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.