Great as was the excitement produced throughout the country by the event itself, and by the preposterous pretensions of the new Roman bishops, the public feeling was much intensified by a letter of Lord John Russell’s to the Bishop of Durham. The prelate was supposed to be an ardent and consistent Protestant, and the circumstance of a man of such a character being selected by the premier as the medium through which to give his opinions to the public, parliament not being then sitting, led the country to believe that his lordship really sought its support for some great and practical purpose; that the letter was intended to indicate an anti-papal policy for the future, for which the support of the nation was sought. It was as follows:—
TO THE RIGHT REV. THE BISHOP OF DURHAM.
My dear Lord,—I agree with you in considering “the late aggression of the pope upon our Protestantism” as “insolent and insidious,” and I therefore feel as indignant as you can do upon the subject.
I not only promoted to the utmost of my power the claims of the Roman Catholics to all civil rights, but I thought it right, and even desirable, that the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Catholics should be the means of giving instruction to the numerous Irish immigrants in London and elsewhere, who, without such help, would have been left in heathen ignorance.
This might have been done, however, without any such innovation as that which we have now seen.
It is impossible to confound the recent measures of the pope with the division of Scotland into dioceses by the Episcopal Church, or the arrangement of districts in England by the Wesleyan Conference.
There is an assumption of power in all the documents which have come from Rome—a pretension to supremacy over the realm of England, and a claim to sole and undivided sway, which is inconsistent with the queen’s supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation, as asserted even in Roman Catholic times.
I confess, however, that my alarm is not equal to my indignation.
Even if it shall appear that the ministers and servants of the pope in this country have not transgressed the law, I feel persuaded that we are strong enough to repel any outward attacks. The liberty of Protestantism has been enjoyed too long in England to allow of any successful attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon our minds and consciences. No foreign prince or potentate will be permitted to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom of opinion—civil, political, and religious.
Upon this subject, then, I will only say, that the present state of the law shall be carefully examined, and the propriety of adopting any proceedings with reference to the recent assumption of power deliberately considered.