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tical conduct of the tyrant, claimed a confirmation of their ancient rights and privileges, which had been secured to them by St. Edward's laws. In this they were seconded by Cardinal Langton, and on the 19th day of June, 1213, the king signed the famous deed of Magna Charta, which granted to every order of the nation, the clergy, the nobility, and the people, the most important privileges. The first article of this memorable Charter stipulated, that THE ELECTION OF BISHOPS SHOULD BE FREE.-The reader will here see the effects occasioned by the interference of the Crown in the appointment of the Clergy, and the opinions of the Catholic Clergy and Nobility of that age, respecting its evil consequences. So convinced were the Barons of its pernicious tendency, in corrupting the morals of those who ought to stand without suspicion in the eyes of the people-so convinced were they that, unless this influence was completely abrogated, their endeavours to recover their ancient privileges would prove useless, that, before they stipulated for their own civil rights, they not only insisted that the election of Bishops should be free, but that the Church should possess all her just privileges and immunities.-If such was the case with our ancestors, my fellow-countrymen, with what face can we agree to resign our Clergy into the hands of an heterodox Government? How can we, with such an example before us, think of bartering away the rights of

those whose freedom of action is essential to our own safety? If the Barons of Runnymede declared their conviction that the Church should be free, from their experience of the tyrannical conduct and corrupt measures pursued by their Norman sovereigns, what ought to be our setiments, who have before our eyes the evidence of ages since the union of the Church with the State, which our misguided countrymen call the Reformation; and the test of experience in the conduct of administration towards

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us, since the union with Ireland, not
forgetting the nature and formation of
our Cabinet? I know it has been as
serted that it was not intended on the
part of Government to exercise any
influence in the appointment of the
Catholic prelates-all they wanted
was, to be satisfied of their loyalty;
and that this was requisite, on ac-
count of the great influence which they
had over their flocks. This is a mere
pretence-a miserable subterfuge—
dishonourable to the Protestant, and
disgraceful to the Catholic.-The lat
ter knows it to be impossible for the
virtuous pastor to be disloyal, and he
also knows that his pastor's influence
over him, continues no longer than he
continues zealous and virtuous. It is
the zeal, the piety, the integrity, and
the meek disinterestedness of the Ca-
tholic clergy, which attach the peo-
ple to them; and can this people,
then, without incurring disgrace upon
themselves, consent, for a few tempo.
ral advantages, to have these venerable
men, who are bound, by the duties of
their sacred order, to inculcate a due
obedience to the laws of the land, stig.
matized, by a public document, as
suspected subjects? And yet such
must be the case, if the Veto is
granted upon those terms.-The for-
mer is sufficiently informed [that the
Catholic Clergy have been loyal under
oppression and persecution; can it
then be honourable in him to in-
sinuate, that those who have been
proof against suspicion in the time of
persecution, ought to be looked upon
as proper objects for it, when a mild-
er system is pursued? An oath is
judged sufficient for the dissenting
preacher, why then should it not be
sufficient for a Catholic clergyman?
And so it would, good reader, were
the Catholic clergy less zealous.-It
is the progress of Popery which alarms
the No-Popery faction, and therefore
they want to get our
clergy under
their thumb. This measure once ob-
tained, and they will then be told, in
the words of the Canadian instructions,
not to inveigle Protestants to become

Papists; nor to tamper with them in matters of religion; nor to inveigh in their sermons against the religion of the Church of England. Can any thing more clearly demonstrate the dread which haunts this faction, than the bellowings, the ravings, the lies, which have been vomited from the press of this country against the exalted and incorruptible Head of the Church, for restoring the order of the Jesuits, and the Monastic institutions. In short, the object is to muzzle and corrupt the Clergy; to make them less respected by their flocks; and, therefore, we are told, that, before we can be admitted to enjoy the rights of freemen, we must submit to have our Clergy enslaved. But such, I trust, will never be the case. Our Clergy are at present free from all temporal influence, and I trust they ever will remain so. No measures, I hope, will be resorted to, that will entangle them with the State. Our religion is one of perfect freedom, and it is to be hoped its believers will never seek their civil liberty at the expence of their venerated clergy. Rather let us petition the Legislature for equal and unrestricted rights. Let us explicitly declare, in union with our Irish brethren, "that we never can or will consent to any Barter of any portion of the Doctrine or Discipline of our Holy Religion, for any Political Advantages whatever."-By strictly adhering to this straight forward conduct, we shall be enabled to meet the evasive and subtle measures which have I been pursued not only by our opponents, but also by those who pretend to be our friends. We may, perhaps, be longer in gaining the battle, but when we do gain it, and gain it we shall, it will be with credit to our! selves and benefit to our country.-In the mean time, is it not better to wear our shackles with honour, than to gain our privileges with disgrace?-I know that these sentiments are not pleasing to some members of that association which assume to be the organ of the English Catholic body. I also know

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ORTHOD. JOUR. VOL. II.

that for promulgating these sentiments I have raised their displeasure, and that every means which secret influence can employ are used to injure not only the sale of my Journal, but of such other works as I now publish; but vain are the efforts, and unworthy are the plans, which they adopt to crush me.-Unconnected with a single individual, independent of any man, or party of men, I have sent forth my opinions under the banner of Truth.-I have supported the claims of my Catholic countrymen upon legal and constitutional grounds, and I have defended the just rights of the Catholic Clergy, which have been attempted to be invaded, by our pretended friends and declared enemies.- -If, in the course of my humble labours, I have fallen into error, it has been my wish to be corrected, and the pages of my Journal have ever been open to those who differ from me in opinion, provided they paid the same regard to Truth as I have endeavoured to do.If this conduct entitles me to the wrath and persecution of these men, I cannot help it; I am sorry for them, and I sincerely compassionate them. Such pitiful attempts to hurt me will only recoil upon themselves, and sink their own characters in a much greater degree than they can injure my pocket. But I earnestly trust we shall soon see an end to all divisions among our body.—— That the system hitherto pursued by the English Board is not congenial to the sentiments of the Catholic body is I think sufficiently demonstratable; and I would recommend to the serious perusal of the members of this Board the admirable letter of "An English Catholic," and the excellent article on the Veto by "Hibern-Anglus," in this present number, which cannot fail, I should hope, of bringing conviction to the minds of those who are not governed by interest, or blinded by prejudice.-Let but the upright and independent members of the Board come forward with a petition on the broad and honest principles of our Irish bre

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thren, and they will find thousands of signatures to support them; but should recourse be had to the same insidious language which distinguished the former supplications of that body, there is every reason to suppose the Catholics at large will declare their entire dissent from such practices, and their determination to unite themselves with the great mass of their fellowCatholics in Ireland in a constitutional and noble struggle for an equal participation of privileges for all classes of British subjects.

WM. EUSEBIUS ANDREWS.

London, Nov. 24, 1814.

To the Editor of the Orthodox Journal.

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SIR, You and your correspondents have lately been accused of pouring forth torrents of abuse, and you have lately complained of the torrents of abuse which have issued from the periodical press. First of the first.

As one of your correspondents who have taken on myself to censure some persons and some proceedings, it behoves me to defend myself from my share in this inculpation. I must observe, however, that the word abuse signifies, according to its etymology, the turning any thing from its proper use in this sense, a man abuses his fork at dinner time if he employs it in picking his teeth. I am content nevertheless to take the word in its colloquial acceptation: still you and your correspondents are not proved to have done wrong in abusing, unless it can be proved that the abuse is unfounded, and therefore unjust; excessive, and therefore unreasonable; acrimonious, and therefore uncharitable.

For myself, I trust that my express sions have been measured by the occasion, and that my invectives have been free from bitterness. When I have complained of the intolerant spirit of some members of the government of this country, whose influence is, as it hitherto appears, all-powerful against the Catholics; when I have reproached the Protestant people of this country,

both Anglicans and Dissenters, with bigotry, ignorance, and prejudice, I have brought these charges not with the intention of irritating, nor yet in the hope of producing any change in the dispositions of those against whom I brought them. My purpose was to admonish the Catholics, both of Ire land and England, to moderate their expectations, to assuage the disappointment which I expect they will repeatedly sustain: to be an instru ment, however humble and unworthy, of turning into their legitimate course the efforts of the Catholic Board.

I wished to make the members of that Board sensible that when they were called on to conciliate and concede to the power of the Protestant government, they were treated with insult and mockery; that when they and other principal Catholics associated with Protestant distributors of the Bible, when they attempted court and fawn upon them by an awk. ward imitation of their practices, the device was equally ridiculous and un availing; that when they or some of them offered themselves as co-partners in the agency to controul and debase, at the pleasure of a Protestant govern, ment, their own clergy, they were putting a yoke on the neck of them, selves and their brethren far more galling and corrosive than all the dis qualifying statutes; that when they expelled from among them a man, whose name is his praise, for defending, surely on their own behalf, the rights of the ecclesiastical body, they heaped disgrace on themselves. I have not abused the Catholic Board: it is they who have turned themselves from their proper use.

From Manilla to Lima there is not a body of Catholics more worthy of the veneration of the Church than the present English Catholic gentry Even Catholic Ireland must yield the palm of patient endurance to the Ca tholic gentry of England. Let the circumstances be considered. At the epoch of the Reformation, so called, Ireland was invited to adopt the faith

of those whom she had long considered | ments of respect the body of Catholic as her subjugators and oppressors: gentry, I am not inclined to blame ministers, who understood not a word those amongst them, who have taken of the Irish language, were sent over on themselves to act for us, as guilty to convince the natives of the folly of of an unwarrantable assumption of hearing prayers in an unknown tongue. power: not for acting, but for their Ireland was never deprived of its cler- acts, I blame them. Let them at gy: Ireland, before the Scotch and length remember that they ONCE WERE English colonizations, was a nation ENGLAND. Let them now present to apart, far removed from the seat of the Legislature a petition worthy of government, and from the scene of re- their own dignity, consonant to the ligious dissention; its people were not justice of their cause, claiming uncondeluded by a liturgy formed, as far as ditionally the restoration of their might be, on the ancient model, in birth-right. Instead of being umbiwhich fasting and abstinence are en- tious of such honours and preferments joined, confession and absolution pre- as may be doled out to them by a Goscribed, many names of saints in black vernment which will always regard letter and red letter still honoured, them with "peculiar jealousy," let and even most of the rejected sacra- them place themselves at the head of ments retained as holy rites. But the the Catholic pétitioners of the empire. new religion was introduced into Eng-Thus will they make a noble amend land, not by persons regarded as intruders, but by men of the same nation and language: the defection at first was rapid: at the end of the reign of the virgin queen, not more than one third o England was Catholic. Still at the time of "Cecil's holiday" | twenty Catholic peers sat in the upper House of Parliament, a large proportion of the total number of that time. Two centuries of vexation and proscription have passed over the Catholics of England. Cowardice and malice increased their sufferings according to the increased security of the Protestant religion, and as if in derision of their loyal and dutiful conduct. But that which is most to be lamented is still to be told they have witnessed the slow and silent falling away, in the course of these two centuries, of threefourths of their number. Beatificamus eos qui sustinuerunt, say the divine oracles: Beatificamus eos qui sustinuerunt, re-echoes the universal church. Regarding with such senti

* In the reign of Queen Anne the population of England was four millions. A century before, it was probably three millions. The defection of three-fourths of a million leaves 250,000; supposed by Bishop Milner to be the actual number of English Catholics; but I would add to that number, not include in it, converts and strangers.

for their former mis-doings; thus will they become the center of union, a source of energy, to those, without whom they will be despised by those who purchase them; with whom, they will be respected even by bigotry and injustice.

I have said that the Board, by acting from and for themselves, have reduced the Catholics of England to a state of insignificance: from this state we are beginning to retrieve ourselves: but I can conceive no situation more worthy of pity than that in which our Catholic nobility and gentry would have found themselves, had relief been granted on terms rejected by the Irish and English body. Authors of a schism, schismatics themselves, they would have been obliged to recur for all their consolation to electioneering broils and petty place-hunting. They have whom they may to consult on the happiness of such a life,

I hope better things of the representatives of those illustrious and ancient families which, under God, preserved and cherished the dispersed and dying embers of the ancient faith. They still love the sacred deposit. It is still in their power to act worthy of the trust which Providence has con. fided to them; worthy of their forefa

thers and of themselves; worthy of the faithful millions of whose cause they still may be the venerated advocates; united with whom they still may be its powerful protectors.

On the subject of the abuse of the Pope, the Inquisition, and the Jesuits, which has lately been vomited forth by the periodical writers, I beg leave to remind you, that for these writers, or for any writer of their persuasion, to revile the Catholic religion, is the most common and the most stupid of all stupid common places. Protestant books of rhetoric have a collection of these communes loci. The writers of whom you speak have the same excuse for their reviling and foul mouths that Falstaff gives for high-way robbery. "Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal: 'tis no harm for a man to labour in his vocation,"-Besides, Sir, it is long vacation with them: no debates in Parliament before the date of your last publication: no recess of the Congress of Vienna: the campaign in America nearly closed, and Sir George Prevost with full leisure to carry on operations, according to his instructions, against Popery and superstition, and to gratify those who hate idolatry more than they love good faith. In this dearth what is the public to feed upon? Let the writers alone. When they have any thing to write about that will sell as well, they will let Popery alone and all its enormities. Whom do you mean to instruct by noticing these railings? Have you many Protestant readers? If so, I am glad of it. But the ignorant, infidel,

and sentiment, an indifference more hostile to every establishment than quiescent or submissive, or they proceed from concealed infidelity. Would it not be prudent to pass an act that every one wishing to revile Popery should take out a license and subscribe to the thirty-nine articles? Seriously, I exhort the members of the established religion to consider well, whether in the danger which threatens their church from the increased and increasing number, zeal, and activity of the dissenters, it would not be for their advantage to conciliate by a restora tion to them of their civil rights, those who, in the full attainment of all the power which their enemies accuse them of aiming at, would assuredly respect the work of their forefathers, the Church and Constitution of England-would not destroy and 66 overturn," but restore and confirm. Anxious as I am for the continuance of the peace and tranquillity of the empire, which I firmly believe the repeal of our disqualifications would tend to secure, expecting, in common with every Catholic with whom I have conversed, harder treatment from the Dissenters, if in power, than we now experience, I entreat the members of the establishment to take what I say in good part, and to ponder it in prudence and charity.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.

ON THE VETO.

LETTER SECOND.

and blasphemous remarks of which To the Editor of the Orthodox Journal, you condescend to give a refutation will really excite nothing but nausea in the stomach of Catholics.

SIR,-I trust I have succeeded, in conveying conviction to the minds of your readers, that without the efficient assistance derived from the Catholic Body of Ireland, the measure of Union could not have been carried into effect;-this fact is so indisputa ble, that it requires no labour to prove it. It cannot be denied, like

One word at parting to your read ers, if any, of the established religion. I advise them in charity not to be too secure that every word spoken or written against Popery is intended favourably to their religion or to Christianity of any description: these railings proceed either from a detest-wise, that there was an implied comable indifference to all religious belief pact between the English Government,

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