping the ecclesiastical courts, blockading the Church, and storming the universities. The fact was, that the Papal aggression had been a regular godsend to the noble lord; Cardinal Wiseman a whipping-boy on whom to flog the Anglican truants, and the cry of invasion from without a cover behind which to quell treason within. The noble lord affected surprise that the Roman Catholics should be offended at his letter-at his merely "walloping his own nigger," to use a Transatlantic expression; but this affectation was simply preposterous. If this bill were passed, the only reply to it that Ireland would make would be open defiance-the unequivocal and unhesitating refusal to obey-a refusal attended by entire impunity, since, prosecute any man in Ireland for disobedience to the enactment, and not a jury throughout the country would give a verdict against him.

Mr. BRIGHT should not have risen to speak immediately after a gentleman with whom, to a great extent, he agreed, but that he supposed no one on the Treasury bench would think it necessary to say anything after the noble lord's speech; and gentlemen opposite were probably so much taken aback by that speech as to require time for considering out of doors what course they had best adopt in the matter. The question now before the House some gentlemen seemed to consider of light importance, while others deemed it a very grave matter. Among the latter class was the noble lord, who had shown more than usual feeling and excitement in the delivery of his address that evening. He did not propose to make many observations on the course which had been taken in the first instance by the noble lord, though he thought it open to great animadversion. The worst he could say of the noble lord's letter perhaps was, that it had been penned under feelings of excitement which were hardly becoming in a Prime Minister. Of the excitement which animated the noble lord at the time there could be no question, and, indeed, there was no dispute about it. That excitement, however, had reference, according to the noble lord's own statement in the letter itself, still more to the apprehensions he entertained of the enemy within his gates than to any fear of foreign invasion. Now, he should have supposed that a Prime Minister, conscious of the magnitude of this question, would have placed in the Queen's Speech some distinct reference to this more impending and more important danger that he apprehended, and that instead of this light measure, having relation to the confessedly minor peril, he would have brought forward some

In

proposition for averting the danger which he considered to menace the Church from the enemies within her own bosom. The noble lord had thought fit to appeal to the bigotry of the country, and the bigotry of the country came to his aid, supported by many auxiliaries, who, though not themselves bigoted, still followed the noble lord's banner, and the end was the little miserable measure now before the House. The noble lord must take care that he was not, like the person of whom they had heard in old, perhaps in fabulous times, devoured by his own hounds; and that the measure which he calculated upon to give him popularity did not involve the destruction of his Cabinet. He might be allowed, for the sake of argument at all events, to assume, from the number of meetings that had been held on the subject, that the people of England regarded the present as an extraordinary occasion. This feeling had been founded upon their impression that the Roman Catholic religion was making rapid strides in the United Kingdom, of which progress they regarded the Pope's letter as an indication, and upon their conviction, in which he entirely concurred, that the return of this country to Catholicism would be a great calamity. Ireland was overrun with this Roman Catholic religion, and in England, he understood, there was a yielding and falling back to it. But that was not the question for us to discuss at all. We were discussing it in consequence of the errors of our forefathers. The American Minister had been in the House at the beginning of the speech of the noble lord, and he (Mr. Bright) had watched his countenance during that speech, and he had asked himself, what could that man think of the people and the Parliament of England that in the year 1851 they should be discussing a question such as this-an imaginary sentiment and nothing more? The real question that they should consider while this subject was before them was, how far our past policy had tended to suppress that religion, and to make this a Protestant country and a Protestant empire. Ireland, there could be no doubt that the Roman Catholic religion was more prevalent at this time than at any former period since the connexion of England with that country, and he had no hesitation in saying that the tendency of all our proceedings in past times had been to give strength and permanence to that religion. He did not much believe that in England it was gaining any great ground, but there was a large emigration from Ireland into England, and he believed that in Lancashire even, the great bulk of Catholicism to be found had been imported from Ireland; but whatever there was of conversion to what was called Popery in this country, was to be found among the clergy of the Established Church; and there were very few of the laity, he believed, who were much infected with those principles. The object of Parliaments for a long period had been to exterminate Catholicism by exterminating Catholics. From 1690 to 1778, the most stringent penal laws had been enacted against Roman Catholics, and it was not from any increased liberalism, but only because England became engaged in a dangerous war with the United States that that code was relaxed. From that period down to 1829, the process had been one of gradual but slow relaxation, every little right and privilege gained by the Catholics of Ireland being gained only by incessant struggles. Now, in Ireland there existed an establishment whose safety consisted in its being overlooked-the Irish Church, which had been placed in that country to convert the Roman Catholics, and to be a bond of union between Great Britain and Ireland. That Church had had at its disposal the whole power and favour of the Crown and of Parliament, the army, and the police; while its property amounted to a principal sum of 20,000,000l. sterling, the interest of which had annually gone to its bishops and priests. That Church, moreover, had leagued with the civil power, and there was not an act of oppression which the civil power had committed in Ireland that had not been either in obedience to that Church or with its most cordial consent; and more, that Church had denounced every statesman who had ever attempted to give anything like freedom to the Catholic population of Ireland, the noble lord himself among the number. The Irish Roman Catholics, however, had not been exterminated; and Governments had yet to learn that there was one thing almost as indestructible as truth, and that was a persecuted error. He recollected a saying of an ancient father of the Church in the eighth century, who, speaking of the difficulty of converting the Saxons, said, that if the clergy had attempted to convert them with kindness and generosity, he thought they would not so long have resisted the rite of baptism. He said, "Sint prædicatores, non prædatores." But that Church had even said to the State, "If you will defend me with the sword, I will defend you with the pen ;" and he (Mr. Bright) confessed that he looked upon that system as at the root of the extended Catholicism now to be found in Ireland, and the pertinacious adherence to that Church which was found to exist more rankly in Ireland than in any other Catholic country in the world. The Catholic religion triumphed, and our legislation had borne fruit to Rome both in Ireland and England. Then, again, let them look at the English Church-that great institution which was intended to be the bulwark of Protestantism, but which had turned out to be a kind of manufactory for a description of home Popery. That Church had the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge at its command, the army and police, and some two dozen bishops in the House of Lords. The noble lord had stated that he was opposed to ecclesiastical influence in temporal affairs, yet there were some twenty-four or twenty-six bishops in the other House who always sat behind the Government. One of those-the archbishop-had an income of 15,000l. a-year. He had heard the noble lord say that an arrangement had been made by which the salary should be reduced from some unknown and almost fabulous amount to 15,0001.