greedy, growling, guzzling monopoly | within our gates, which are a bitter satire of such a blessing. France is no longer a nation of atheists; and therefore, a great cause of offence to the Irish Roman Catholic clergy is removed. Navigation by steam renders all shores more accessible. The union among Catholics is consolidated; all the dangers of Ireland are redoubled; everything seems tending to an event fatal to Englandfatal (whatever Catholics may foolishly imagine) to Ireland - and which will subject them both to the dominion of France. Formerly a poor man might be removed from a parish if there was the slightest danger of his becoming chargeable; a hole in his coat or breeches excited suspicion. The churchwardens said, “He has cost us nothing, but he may cost us something; and we must not live even in the apprehension of evil." All this is changed; and the law now says, "Wait till you are hurt; time enough to meet the evil when it comes; you have no right to do a certain evil to others, to prevent an uncertain evil to yourselves." The Catholics, however, are told that what they do ask is objected to, from the fear of what they may ask; that they must do without that which is reasonable, for fear they should ask what is unreasonable. "I would give you a penny (says the miser to the beggar), if I was quite sure you would not ask me for half a crown. on our philanthropy, and a melancholy negation of our professions. Our sentiments reigners so haughty, we have set up such have been so lofty, our deportment to foliberty and such morals, that no one could suppose that we were hypocrites. Still less could it be foreseen that as a great moralist, called Joseph Surface, kept a 'Little Milliner' behind the screen, we too should be found out at length in taking the diversion of private tyranny after the most approved models for that amusement.”— (Letter to Lord Milton, pp. 50, 51.) We sincerely hope we firmly believe it never will happen; but if it were to happen, why cannot England be just as happy with Ireland being Catholic, as it is with Scotland being Presbyterian ? Has not the Church of England lived side by side with the Kirk, without crossing or jostling, for these last hundred years? Have the Presbyterian members entered into any conspiracy for mincing Bishoprics and Deaneries into Synods and Presbyteries? And is not the Church of England tenfold more rich and more strong than when the separation took place? But however this may be, the real danger, even to the Church of Ireland, as we have before often remarked, is the refusal of Catholic Emancipation. It would seem, from the frenzy of many worthy Protestants, whenever the name of Catholic is mentioned, that the greatest possible diversity of religious opinions existed between the Catholic and the Protestant-that they were as different as fish and flesh-as alkali and acid-as cow and carthorse; whereas is quite clear, that there are many Protestant sects whose difference from each other is much more marked, both in church discipline and in tenets of faith, than that of Protestants and Catholics. We maintain that Lambeth, in these two points, is quite as near to the Vatican as it is to the Kirk-if not much nearer. Nothing, I am told, is now so common on the Continent as to hear our Irish policy discussed. Till of late the extent of the disabilities was but little understood, and less regarded, partly because, having less liberty themselves, foreigners could not appreciate the deprivations, and partly because the pre-eminence of England was not so decided as to draw the eyes of the world on all parts of our system. It was scarcely credited that England, that knight-errant abroad, should play the exclusionist at home; that everywhere else she should de- Instead of lamenting the power of claim against oppression, but contemplate the priests over the lower orders of the it without emotion at her doors. That her Irish, we ought to congratulate ourarmies should march, and her orators phi-selves that any influence can effect or lippise, and her poets sing against continental tyranny, and yet that laws should control them. Is the tiger less forremain extant, and principles be operative midable in the forest than when he has been caught and taught to obey a voice, and tremble at a hand? But we overrate the power of the priest, if we suppose that the upper orders are to encounter all the dangers of treason and rebellion, to confer the revenues of the Protestant Church upon their Catholic clergy. If the influence of the Catholic clergy upon men of rank and education is so unbounded, why cannot the French and Italian clergy recover their possessions, or acquire an equivalent for them? They are starving in the full enjoyment of an influence which places (as we think) all the wealth and power of the country at their feet- -an influence which, in our opinion, overpowers avarice, fear, ambition, and is the master of every passion which brings on change and movement in the Protestant world. We conclude with a few words of advice to the different opponents of the Catholic question. To the No-Popery Fool. To the No-Popery Rogue. A shameful and scandalous game, to sport with the serious interests of the country, in order to gain some increase of public power! To the Honest No-Popery People. the old anti-popery people are fast are not surprised by an emancipating king, or an emancipating administration. Leave a locus pœnitentiæ!· prepare a place for retreat-get ready dreadful day may yet come, when your equivocations and denials. The liberality may lead to place and power. We understand these matters here. It is safest to be moderately base -to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue. To the Catholics. You are made use of by men who laugh at you, and despise you for your Wait. Do not add to your miseries folly and ignorance; and who, the by a mad and desperate rebellion. moment it suits their purpose, will Persevere in civil exertions, and conconsent to emancipation of the Catho- cede all you can concede. All great lics, and leave you to roar and bellow alterations in human affairs are proNo Popery! to Vacancy and the Moon. duced by compromise. NOTE. ed.* MR. SYDNEY SMITH selected from the inferred, their numbers are subjoinEdinburgh Review those articles he had written, -with the exception of twelve. These were probably omitted, because their subjects are already treated of in the extracted Articles, or, because they applied only to the period in which they were written. As Mr. Sydney Smith made the selection, it is therefore respected and continued; but lest any intention of disowning these omissions should be After the year 1827, the Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, disregarding political differences between himself and his friend, presented Mr. Sydney Smith to the Canonry of Bristol Cathedral. As a Dignitary of the Church he then ceased to write anonymously. Vol. i. No. 3.; Vol. ii. No. 4.; Vol. iii. LETTER I. DEAR ABRAHAM, -nor In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the Pope is not landedare there any curates sent out after A WORTHIER and better man than him nor has he been hid at St. Alyourself does not exist; but I have ban's by the Dowager Lady Spencer always told you from the time of our - nor dined privately at Holland boyhood, that you were a bit of a House-nor been seen near Dropmore. goose. Your parochial affairs are gov- If these fears exist (which I do not erned with exemplary order and regu- believe), they exist only in the mind larity; you are as powerful in the of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; vestry as Mr. Perceval is in the House they emanate from his zeal for the of Commons, and, I must say, with Protestant interest; and, though they much more reason; nor do I know reflect the highest honour upon the any church where the faces and smock- delicate irritability of his faith, must frocks of the congregation are so clean, certainly be considered as more amor their eyes so uniformly directed to biguous proofs of the sanity and vigour the preacher. There is another point, of his understanding. By this time, upon which I will do you ample jus- however, the best informed clergy in tice; and that is, that the eyes so di- the neighbourhood of the metropolis rected towards you are wide open; for are convinced that the rumour is withthe rustic has, in general, good prin-out foundation: and, though the Pope ciples, though he cannot control his an- is probably hovering about our coast imal habits; and, however loud he may in a fishing smack, it is most likely he snore, his face is perpetually turned toward the fountain of orthodoxy. Having done you this act of justice, I shall proceed, according to our ancient intimacy and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions about the Catholics, and to reply to yours. will fall a prey to the vigilance of our cruisers; and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exactly in the same manner, the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to be without | brotherhood have been able to persuade the shadow of a foundation: instead the country into a continuation of this of the angels and archangels, men-grossest of all absurdities, you have tioned by the informer, nothing was ten times the power which the Catholic discovered but a wooden image of clergy ever had in their best days. Lord Mulgrave, going down to Chat-Louis XIV., when he revoked the ham, as a head-piece for the Spanker Edict of Nantes, never thought of pregun-vessel it was an exact resem- venting the Protestants from fighting blance of his Lordship in his military his battles; and gained accordingly uniform; and therefore as little like a some of his most splendid victories by god as can well be imagined. the talents of his Protestant generals. No power in Europe, but yourselves, has ever thought for these hundred years past, of asking whether a bayonet is Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran; but whether it is sharp and well-tempered. A bigot delights in public ridicule; for he begins to think he is a martyr. I can promise you the full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of Europe to the other. Having set your fears at rest, as to the extent of the conspiracy formed against the Protestant religion, I will now come to the argument itself. You say these men interpret the Scriptures in an unorthodox manner, and that they eat their God.-Very likely. All this may seem very important to you, who live fourteen miles from a market town, and, from long residence upon your living, are become a kind of holy vegetable; and, in a theological sense, it is highly important. But I want soldiers and sailors for the state; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men; I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to check the power of France; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' time will be nothing but a mass of French slaves: and then you, and ten other such boobies as you, call out "For God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland! They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do! . . . . They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!" I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are. What! when Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined against this country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no religious persuasion; when the population of half the globe is up in arms against us; are we to stand examining our generals and armies as a bishop examines a candidate for holy orders? and to suffer no one to bleed for England who does not agree with you about the 2nd of Timothy ? You talk about Catholics! If you and your I am as disgusted with the nonsense of the Roman Catholic religion as you can be and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe the product of the earth, nor meddle with the ecclesiastical establishment in any shape; - but what have I to do with the speculative nonsense of his theology, when the object is to elect the mayor of a county town, or to appoint a colonel of a marching regiment? Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the blockhead believes in all the Catholic nonsense of the real presence? I am sorry there should be such impious folly in the world, but I should be ten times a greater fool than he is, if I refused, in consequence of his folly, to lead him out against the enemies of the state. Your whole argument is wrong: the state has nothing whatever to do with theological errors which do not violate the common rules of morality, and militate against the fair power of the ruler: it leaves all these errors to you, and to such as you. You have every tenth porker in your parish for refuting them; and take care that you are vigilant, and logical in the task. I love the Church as well as you do ; but you totally mistake the nature of an establishment, when you contend that it ought to be connected with the | Catholics of both kingdoms than had military and civil career of every indi- been done for them since the Reformavidual in the state. It is quite right tion. In 1778, the ministers said that there should be one clergyman to nothing about the royal conscience; every parish interpreting the Scriptures in 1793* no conscience; in 1804 no after a particular manner, ruled by a conscience; the common feeling of regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich humanity and justice then seem to proportion of haycocks and wheat- have had their fullest influence upon sheafs. When I have laid this foun- the advisers of the Crown: but in dation for a rational religion in the 1807 -a year, I suppose, eminently state-when I have placed ten thousand fruitful in moral and religious scruples well educated men in different parts of (as some years are fruitful in apples, the kingdom to preach up, and com- some in hops)-it is contended by the pelled everybody to pay them, whether well-paid John Bowles, and by Mr. they hear them or not- I have taken Perceval (who tried to be well paid), such measures as I know must always that that is now perjury which we had procure an immense majority in favour hitherto called policy and benevolence! of the Established Church; but I can Religious liberty has never made go no further. I cannot set up a civil such a stride as under the reign of his inquisition, and say to one, you shall present Majesty; nor is there any not be a butcher, because you are not instance in the annals of our history, orthodox; and prohibit another from where so many infamous and damnabrewing, and a third from administer- ble laws have been repealed as those ing the law, and a fourth from defend- against the Catholics which have been ing the country. If common justice put an end to by him: and then, at did not prohibit me from such a the close of this useful policy, his conduct, common sense would. The advisers discover that the very meaadvantage to be gained by quitting sures of concession and indulgence, the heresy would make it shameful to or (to use my own language) the meaabandon it; and men who had once sures of justice, which he has been left the Church would continue in such pursuing through the whole of his a state of alienation from a point of reign, are contrary to the oath he takes honour, and transmit that spirit to the at its commencement! That oath binds latest posterity. This is just the effect his Majesty not to consent to any mea. your disqualifying laws have produced. sure contrary to the interest of the They have fed Dr. Rees, and Dr. Kip- Established Church: but who is to pis; crowded the congregation of the judge of the tendency of each parOld Jewry to suffocation; and enabled ticular measure? Not the King alone: every sublapsarian, and superlapsarian, it can never be the intention of this and semi-pelagian clergyman, to build law that the King, who listens to the himself a neat brick chapel, and live advice of his Parliament upon a road with some distant resemblance to the bill, should reject it upon the most state of a gentleman. important of all measures. Whatever be his own private judgment of the tendency of any ecclesiastical bill, he complies most strictly with his oath, if he is guided in that particular point by the advice of his Parliament, who may be presumed to understand its tendency better than the King, or any other individual. You say, if Parliament had been unanimous in their You say the King's coronation oath will not allow him to consent to any relaxation of the Catholic laws.-Why not relax the Catholic laws as well as the laws against Protestant dissenters? If one is contrary to his oath, the other must be so too; for the spirit of the oath is, to defend the Church establishment, which the Quaker and the Presbyterian differ from as much or more than the Catholic; and yet his Majesty has repealed the Corporation and Test Act in Ireland, and done more for the These feelings of humanity and justice were at some periods a little quickened by the representations of 40,000 armed volunteers. |