BRITISH PREMIERS IN RELATION TO BRITISH CATHOLICS.
The English parliament having lately occupied itself in discussing a measure of the utmost importance to the Catholics of the United Kingdom, and to Irish Catholics in particular—the abolition of the Established Church supremacy, the time seems very opportune for reviewing the conduct of British premiers for the last century and a half in reference to Catholics. The subject, we think, cannot fail to interest our readers, whether they be natives of this soil of freedom, or whether they have emigrated from an isle where freedom was, during long ages, unknown, and have sought on this side of the Atlantic that liberty, prosperity, and peace from which in Ireland they were cruelly debarred.
Though the revolution of 1688 filled the breasts of Catholics with dismay, and the ruin of their cause seemed complete, when the arms of William of Orange prevailed at the Boyne and at Limerick, yet their situation was not so forlorn nor were their prospects so hopeless as might have been expected. Many circumstances alleviated their misery; and, stormy as was the landscape spread before their eyes, glimpses were ever and anon afforded them of that tranquil and sunny horizon into which, after so many toils and conflicts, wounds and tears, they now seem to be entering. Every premier since the revolution down to the present time has done something, directly or indirectly, conducive to their interests, and calculated to raise them to equal privileges with the rest of their fellow-countrymen, if not to restore them to their long lost ascendency.
William III. was decidedly averse to persecution, and whether from coldness or kindness of disposition, he could never be induced by any of his counsellors to trample on the liberty of one portion of his subjects in order merely to please another portion. There was, indeed, one act of his reign,[152] of which we shall speak more particularly when we arrive at Lord North's ministry, that pressed very heavily on English and Irish Catholics; but of this act, which was never carried fully into execution, the nation became weary in eighty years, and William's consent to it was given very unwillingly. The known moderation of his own views was probably one reason why the pope (Alexander VIII.) did not disdain to give him his moral support in the league against France, and to be secretly, though not openly, one of the alliance formed against ambition and encroachments which the states of Europe in general felt to be intolerable. When his approval of the Declaration of Indulgence was sought by James II., in 1687, he had answered that he and the princess must protest against it, as exceeding the king's lawful prerogative, and as being dangerous to the Protestant ascendency, because it admitted Catholics to offices of trust; but he added that "they were not persecutors. They should with pleasure see Roman Catholics as well as Protestant dissenters relieved, in a proper manner, from all penal statutes. They should with pleasure see Protestant dissenters admitted in a proper manner to civil office. But at that point their highnesses must stop."[153] Such being William's sentiments, it is much to be regretted that he did not firmly resist the persecutive act which disgraces his reign, and which, far from mitigating the penal statutes in force against Catholics, made them more severe, and stood in direct contrast to his well-known and often expressed convictions.
[154] But not only was King William himself favorable to Catholic liberties, nearly one half of the Lords, the Commons, and the people in general, were Jacobites, or inclined to Jacobitism. Many of the great measures which decided the course of the English government in a Protestant and anti-Stuart direction were passed by extremely small majorities, and not a few of those who held offices of the highest trust in William's government, who commanded his armies and fleets, and sat by him at the council-board, were privately negotiating with King James and receiving the nightly visits of messengers from St. Germain. Such were Russell, Godolphin, and Marlborough; and when men so high in the state were thus striving to serve two masters, those Catholics who became aware of their intrigues could not but cherish bright hopes that the day of their own redemption was drawing nigh. During the reign of Queen Anne these hopes rose yet higher. She had a brother who claimed the throne of England, and she desired that he might be her successor. There were few at the time who knew the inmost thoughts of her heart; but it was evident to all that she leaned to the Jacobites; and when statesmen like Oxford and Bolingbroke, and a bishop like Atterbury, stood high in her favor, it was manifest to Catholics that her royal mind turned wistfully toward the Catholic dynasty. The rigorous measures which had been passed against Catholics in her predecessor's reign remained, for the most part, a dead letter during hers. Anne herself was no bigot; and if the country had not been kept in constant alarm by a threatened Stuart rising, the Catholic population would have enjoyed great tranquillity and considerable freedom. In 1714, we find Lord Bolingbroke writing that the Catholics enjoy as much quiet as any others of the queen's subjects.[155] But this assertion, it must be admitted, loses part of its credit when we remember that the oppressive measures enacted at various times under William and Mary were followed by several fresh refinements of cruelty in the reign of Anne.[156]
When the peaceful accession of the Elector of Hanover to the throne of England darkened the prospects of the Jacobites, and suggested to them the adoption of desperate steps as the only remedy for their disappointment, the government was sorely tempted to subject all Catholics to rigorous laws, and to render existing statutes still more severe. To this temptation, however, happily, it did not yield except in one or two instances. The mind of Sir Robert Walpole was neither persecutive nor narrow. He had, shortly before Queen Anne's demise, opposed the odious Schism Act, by which every tutor and schoolmaster in Great Britain was compelled to receive the sacrament in the Established Church, obtain a license from the Protestant bishop, and pledge himself in writing to conform to the state religion.[157] In speaking, as he did, against this measure, Walpole was battling for the religious liberty of Catholics as well as of other dissenters from the Anglican communion, and was doing all that lay in his power to promote education among them.
His associate in and out of office, General, afterward Earl, Stanhope, who also became premier in his turn, was a man of most honorable feelings and enlarged views. During his tenure of power he not merely endeavored to repeal the Schism Bill, the Test Act, and the Bill against Occasional Conformity, but he had designs of a higher order. Though Catholics had favored the Scottish insurrection in 1715, though Protestant antipathy to them was at its height, though the popes and the Catholic courts of Europe in general supported the designs of the Stuarts, though "Papists" were proscribed by common consent, and even the genius and very moderate Catholicism of Pope could scarce save him from opprobrium on account of his religion, Lord Stanhope, to his immortal honor, undertook the cause of the persecuted remnant, and formed the design of repealing, or at least greatly mitigating, the penal laws in force against them. A paper which he wrote on the subject was placed in the hands of leading English Catholics. The Duke of Norfolk and Lord Waldegrave were disposed to accept the conditions, provided they obtained the sanction of the pope.[158] But a variety of causes prevented the scheme from being carried into effect; and premature death carried off the only man who would, at that period, have had the least chance of success in a matter so difficult, unpopular, and benevolent. Lord Stanhope's offer of indulgence to Catholics, on condition only of their swearing allegiance to the reigning family, was an admirable precedent, and his descendant, the historian of England from the Peace of Utrecht to 1783, calls it, very properly, the earliest germ of Roman Catholic emancipation.
The Earl of Sunderland also, who was premier in 1718, concurred with Stanhope in his schemes for religious liberty, though he was not equally sanguine in his hopes. He believed that any attempt to get rid of the Test Act—in other words, to admit dissenters and Catholics to places under government—would be ruinous to all their liberal designs. He therefore prevailed on Stanhope to abate some of his demands, and a bill for the relief of non-conformists was carried by the ministry through both houses, after several important clauses had been struck out. Sir Robert Walpole unfortunately opposed the bill which, on a former occasion, he had supported in principle. Though a great man, a sound statesman, a true patriot, he had his littlenesses. He did not rise above his age. He was one thing in office, and another out of office. He had a passion for governing, and was not over-scrupulous in the means he took for attaining power. Expediency was often his law, and principle was set aside. Hence, when Sunderland and Stanhope were dead, and he once more took the helm of the ship of state, he laid a heavy tax on the estates of Catholics, on the ground of their having cost the nation so much by fomenting the rebellion of 1715.[159] The disaffection they then manifested was the cause also why, in 1716, they were forbidden, under pain of punishment, to enlist in the king's service.
But these enactments were of a temporary nature, called forth by a special circumstance, and not of sufficient moment to disprove the assertion that, under the prime ministers of George I., the political and social condition of English Catholics was rendered more hopeful. Yet in saying this we do not forget that the statute-book remained unpurged,[160] and exhibited even some additional defilement. But it is not always by law-books that we can judge of a nation's condition. Its acts are often better than its laws, and it mends its ways long before it improves its statutes. It was so for a long period with Great Britain as regards her dealings with Catholics, and if it had been otherwise, scarcely a remnant of the chosen people would have remained to bear witness to the ancient faith. Sir Robert Walpole inclined in his heart to lenient measures, and would have done more to promote religious liberty if he had not fallen among a stiff-necked generation, to whom retaliation and oppression came as things of course. His efforts to relieve the Quakers from prosecution and imprisonment for refusing to pay tithes and church rates, and to substitute for these a levy by distress on their goods, sufficiently proves his aversion to the oppressive policy which Gibson, the Bishop of London, and many of his lawn-sleeved brethren, wished to pursue.
Little alteration took place in the condition of Catholics during the premierships of Carteret, Pelham, and Newcastle. They were few in number, except in the southern and western provinces of Ireland, where they comprised the great body of the laboring classes. In England, on the contrary, they had scarcely any hold on the lower orders, but numbered among their people many peers, country gentlemen, and other educated persons. The alarm they occasioned was incredible, considering the poverty of their chapels, and the scanty numbers by whom these were frequented. The most wicked and absurd doctrines were ascribed to them, nor was any falsehood respecting them too glaring to obtain credit with the prejudiced multitude. The rising of 1745 brought them more than ever into disrepute, and their enemies saw with fierce joy their bones whitening on Temple Bar and Tower Hill. The butchery of the Duke of Cumberland was accounted lenient when exercised against Catholics; and if the government had drenched the scaffolds with more blood of Highland chiefs, it would probably have been applauded by a crowd of Protestant zealots. But Pelham and his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, were neither cruel nor fanatical; and the effort made by the former to ameliorate the condition of the Jews, though frustrated by the intolerance of the times, proved that his leanings, at least, were in favor of religious and political equality. Deserted as he was in this matter by his timid and shuffling brother, hooted at and cried down as an enemy of Christianity because he was averse to persecuting the forlorn and helpless Jews, we may judge how hopeless would have been any attempt to plead the rights of Catholics, and how prudence itself demanded that the redress of their wrongs should be postponed to a more convenient season. The Whigs of George II.'s reign did what they could in their favor, and it was little indeed, by paving the way for future concessions.
While Chatham, with his fiery genius, was holding the reins of government, in concert successively with the dukes of Devonshire, of Newcastle, and of Grafton; while Bute enjoyed the favor of his sovereign, and incurred in an equal degree the odium of the people; while Grenville goaded the American colonists into revolt, and Rockingham vainly endeavored to heal the wounds which his predecessor had inflicted on them; little was thought, and still less was said, in parliament about the emancipation of Catholics. Yet many of the events which occurred, many of the political gladiators who acquired for themselves such renown in the arena of public life, were preparing the way for this happy consummation in the fulness of time. Every blow that was struck for freedom was a gain to the Catholic cause; every check that was put on the arbitrary power of the king or the parliament was in effect a loosening of their bonds. When Chatham declaimed against the use of general warrants, and Wilkes waged war single-handed with the crown, the cabinet, and the commons; when Burke and Rockingham, no less than Chatham, denounced the injustice of the Stamp Act, and the fratricidal cruelty of the war by which it was in principle to be enforced, the arguments by which they clove down menaces, boasts, and blatant sophistry availed more or less against every thing that could be pleaded in support of the bondage and degradation to which Catholics were subjected. Edmund Burke was the burning and shining light of the Rockingham administration. It was scarcely possible for the premier to overrate his importance as an ally. He had the most philosophical mind of any statesman of his age; and the fact of his being chattered against as a wild Irishman and a concealed papist by the Duke of Newcastle, proved that the despised and the detested Catholics of Ireland were likely to find a friend in him. He was more than a great man; he represented a principle. He never shifted his ground, though he sometimes changed his front. He always pleaded for order, and "a manly, moral, regulated liberty." In the outset of his political career, the tide of human thought was setting in new directions. America was declaring her independence; the Wealth of Nations was laying the foundation of political economy; Wesley and Whitefield were stirring up a dormant spirit of sincere though misguided religion in mines, factories, fields, and wolds; Hargreaves's spinning-jenny was well at work; Arkwright's patent had been issued some years; Crompton's mule was seen coming into play; Brindley's canal from the Trent to the Mersey was being cut; and Watt was preparing his third model of the steam-engine. Powerful solvents of old systems were applied, and active germs of new ones sprang up on every side. It was a time, therefore, when thoughtful men were accessible to new ideas, when they would listen to arguments so new, so strange, so extravagant, (for such they had once thought them,) as those which Burke advanced in favor of religious toleration, and of the persecuted Irish. Year after year his convictions gathered strength, till at last "the god within him" burst forth, and he denounced the penal code of Protestant England as "A system full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts, a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."[161] As the secretary, the friend, the adviser and colleague of Lord Rockingham, Edmund Burke had some influence in abating the rigor of enactments against "papists;" and though the Rev. James Talbot, brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was tried for his life at the Old Bailey for saying mass, so late as the year 1769, yet the spirit of persecution sensibly declined after the fifth year of George III.'s reign. It was rarely, and at long intervals, that it ventured to display itself in the English parliament; and in 1774, the first decided step toward toleration was taken by that prejudiced body. The Catholics of Canada were allowed by law to enjoy free exercise of their religion, subject to the king's supremacy.[162]
Only four years passed before this concession was followed by another of far greater importance and extent.
It was under the ministry of Lord North, and with his concurrence, that Sir George Savile, in 1788, introduced a bill to repeal the atrocious enactments extorted from William of Orange by a relentless parliament. The bigots of his day had often repeated the false reports of Jacobites, who affirmed that William was in secret a favorer of their religion; but now that eighty years had rolled by, the representatives of the nation in parliament, though not the people themselves, were sensible of the injustice their forefathers had wrought, and were willing to make reparation for it. It was already a marvellous change that had come over the minds of the thinking part of the nation; and it is pleasing to reflect that Sir George Savile's healing measure encountered little opposition. The penal statutes which his bill repealed had not, generally speaking, been put into execution, but in some instances they had; and Sir George declared himself cognizant of cases in which Catholics were not merely living in terror, but were obliged to bribe informers not to betray them, in consequence of the powers which the law conferred. Thurlow, the attorney-general, supported the bill, and so did Dundas, the lord-advocate of Scotland. The only whisper of opposition came from a Whig bishop of Peterborough, named Hinchcliffe. By this repeal the priests were secured from persecution, schoolmasters were permitted to teach, Catholics were enabled to purchase and to inherit estates, and many other happy exemptions from pain and penalty were granted to them.[163] Horace Walpole, in one of his letters,[164] called the repeal "the restoration of popery," and "expected soon to see Capuchins trampling about, and Jesuits in high places."
It is needless to recount the excesses which followed this measure. The Lord George Gordon riots are too well known even here to require more than an allusion to be made to them. Gibbon, the historian, was an eye-witness of the scene, and he says, in memorable words, that "the month of June, 1780, will ever be marked by a dark and diabolical fanaticism, which I supposed to be extinct, but which actually subsists in Great Britain perhaps beyond any other country in Europe." Impelled by these frantic disturbances, the parliament condescended to explain Sir George Savile's bill to the people, and to show that, though intended to relieve "papists," it was not meant to encourage "popery."
The coalition ministry, under the Duke of Portland, did not last long enough for Fox, its most distinguished and philanthropic member, to propose measures for the relief of Catholics. But his great rival, Pitt, during his long tenure of office, had means of befriending them which he did not altogether neglect. The Toleration Act[165] received the royal assent in 1791, and many of its provisions did credit to William Pitt's wisdom and humanity. It removed penalties still attached by law to the celebration of Catholic worship, and relieved tutors, schoolmasters, barristers, and peers from some degrading restrictions. Pitt would willingly have gone further, much further. He would gladly have fulfilled the promises made to some of the leaders of the Irish people, and would have cemented the union of England and Ireland by admitting Catholics to a share of political power and by providing a state endowment of the Catholic priesthood. He even resigned his post as premier in 1801 because he found it impossible to obtain the consent of the purblind, bigoted old king to the measures he had planned for the peace of Ireland. It would have been better for his fame if he had persevered in his good intentions. That he did not do so, is a stain on his memory which posterity, however lenient, cannot wash out. His honor was involved in completing the union with Ireland by Catholic emancipation. This he not only failed to do, but, out of regard to his sovereign, he promised in writing that he would never again moot the question, and that he would oppose its being agitated to the day of his death. This was carrying loyalty too far. It prevailed against justice. It cancelled personal honor. An engagement is sacred; and if Pitt had observed his, he would have stood higher in the esteem of thinking men, without driving George III. into lunacy or to Hanover. Considering all the circumstances, we cannot feel surprised at his setting it aside; but we regret that he did not hold to it firmly. Faith in political leaders would then have been more easy, and public virtue less a sham. When the strength of Pitt superseded the weakness of Addington, and the great statesman found himself again prime minister, his tongue was tied in reference to Catholic claims. Nay, even his rival, Fox, when he came once more into office, refrained from advocating emancipation out of deference to the king's weakness and tendency to madness. Indeed, the Grenville ministry, called usually "All the Talents," broke up at last on the question of removing Catholic disabilities, as that of Pitt had done in the year 1801. A puny and pitiable concession had been made to Irish Catholic soldiers in 1793. They had been allowed by law to rise in the army to the rank of colonel, in case of their serving in Ireland. Lord Sidmouth and Chancellor Erskine were opposed to Catholic emancipation, yet even they were willing in their boundless generosity to extend this privilege to officers serving in England. The king was alarmed at the proposal, and wrote to Lord Spenser, declaring that it should never gain his consent. It would remove a restriction on Roman Catholics, and it was only part of a system to which he was unchangeably averse. But when two days had passed, his majesty thought better of it. He would not thwart his ministers for such a trifle. He yielded the point, and then discovered than he had been deceived by the liberal members of the cabinet, and that they actually intended to put Catholics and dissenters on exactly the same footing as members of the Anglican church in the army, and to exact from them merely an oath of allegiance. The bill for the purpose had, in fact, been submitted to him, but, being blind, he had let it pass without proper scrutiny. His ministers always affirmed that, if he had been misled, it was not through their fault or intention. The afflicted old man was greatly disturbed by what he heard on the subject from Lord Sidmouth, and he became still more indignant when the bill was fathered on him, introduced into parliament by Lord Howick, (afterward Lord Grey,) opposed stoutly by Mr. Perceval, and read for the first time. He resolved in secret to rid himself of ministers whom he regarded as dangerous and false. He informed them that the bill in question would never be signed by him, that it must be withdrawn, and that he should be satisfied with nothing less than an explicit assurance and promise that no such measures in future should be proposed. This "All the Talents" refused to give, and the king, on hearing that their answer was final, said, "Then I must look about me."[166]
Though the Duke of Portland became prime minister in 1807 with the express intention of defending the sovereign against importunity in favor of Catholics, it is worthy of remark that the College of Maynooth was endowed during his premiership; and this is only one illustration of the remarkable fact which we are endeavoring to exhibit—that the Catholic cause in England has progressed in England under every government since the revolution of 1688, in spite of penal statutes, obstacles, and resistance of king, lords, commons or people.
Mr. Perceval, who succeeded the Duke of Portland in 1809, is described by Madden as "a stupid lawyer, without character or practice, noted only for his bigotry."
There was little done for Catholics in his time; but about two months after he had been shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, Lord Wellesley moved that the Catholic claims should be considered.
The cabinet of Lord Liverpool was formed on the basis of neutrality as regards the Catholic question; in other words, its members were allowed to advocate or oppose emancipation, just as they thought fit. Canning and Castlereagh were its friends; Lord Eldon was its bitterest opponent. The premier himself invariably spoke against it, but he was not virulent. His hostility to it arose from the conviction that Protestant ascendency was the real and proper basis of the British constitution, as revised under William III. To alter that basis was, in his eyes, to effect a revolution; and he predicted, in 1812 and in 1825, that if emancipation were granted, either the Protestant church in Ireland would be disestablished or the Roman Catholic Church there would be established by law. Events have proved, happily, that he was not altogether wrong.
The period of the Liverpool administration was, of course, a dreary one for Catholics. The efforts of Grattan, Wellesley, Sir Henry Parnell, Plunkett, and Canning to obtain for them some redress, ended for the most part in cruel disappointment. Yet in 1817 the government introduced a bill, which passed both houses, opening to them the army and navy, and thus generously bestowed on them the privilege of shedding their blood in the service of their oppressors. By annual acts of indemnity, also, Catholic officers were relieved from the penalty of not taking the oaths of supremacy.
In 1824, Lord Liverpool had so far relaxed his opposition to Catholic claims that he spoke in favor of Lord Lansdowne's two bills for giving the elective franchise to English as it had been given to Irish Catholics, and for throwing open to them magistracies and other inferior offices, besides allowing the Duke of Norfolk to execute his hereditary office of earl marshal. The bills were rejected, but the duke's claim was allowed. In 1826, just two years before his death, Lord Liverpool submitted to the king an important paper, in which he reminded his majesty that the cabinet he had framed in 1812 regarded emancipation from the first as an open question, and declared that he could not now be a party to any other arrangement. He humbly suggested that the king should advert to the actual state of the opinions of public men in the two houses of parliament, particularly of those in the House of Commons, upon the Roman Catholic question, and that he should seriously consider whether it would not be at least as impracticable as in 1812 to form an administration upon the exclusively Protestant principle. Thus Lord Liverpool himself, and his neutral or divided cabinet, prepared the way for emancipation in the year after his death.
Canning succeeded Lord Liverpool in 1827. He had long advocated the redress of Catholic wrongs. It was not his fault that Ireland was duped by the union. It had been his desire and intention that emancipation should seal and complete that measure. He could scarcely venture to speak of it, however, except in vague terms; for the smallest allusion to it on his part would have been sure to call down upon him the vengeance of the treasury benches. Yet he did allude to it in January and April, 1799, and thirteen years after, when, speaking of the Catholic claims, he declared that "expectations had been held out, the disappointment of which involved the moral guilt of an absolute breach of faith."
"Does history," asks Goldwin Smith, in discussing the wrongs of Ireland—"does history afford a parallel to that agony of seven centuries which has not yet reached its close? But England is the favorite of Heaven; and when she commits oppression, it will not recoil on the oppressor!"
If Canning's life had been spared, there is no doubt that he would have signalized his tenure of office by the completion, in some measure at least, of the designs of the Catholic Association. This body, formed by O'Connell in 1823, had infused new life and hope into Irish patriotism. Disappointed and betrayed as the people of Ireland had been by one statesman after another, they could not but expect something from Canning's hands, especially when they saw him rise in April, 1822, and move for leave to bring in a bill which should relieve Roman Catholic peers from the disabilities imposed on them by the Act 30 of Charles II., with regard to the right of sitting and voting in the House of Peers. His brilliant and beautiful speech was crowned with a certain success. His motion was carried by a majority of five; but Peel opposed the measure, and the Lords rejected it by a majority of forty-two. Their policy in such matters has always been one of obstruction. They declined to let noblemen so noble and so pacific, and of families so ancient, as the Dukes of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Petre, and Lord Stourton, sit beside them in their chambers as peers of the realm.
After this failure, Canning's zeal in the Catholic cause is said to have declined; but he doubtless felt his impotence, and waited only till a more favorable opportunity of serving the Catholic interests should arrive.