In the passage which follows, the established clergy are rather unceremoniously handled; and not undeservedly, for there can be no doubt that their reckless diatribes in the pulpit, on the platform, and in the press, were the chief cause of the unhallowed uproar which attended the publication of the new and much-needed organization of the Catholic church in England. It certainly was not their fault if the country was not [pg 116] disgraced by deeds of violence. In one or two places, indeed, such things were attempted. At a town in the north of England, where there is a Catholic mission, a mob of excited people threatened the chapel and priest's house. The presence of a counter-mob from a neighboring colliery speedily restored tranquillity. In another town a crowd of the unwashed were proceeding to burn the Pope and Cardinal in effigy, when these august persons were wisely seized by order of the magistrates, and, with some of their unruly escort, secured within the prison walls. Although a few hired ruffians could attempt such things (it is known that those last named were hired), the English people were far from contemplating anything like violence. So it is with no small pleasure that is here recorded the high compliment paid to them in the following eloquent passage of Cardinal Wiseman's appeal: “I cannot conclude,” he says towards the end, “without one word on the part which the clergy of the Anglican church have acted in the late excitement. Catholics have been their principal theological opponents, and we have carried on our controversies with them temperately, and with every personal consideration. We have had no recourse to popular arts to debase them; we have never attempted, even when the current of public opinion has set against them, to turn it to advantage, by joining in any outcry. They are not our members who yearly call for returns of sinecures or episcopal incomes; they are not our people who form antichurch-and-state associations; it is not our press which sends forth caricatures of ecclesiastical dignitaries, or throws ridicule on clerical avocations. With us the cause of truth and of faith has been held too sacred to be advocated in any but honorable and religious modes. We have avoided the tumult of public assemblies and farthing appeals to the ignorance of the multitude. But no sooner has an opportunity been given for awakening every lurking passion against us than it has been eagerly seized by the ministers of the Establishment. The pulpit and the platform, the church and the town hall, have been equally their field of labor; and speeches have been [pg 117] made and untruths uttered, and calumnies repeated, and flashing words of disdain and anger and hate and contempt, and of every unpriestly and unchristian and unholy sentiment, have been spoken, that could be said against those who almost alone have treated them with respect. And little care was taken at what time or in what circumstances these things were done. If the spark had fallen upon the inflammable materials of a gunpowder-treason mob, and made it explode, or, what was worse, had ignited it, what cared they? If blood had been inflamed and arms uplifted, and the torch in their grasp, and flames had been enkindled, what heeded they? If the persons of those whom consecration makes holy, even according to their own belief, had been seized, like the Austrian general, and ill-treated, and perhaps maimed, or worse, what recked they? These very things were, one and all, pointed at as glorious signs, should they take place, of high and noble Protestant feeling in the land, as proofs of the prevalence of an unpersecuting, a free, inquiring, a tolerant gospel creed!
“Thanks to you, brave and generous and noble-hearted people of England! who would not be stirred up by those whose duty it is to teach you, gentlemen, meekness and forbearance, to support what they call a religious cause, by irreligious means; and would not hunt down, when bidden, your unoffending fellow-citizens, to the hollow cry of ‘No Popery,’ and on the pretence of a fabled aggression.”
The London Times might well say, referring to this magnificent appeal, that the Cardinal had at length spoken English. It was easy to mystify the people in regard to theological utterances. They could be no longer deceived now that the Chief of the new hierarchy had addressed them in round Saxon terms, about the meaning of which there could be no mistake. The appeal first published in the London Times was reproduced in all the newspapers of the country. The public mind was tranquillized, and very little was heard, afterwards, of the “Papal aggression.” The Prime Minister, however, was bound, for the sake of consistency, to do something. What he did was [pg 118] highly in favor of the hierarchy. It proved that everything had been done according to law, simply by the fact that parliament was urged to make a new law by which everything that had been done would be illegal. This was the famous Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It was designed to accomplish a great deal—to extinguish for ever the Cardinal Archbishop, and all the other newly-instituted bishops. It proved utterly futile—telum imbelle sine ictu. The people could not be made to put down the Catholic institution; and religious liberty was so thoroughly recognized that even an act of parliament was powerless against it.
Numbers and names of the new Sees.
The new Sees constituted by the Letters Apostolical of 29th September, 1850, were thirteen in number—Westminster, the Metropolitan See; Southwark, Hexham, Beverly, Liverpool, Salford, Shrewsbury, Newport, Clifton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Birmingham and Northampton.
Dr. Wiseman and thirteen other eminent persons raised by Pius IX. to the dignity of Cardinal.
At the time of the restoration of the English hierarchy, Dr. Wiseman was created a Cardinal, not so much in honor of the important act to which it was his charge to give effect, as because the Holy Father having resolved on a creation of Cardinals so eminent a man could not be overlooked. At the accession of Pius IX. there were sixty-one living Cardinals. Of these only nine were not Italians. When, on his return to Rome, after his sojourn in the kingdom of Naples, he determined to add fourteen Cardinals to the Sacred College, only four of the prelates selected were natives of Italy. The rest were, at the time, the most distinguished men of the Catholic world. Of this number Archbishop Geissel of Cologne was one, and the King of Prussia, more liberal than certain magnates of England, thanked the Holy Father, in an autograph letter, for the honor thus done to the Catholic church of his country. Since that time the Prussian monarch appears to have changed his sentiments as well as his ministry.
Success of the English Hierarchy.
Notwithstanding the noisy demonstrations in opposition to the Cardinal Archbishop and his brother bishops, they were allowed to pursue in peace their labors of Christian zeal. The English grumbled, as is their wont. But discovering in time that they were neither attacked nor hurt, the rights of liberty of conscience were respected, and no persecution followed what it was at first the fashion to call the “Papal aggression.”
Increase of Catholics during the decade—1840-1850.