mind, and by it to support the friends of truth within the walls of Parliament, and baffle its enemies without, that time is come. We demand to repel and reject the claims of the Papists*, not on the vulgar grounds of a "rivalry of sects," of "keeping down what we have once got down," nor even of constitutional and national pledges to Protestantism; but on the grounds of general good, self-defence, and public necessity. The noblest attributes of society are True Freedom, the power to every man of doing what he will, saving the injury of others;-and True Religion, the genuine worship of God; which is to be discovered, like all other truths, only by the exercise of the human understanding upon the documents and evidences of the religion. Popery stands up against the liberty of man. Its civil principles are despotic, its govern * We call those men Papists, because they have no right to any other name. It is absurd to call Popery, Catholic, when its supremacy is disowned by not merely the whole Protestant world, but by those who approach the nearest to its own doctrine; by the Greek Church, by the Syrian, the Georgian, the Armenian, the Christians of Palestine, almost the whole of Lesser Asia, the Indian Christians, &c.; all of whom reject the Pope. ment is a despotism, it has been found habitu ally connected with despotic governments. In religion, it shuts Scripture upon the people; it loads them with a yoke of ceremonies, contrary to the spirit and command of Scripture; it throws down the laity at the foot of the Priest; it claims a haughty and unlimited dominion over every other faith; and it urges this monstrous claim by intolerance and sanguinary persecution. Rome, at this hour, looks upon every Protestant state as a rebel, left loose only till she can have the power of fierce coercion. For England, as the great offender, the very chief of the revolt, there is a black and consummate reserve of retribution. We come to the Popish question of the day. The English are certainly a generous people, and, with the usual fate of the generous, easily cajoled. There is no spot on earth where an empiric, and, of all the trade, a political empiric, whether stationary or itinerant, volunteer or stipendiary, can fatten to a larger size. The English love liberty, and hate slavery, and those words, in the mouth of an orator of whatever dimensions, are irresistible. 'Mr. O'Connell is certainly an able artist in these things. No man is more dextrous in disco vering the true soft material to work into the shape of sympathy; and when he is fully warmed into his tavern tale of the "six hundred years of Ireland's beggary and chains," when he forbids the women of his country to bring forth males, lest they should be found fettered in the cradle; and obtests the vengeance of his three hundred and sixty-five saints against the remorseless and indescribable tyranny which, while it gives liberty of worship, person, and property, yet withholds from his compatriots silk gowns, Lord Mayor's coaches, and the other common and indispensable rights of human nature; he enjoys the triumph of his trade. But if, when this storm of eloquence has drawn off, and the man stands no longer before them, magnified through his haze of national sorrow, "Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting A sober enquirer should dare to ask, in that region of free discussion, what hindrance lies between the Papist and his full enjoyment of Protestant privilege; what rough and towering barrier rises between the luxurious possessor and the heroic and formidable outcast? Might he not be surprised to hear, that the single condition is that of paying the common allegiance of the realm to the King. The oath of supremacy is the general demand of the constitution. The Papist refuses this oath (which évery other subject takes,) and demands the unconditional surrender of the last security of the rights and lives of Protestantism. And he refuses this allegiance to his King, while he offers it to a foreigner, and that foreigner elected to his throne by the influence of foreign potentates, who may be our enemies at any hour; himself the ancient disturber of England, and bound by the severest bonds of his arrogant and un-scriptural faith, to extirpate our religion, though it were in our ashes! These things open our eyes to the orator's history of grievance. We begin to remember that this clamorous pathos is fabricated of the regular stock figures of mob eloquence; we see the sleek and pinguid prosperity of this professional man of famine and chains, and are comforted; we refuse the cup of blandishments of this Circe in a wig and gown, and “Risu solvuntur tabulæ.” But the Papist offers civil allegiance to the Crown, a thin subterfuge. Civil allegiance is a dream, where spiritual allegiance is not bound up with it; and, above all, where that higher allegiance is given to the declared enemy of our religion. Are we to hear that Papal jurisdiction is only a matter of tonsures and vestments? The spiritual allegiance of the Papist usurps and commands the whole moral action, and what is this, but the whole mental and bodily power of the man; it demands, by confession and the ceremonial of the Church, a knowledge of every man's secret impulses, and an interference with his conduct; it demands a thorough and unceasing submission to the Papal laws; and the Pope, with a council, or without a council, may make what laws he will. The following is the oath taken by every Papist bishop. "I from this time forward will be faithful and obedient to my Lord the Pope, and to his successors. "The counsels with which they trust me I will not disclose to any man! to the hurt of the Pope or his successors. "I will assist to retain the Popedom and the royalties of St. Peter against all men ! "I will carefully preserve, defend, and pro |