It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was hushed by death, no representative of their interests in parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters. [Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: See Lord Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 16.]
In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120] under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers, and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of cabinets and courts.
[Footnote 120: Flanagan's English and Irish History, p. 665.]
The Catholic revival, in short, in England—a revival of whose reality and strength we daily see the proofs—is not to be ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688 excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III. fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.
[Footnote 121: Pellew. Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. 435. Jesse's George III. iii. 476.]
George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation, and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday; dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow. In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also, superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.
There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122] There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority, religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to endowment be adjusted in such cases?
[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]