Printed by Thomas Wilson and Sons, High-Ousegate: SOLD BY LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN, AND BY J. AND G. TODD, YORK. 1826. A LETTER, &c. &c. WHY is not a Catholic to be believed on his oath ? What says the law of the land to this extravagant piece of injustice? It is no challenge against a juryman, to say he is a Catholic; he sits in judgment upon your life and your property: Did any man ever hear it said that such or such a person was put to death, or that he lost his property, because a Catholic was among the jurymen? Is the question ever put? Does it ever enter into the mind of the attorney or the counsellor to inquire of the faith of the jury? If a man sell a horse, or a house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser is a Catholic? Appeal to your own experience, and try by that fairest of all tests, the justice of this enormous charge. We are in treaty with many of the powers of Europe, because we believe in the good faith of Catholics. Two-thirds of Europe are, in fact, Catholics; are they all perjured? For the first fourteen centuries all the Christian world were Catholics; did they live in a constant state of perjury? I am sure these objections against the Catholics are often made by very serious and honest men, but I much doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing against the Christian religion so horrible, as to say that two-thirds of those who profess it are unfit for all the purposes of civil B life; for who is fit to live in society who does not respect oaths? But if this imputation be true, what folly to agitate such questions as the civil emancipation of the Catholics. If they are always ready to support falsehood by an appeal to God, why are they suffered to breathe the air of England, or to drink of the waters of England? why are they not driven into the howling wilderness? But now they possess, and bequeath, and witness, and decide civil rights; and save life as physicians, and defend property as lawyers, and judge property as jurymen; and you pass laws, enabling them to command all your fleets and armies, * and then you turn round upon the very man whom you have made the master of the European seas, and the arbiter of nations, and tell him he is not to be believed on his oath. I have lived a little in the world, but I never happened to hear a single Catholic even suspected of getting into office by violating his oath; the oath which they are accused of violating is an insuperable barrier to them all. Is there a more disgraceful spectacle in the world than that of the Duke of Norfolk hovering round the House of Lords in the execution of his office, which he cannot enter as a peer of the realm? disgraceful to the bigotry and injustice of his country, to his own sense of duty, honourable in the extreme: he is the leader of a band of ancient and highprincipled gentlemen, who submit patiently to obscurity and privation, rather than do violence to their conscience. In all the fury of party, I never heard the name of a single Catholic mentioned, who was suspected of having gained or aimed at, any political advantage, by violating his oath. I have never heard so bitter a slander supported by the * There is no law to prevent a Catholic from having the command of a British fleet or a British army. |