In a letter to the Duke of Rutland, in 1784, the Bishop says—"I particularly agree with you in relation to the (Roman) Catholics. No man on earth, I trust, can have more enlarged sentiments of toleration than I have. But the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church; and it is our interest and our duty, on every principle of religion and common sense, to guard ourselves against her machinations." He then gives the expression of the great Lord Clarendon—"It is the duty of Catholic subjects in a Protestant country, of priests as well as the laity, to abjure the Pope's supremacy, ecclesiastical as well as temporal."
The Popish advocates lay great weight on the patronage afforded to their parliamentary demands by the Cabinet of Pitt; who evidently made the grand mistake of supposing that spiritual dominion could be disunited from temporal—a mistake as great as supposing that the command of the limbs could be disunited from the power of the mind. But the views of the Minister were founded merely on political objects, while the true question was one of religion. The argument is thus summarily answered:—
"Let me remind you that an illustrious statesman, William Pitt, in the very last speech which he delivered in Parliament, expressed himself on the subject of Roman Catholic emancipation in the following remarkable language:—'I never thought that it would have been wise to throw down rudely the guards and fences of the Constitution. But I did think, that if the system I alluded to had been adopted, it ought to have been accompanied by those checks and guards, and with every regulation which could have given respect and influence to the Established Church, to the support and protection of the Protestant interest, and to the encouragement of every measure which could tend to propagate the example of the Protestant religion.'
"His splendid pupil, Canning, the most ardent friend of Roman Catholic emancipation, also thus expressed himself: 'Go as far as you can, with safety to the Establishment. Do not exact from them terms that are unnecessary, but be rigorous in imposing such conditions as shall free you from all real, I had almost said all imaginary, danger.'"
These are important opinions, which should teach us how to act. We have seen those guards and fences broken down; we have seen every protective condition accepted, and finally scoffed at, and we are at this moment at once insulted and injured by the cool and contemptuous violation of every promise which was required for the safety of the Church—of Protestantism.
But the whole system of concession was founded on ignorance, carried on by faction, and suffered by infatuation. That unhappy concession is the only blot on the tomb of Pitt, who made it in ignorance: it is the chief among the many blots on the tomb of Canning, who made faction his auxiliary, by first sacrificing his Toryism; and it covers with the indelible contempt, due to the traffic of principle, the whole paltry and perfidious generation who, subsequently, under different garbs, but with the same physiognomy of worldliness, have droned and drivelled and died off in the shadow of the Treasury. What the majority of those men thought, is a subject too low for memory; what they did, is to be seen in the scars of the Constitution.
But when the mighty orb of Pitt undergoes an eclipse, it must be by a body of no slight magnitude. His wisdom was actually thwarted by his magnanimity. Himself the soul of honour, he evidently imagined that Popery was capable of honour.
"What would William Pitt, what would George Canning, say?" exclaims Mr Warren, "were they still alive to read the Bull of Pius IX. and Dr Wiseman's Pastoral? and what would they do?"
We think that we can answer the question. If Pitt denounced the grasping ambition of French republicanism, if Canning lashed the low absurdities of Radicalism, with what indignant justice would they not have stript and scourged an aggression which unites more than the ambition of the one, with more than the absurdity of the other! With what lofty vengeance would Pitt have trampled down the haughty usurpation which dared to degrade England into a province! and with what sarcastic ridicule would Canning have stung the bloated arrogance with which, from a palace almost a prison, an impudent monk dared to control the liberties of England!
But what would the Papal assumptions be, if uttered by any other sovereign? Let us suppose that Austria ventured to send a dozen of her monks here to carve the land into dioceses. What would be the universal exclamation, but that Austria was mad; and that the first monk who made the attempt should find his only diocese within the walls of Newgate. What if France declared England a province? Can we doubt that our answer would be a declaration of war? And is a beggarly Italian—a fugitive from his own territory, a priest flying for his life in the livery of a footman—to offer this insult with impunity? But if we are told that Pius IX. is a different personage from his predecessors, a Liberal, a man of the new school—tempted, by misrepresentations from his emissary monks here, to make a usurpation against his nature—let us hear the pamphlet:—