is seldom appeased without some bloody sacrifice, and the benevolent reader, whether Catholic or Protestant, when he peruses the trial and execution of Lord Stafford, a nobleman venerable alike for his age and for his gentle virtues, will drop a tear over the credulity and the sufferings of mankind. But we need not recur to past times for instances of these dreadful excesses. The present reign furnishes us with an example sufficiently alarming. We have seen the lenient spirit of the legislature resisted by a Protestant association, and by a No-popery mob; we have seen the jails thrown open, the laws of nations violated, the majesty of parliament insulted, and the capital exposed to plunder and to conflagration; we have seen the Bank of England, the very seat and citadel of public credit, assailed and on the point of being ransacked; in all these outrages, these atrocious acts of violence and rebellion, the danger of the Church was the pretext, and No-popery was the watch-word.

Let me ask your Lordship whether the same cause may not again produce the same effect? and whether the attempt lately made, and at this very moment renewed with redoubled activity, may not succeed to the full extent, revive ancient animosities, and involve this united kingdom, now the sole asylum of liberty and of independence, in civil war, bloodshed, and ruin? Are the dangers to be apprehended from Popery alone worthy of attention? or does your Lordship see no grounds for apprehension in the manner in which the Catholic question is at present agitated? Yet there are among the Protestant Clergy, as well as laity, several wise and good men, who tremble lest the result of so much animosity should be fatal alike to Protestants and to Catholics, and to their common country and its constitution.

It may here perhaps be asked, whether the pastors of the Established Church have not a right, and are not in duty bound to enforce its doctrines, and guard their flocks against error and delusion. With the right or duty, in itself, I presume not to interfere. But in the exercise of this right or duty, I claim from you, my Lord, and from your brethren, and from all pastors, teachers, and disputants, whether Catholic or Protestant, in the name of that Gospel in which we all believe, and by that charity which we all acknowledge to be our first bounden duty, candor in the statement

of your adversary's tenets, temper in the discussion of his arguments, and compassion for his errors.

I will now proceed to the examination of some of your Lordship's positions, having premised that in many, as it appears to me, truth and error are so interwoven as to render the task of separation extremely difficult; and that the various disputable points and groundless assertions in your Lordship's Charge are so scattered over its different parts, as to render any attempt to methodize them still more laborious.

In the first place, my Lord, you assert in your preface, that Catholics now demand, not toleration, but political power. There is, in this assertion, contrary without doubt to your Lordship's intentions, something equivocal, as it seems to imply that the Catholics are endeavouring to obtain as a body a degree of power and of preponderance dangerous to the constitution. In this sense your assertion is totally unfounded. The Catholics disclaim every wish and intention of acquiring power or influence of any kind; they ask for no distinction; as a body they are only ambitious of being confounded with the rest of his Majesty's subjects, without any mark of privilege, or of penalty. They only entreat you not to withhold from them personally, that influence and those honors, which Protestants of the same rank and condition either enjoy by their birth, or may attain by their exertions. To represent this claim upon your justice and your generosity as a demand of political power, is surely unfair and invidious, and as such I denounce it to the reader, or rather to your Lordship's candor.

In the same preface you cite a passage from one of your former Charges, in which you "contend that the Roman Catholics are already in complete possession of religious toleration." (page 347.) You define toleration elsewhere, page 352-" Toleration is a permission, under the authority of law, to every individual to profess the religious opinions which he conceives most consonant to scrip ture, and to worship God in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his conscience. Internal faith and external worship comprehend the whole, as far as this subject is concerned, of religious service, and whoever enjoys unrestrained freedom in these two respects, enjoys perfect religious toleration."

I must differ from your Lordship in the definition, and conse

quently in the position grounded upon it; in the former, I would insert, after the word respects, this clause, without incurring penalty or privation of any kind. As long as the profession of any particular opinion is punished by any loss, forfeiture, or disability, they who hold that opinion cannot surely be said to be in possession of perfect toleration. Your Lordship is aware that privations act as fines, and that whether you compel a dissenter to pay a certain sum for the permission of exercising his worship, or exclude him from lucrative offices in consequence of exercising that worship, the result with respect to his fortune is the same. That only is perfect to which nothing can be added, and as long as one single penal law stands unrepealed, so long toleration remains imperfect.

This unbounded liberty of worship, you will perhaps say, goes beyond what is generally called toleration; perhaps it may: but in that case it may be argued, that there should be no question of toleration in the present circumstance. Toleration is applicable to cases where the number of Dissidents are few, and of little importance, and of course, where a permission to exercise their particular worship without molestation, may be deemed an indulgence. But in a country like this United Kingdom, where the number of Dissidents is so great, and where, besides the three great societies that form the population of its three constituent parts, viz. the Church of England, the Kirk of Scotland, and the Catholics of Ireland, new sects are daily arising; a much greater latitude, or rather an entire liberty of worship, is, I believe, essential to public tranquillity. So many sects, and such a division of opinion, your Lordship may consider as an evil that cries aloud for redress. That it may be an evil, I may perhaps agree with your Lordship; but it is an evil which arises from the bold and independent character of the nation, a character formed and strengthened by all its institutions both civil and religious; and an evil arising from such a cause is not to be put down by penalties, privations, or coercive measures of any kind; but by gentleness, by persuasion, and by the diffusion of knowledge and of the means of solid instruction.

I cannot drop the subject of toleration without noticing an expression that occurs in another part of your Charge (p.356), where you appeal to the sufferings of Protestants in every country of Europe where Popery has been predominant." If your Lordship

refers to former times, many cruelties have, I fear, been inflicted, and much blood spilt on both sides; but your Lordship's reading has, I fear, upon this, as it has visibly upon some other controversial topics, been confined to writers of your own party. You have probably perused Fox's Martyrs with great edification, and your heart has bled at the recital of the butchery of Protestants in Holland under the Duke of Alva. But you have never even heard of the execution of numberless Catholic priests and laymen under Elizabeth and James, and still less do you even suspect that thousands of Catholics were put to death under circumstances of unparalleled cruelty in the very country which I have just mentioned, about the same period,

Whoever believes in the Gospel acts against his faith if he violate even the hair of his neighbour's head in religious debate; and the cruel excesses which I have alluded to were common to both par ties, not because they were Catholics or Protestants, but because they were semi-barbarians; and they are to be imputed not to the benevolent religion which they both professed, for Christianity is essentially benevolent under all its forms, but to the spirit of the times, and often to the passions of the leaders. So far, however, are they from being arguments for persecution, or even plausible pretexts for the continuation of a system of privation and exclusion, that they are to my mind demonstrations written in blood, of its folly, of its inefficacy, and of its danger. By such a system Spain lost Holland, and Denmark forfeited Sweden. Be wise in time, my Lord;-suppress the whole penal code, and replace it by the benevolent maxim of a venerable ancient-Bonos imitare, malos tolera, OMNES AMA.

If your Lordship's words, which I have cited above, refer to modern times, I am at a loss to guess the countries alluded to, as I conceive the practice of toleration to have been more general for many years past in Catholic than in Protestant countries. In many of the latter, the Catholic Religion was not even tolerated so late as ten years ago, and in Hamburgh, and in most of the imperial free cities, and Hanseatic towns, its exercise was confined to the chapel of the Imperial Minister. In Saxony, it was limited to the

Aug. De Catech. Rudibus.

precincts of the electoral palaces, and those who professed it were not allowed to become masters in any trade or profession,

.

Now, as to Catholic countries, we have seen a Protestant minister, Monsieur Neckar, at the head of the government in France, and the Prince of Saxe Cobourg, a Protestant, commander in chief of the Austrian armies. I need not remind your Lordship of the Marshals Saxe and Laudhon, or inform you that under the old French monarchy, and over all the Austrian empire, and indeed throughout all Catholic Germany and Poland, in military promotion, the talents and the valor, not the religion of the soldier, were the objects of consideration; nor was a gallant man, who had braved danger or shed his blood for his country, ever deprived of his well-earned rewards because he did not profess the national religion. In truth, my Lord, we are far behind the nations of the continent in this respect, and are loudly called upon by the exigencies of the times, to imitate their example, and to turn, without distinction, all the means, all the talents, and all the resources of the state to its defence and to its advantage.

In the same prefatory extract, your Lordship assures your Clergy, that the Roman Catholic Faith (you will excuse me if out of respect both to your Lordship and to myself, I omit the nick-name) is not only a system of religion, but a system of politics. You must not be surprised, my Lord, when I acknowledge that this assertion is to me a perfect novelty, and that I am at an utter loss to guess either its object or its meaning.

The Catholic Religion has, I am aware, been represented in very different and very opposite lights, sometimes as favorable to republicanism, and sometimes as attached to arbitrary power. Your Lordship has been pleased to couple it with the latter, (p. 355.) We, my Lord, consider our religion like the gospel on which we deem it to be founded, as adapted to all governments, but partial to those only which are established upon the basis of freedom and of justice. This opinion is confirmed by the evidence of history; I need not allude to the many powerful monarchies that profess the Catholic faith, as your Lordship has endeavoured to impress your readers with the belief, that it is peculiarly friendly to that form of government.

But in order to show how unjustly the Catholic Religion is