regular clergy, and which would enable him to keep the people in abject slavery almost without effort.
How this bill would have enabled the government to control the priest- hood, we cannot discover. What is it that gives the government influence with the regular clergy ? It is their head ; it appoints not only to the high- er dignities, but to many of the infe- rior benefices. But it was to have no share, not the slightest, in the appoint- ment of the Catholic priesthood ; it was to have no power whatever to re- move any of its members for miscon- duct, or to withhold their stipend. It was merely to have the power to pay certain salaries to certain individuals whom the Pope and his bishops might name, and nothing more. The priests were to be as perfectly independent of it, in point of conduct, as they are at present, when it pays them nothing. We need not sny that the 'principle of this bill was, in the highest degree, unconstitutional and detestable. A quarter of a million of the public mo- ney was to be annually paid to indi- viduals chosen, directly or indirectly, by a foreigner, and these individuals were to be accountable to no authority in the nation for their official conduct. For this large sum, nothing was ask- ed as an equivalent. All sides are de- claiming against the pernicious nature of Catholicism. Much of its discipline, putting Protestantism out of sight, is directly at variance with the spirit of the laws and constitution with liberty and the weal of the state yet not a single attempt was made to obtain a modification of it in return for this lavish grant of the public money. No effort was even made to obtain for the poor Catholic laymen liberty to enter the national churches and to read the Scriptures. So far from this, it was actually declared, that the Catholic priests would only accept the money as a matter of condescension and con- cession that, in accepting it, they would do prodigious violence to their feelings ! ! So much for the second and last security. The common and natural way of set- tling differences was never once thought of. Not a single endeavour was made to obviate the objections of the great body of those who were hostile to the relief bill. The discipline of the Ca- tholic church varies in almost every ratholic country, and this shows that it is a thing capable of change. It is to this discipline principally, rather than to doctrines, that the nation objects. The Catholics declare that they ought to have a peculiar system of discipline in this country, because the government is a Protestant one ; and surely this proves, that the na- tion, in its turn, has a right to insist on so much peculiarity in discipline as will leave nothing in Catholicism at variance with its laws and con- stitution. If something be conceded to the Catholics in the appointment of their clergy, certainly, on every principle of reason and justice, some- thing ought to be exacted in return, in the way of securing knowledge and freedom to their laity in the dis- charge of their political duties. The boundless, unconstitutional, and dan- gerous political, as well as religious influence which the priesthood exer- cises over the vast body of the laity by means of its penal laws, is familiar to every one. No other body in the state is suffered to have such party laws as the Catholics possess. They would, with their present party laws, were the disabilities removed, enjoy exclusive privileges and liberties, as a political, as well as a religious party, of the most formidable and dangerous character. We know that this has been denied in Parliament ; we know, too, that it has not been disproved, and we know, in addition, that it is incapable of disproof. We know that it is as much a matter of state neces- sity to prevent the Roman Catholic Church, as to prevent the Church of England, from having pernicious laws and direct authority. All this, how- ever, was nothing. The detestable pe- nal code of the Catholic church was not even to be spoken against. Lord Liverpool happened to censure certain parts of it, and he was covered with obloquy. The State was to concede everything, and the Catholics nothing; all that the latter asked was to be grant- ed without examination ! The House of Commons never ex- hibited a more extraordinary spectacle than it did during the progress of these three bills. One member wished to vote for one of them, and yet he was compelled to vote against it, from the fear of supporting the others. Another inember was placed in the same situa- tion with regard to another of them. The wings of the misshapen and non-
