VOL. VI. No. 21.]

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CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.
LETTER II.

(For the first letter see p. 629.) "Nunquam unum militum habituros, ni præstaretur fides publica; libertatem uni"cuique prius reddendam esse, quam arma danda; ut pro Patria Civibusque, non pro "Dominis, pugnent." Livy. Lib. 2.

SIR,I have pointed out, in my former letter, some of the advantages, military and financial, which Great Britain would derive from the active co-operation of the Catholics; and, I have shewn that such co-operation is best to be secured by extending to them a fair participation of constitutional rights. I shall now lay before you the prin cipal grievances, of which they complain.These are partly direct, as consisting of many severe penalties and privations, angrily imposed upon their body in the beginning of the eighteenth century, by several statutes now in force: and, they are partly indirect or consequential, so far as those statutes inspire, and almost sanction, a certain spirit of contempt and bitter hostility against Catholics, in persons who can with impunity, in a thousand ways, embarrass, insult, and injure them to an extent far beyond the apparent design of those very statutes.--You, Mr. Cobbett, who have, perhaps, never been in Ireland, and whose English pride has never been humbled by any consciousness of unfair depression in your native land, may not readily conceive the twofold operations of laws, which by stigmatising the individual, arm men with reasons, or at least apologies, for acting in a manner most oppressive towards that individual. But, I am here to state facts, not to discuss their causes.-The Catholics, then, whether by the direct or indirect, and consequential operation of the penal statutes, whether by positive clauses, or by the spirit and policy of them, are, 1. Incapacitated from sitting or voting in either House of Parliament. So far as this incapacity affects their nobility, it is particularly severe. They are so few in num

[802

ber, that no possible danger could result from its removal. There are, I think, only six of them in Ireland, six in England, and two in Scotland. In these times, Sir, it appears to me that the ancient nobility ought to be held in peculiar respect amongst the people of England. You want such men at this day. They would confer a lustre upon the "Domus Procerun," and lend additional weight and dignity to their deliberations. Yet you reject these descendants of the Talbots, the Arundels, and the Howards, the inheritors of the name, honours and virtues of some of the most renowned Barons; you reject them from the great council of the nation, because they have not yet rejected the faith of their ancestors, or renounced the notions of the Edwards and the Henrys! The premier Earl of England, bearing a naine" clarum et venerabile," is, at this moment, of the number; a number so small, that some of them, especially the late LORD PETRE, have feelingly complained of this exclusion, as amounting to little short of a personal imputation against them.--The exclusion from the House of Commons, is open to nearly similar observations. Where the House consists of 658 members, what hazard can be apprehended from the score or two of Catholic gentlemen, who might possibly in the ensuing ten or fifteen years, find their way into it? They now complain, that they are not represented in Parliament, although they are heavily taxed. They feel themselves, moreover, liable to be deeply injured in their properties and persons, by statutes enacted at such a distance without their privity. Hence, every session is to them a subject of suspicion and terror.2. Catholics are excluded not only from all the offices of state, as they are termed, but generally from every honour, dignity, and odice of trust or emolument under the crown. This needs no comment.. -3. They are proscribed from all promotion and advancement of the least value in any one of the learned professions, and likewise in the

ermy, navy, revenue, and public boards. 4. They may not hold, exercise, or enjoy any office or franchise in any city, borough, or town corporate, (not even that of townclerk or common council man) neither may any Catholic be a high sheriff, sub-sheriff, or sheriff's clerk, or hold any municipal of fice whatsoever, in any county, city, or town in the Empire.-5. They are excluded jealously from even the freedom of cities and -towns, although, by Irish statutes, persons of all other persuasions and countries (not excepting Turks or Jews), are entitled to their freedom, on payment of twenty shillings for each person. The effects of these three

last heads of exclusion may be conceived to be not a little unfavourable to their education, moral virtues, industry and quiet. How they operate upon the administration of justice, in the selection of juries, and consequently, in decisions upon questions affecting their property, character, liberty, and life itself; and how far those valuable possessions are secured to the Catholics, can be learned only in Ireland.-6. They are subject to a land-tax, varying from sixpence to two shillings by the acre, which is levied by parochial vestries, from which vestries they are by law excluded. This tax is imposed ostensibly for the purposes of building, rebuilding, repairing or beautifying the churches of the established religion. It is levied from the tenant or occupier, who is, in nineteen cases out of twenty, a Catholic, generally poor, and subject also to heavy tithes and rack-rents, which are rigidly exacted. How the tax thus levied is managed or applied, makes no part of our present inquiry.

-7. Those Catholics, who possess any property in lands, enjoy it only upon the condition, that they shall have taken in public court, certain long oaths, and signed certain declarations, which, to say the least, are unnecessary; and, should a Catholic proprietor happen to be an infant, or non compos, or beyond the seas, or labouring under any mental or bodily infirmity, which may disable him from performing this condition, or (which is equally probable) should he through ignorance omit so to do, his estate may be wrested from him under the old Penal Code; since the Repealing Act, which prescribes those oaths and declarations, has not provided for any such disability or omis sion.-8. Finally, to pass over several lesser grievances, each of which, however, would, in England, be deemed of some magnitude, they are excluded and proscribed from upwards of 14,000 public situations of trust, emolument, dignity, or power, to the salaries of which they principally contribute.

They already afford 100,000 armed men for the service of the state, and bear th far larger portion of imposts to the amount of nearly ten millions sterling, which are annually raised from the people, in the shape of customs, excise, charges of collection, county cesses, church rates, town tolls or tithes. Yet they partake not of one shilling of the income derived from the management or collection of this great revenue, or of any portion of the patronage annexed to it? The reader may form some conception, though a faint one, of those grievances which the Catholics suffer from the Penal Laws, by making their case for a moment, his own. Let him suppose himself to be so branded and incapacitated, as is here described; to be set aside by the laws of his country, as unworthy to fill any office of trust or honour in it; to be denied that share of distributive justice, which apportions reward as well as punishment according to the deserts of each member of the community; to find closed against him every path, which his ambition, his courage, his genius, or his industry might prompt him to explore. Let him suppose himse't to be so taxed, so teased, so worried, and so contemned in his country, as to feel his situation more vile in many respects than that of the "blaspheming Jew." Let him see himself avoided in private society as a degraded being, daily sinking in self-estimation, yet indignant at the scorn annexed to his lot, and vainly looking around him for the succour and smiles of those laws and that constitution, which exalt his fellow citizens upon his misery and mortification. Then let him consult those eloquent panegyrists of our constitution, Montesquieu, De Lolme, and Blackstone, who have pourtrayed its blessings in such fascinating colours, and let him ask them, does he partake of those inestimable blessings, or does he enjoy that "political liberty" which they have pronounced to be the very end and purpose of that admirable constitution? Let him ask his own heart, whether he has liberty of conscience, and whether he is perfectly free to follow its harmless and honest dictates? The answer will be easily found. It is sealed in the breast of every Englishman.So much for the present condition of the Catholics of Ireland. From this condition

they seek to be relieved. Ea enim præsidia libertatis petunt, non licentiæ ad oppugnandes alios. AN IRISH FREEHOLDER.-Düblin, Nov. 6, 1804.

INCAPACITY OF HENRY THE SIXTH.

SIR,In the conclusion of my last let

ter, I signified my intention of proceeding to. give such an historical sketch of my own, as I may think necessary to the subject I have undertaken. Since that time, and especially since my return to this great capital of information, as well as of empire and commerce, I have not been idle. My materials are ready. They are simple; they are such. as will enable me to present to your readers, certainly a more correct, and, if I do not sadly fail in the execution, a much inore satis factory account than has yet appeared, of that portion of our aunals. There are, however, some cobwebbs still dangling in my path, which I must brush away, before I can conveniently pursue the track which I have marked out for myself. Two or three passages, which, bghtly touched here, may only better prepare the mind for that which is to come, would be an impertinent interruption hereafter in the shape of a long note or uninteresting digression. But what I have most at heart (and in all these preliminary discus sions, this you must have observed, Sir, has been a leading object with me) is to wipe off some few more of the general and illconsidered aspersions which have been hasti'y or wantonly thrown on the character of the Parliaments of that period. If I cannot do this, all my labour is fruitless. What may have been the conduct of inen, who ought not to have any authority with us, it is of yery little importance to know.

An injurious remark of this kind to which I have alluded, has dropped from Sir John Fenn in his curious and entertaining publication of the Paston Papers. From the contents of a letter or two there printed, he has taken occasion to reflect on the dependency of the House of Commons in those days *. The principal letter is from the Earl of Oxford to Mr. Paston. It thence appears, that the Dukes of York and Norfolk had met at Bury; stayed till the next morning under the same roof; and written a canvassing let ter to one of Lord Oxford's tenants in favour of Sir William Chamberlayn and Mr. Henry Grey, as candidates for the county of Norfolk; of whom the Earl expresses his approbation to his friend. Now, Sir, the best mode of trying these pretty observations on past ages, is to apply them to real life, as we see it passing before our eyes. Imagine then, if you will, that during a general election, the illustrious person who is next in succession to the throne (as the Duke of York then was) should dine in company with the present Duke of Norfolk; that the Earl of Oxford should learn

Paton Papers, V.I. I.

accidentally to whom they wished success, and write to some respectable gentleman of the county, desiring him to add his support; imagine too, that letter to be intercepted or discovered after the gentleman's, death, by some prying executor; would any soberminded man cry out at once, there is an end to all freedom of Parliaments? At least before he raised his voice, would he not ask a little, what was the actual event of the canvas? Let us then ascertain the result, if we can in the instance before 09. The first step is to fix the year in which the letter was written; for it has no other date than the 18th of October. All that the editor informs us is, that it must have been before 1455. But it is more easy to point a well-turned sentence, than trace an obscure fact. Sir John Fenn is as sparing of research, as he is generally free of conjecture, on such points. Otherwise he might have found, that for a long series of years there were only two, when, writs for a new parliament having been issued in September, the elections were going on in the middle and end of October; and these were the years 1449 and 1450. It is well known, however, that in October, 1449, Richard, after a truly royal progress through a country which, sent to subdue by arms and martial rigour, he had pacified by mildness and conciliation, was receiving at Dublin Castle, the simple presents of respect and affec tionale congratulations of the Irish chieftains, on the birth of his son, afterwards the unfortunate Duke of Clarence. It mu t therefore have been in 1450; and, accordingly, we find, for the first and last time, the name of Henry Gray as one of the representatives of that county. But the principal candidate in the same interest, Sir William Chamberlayn, was thrown out. He was beaten by Sir Miles Stapylton, who had been chosen more than once before, and most probably have been known to be attached to the court party, which we have reason to believe he steadily and zealously supported in this parliament, since we know that as soon as it was over, § he got what we might now call a very handsome job. The Queen and the Dake of Somerset, in

Cattle, then the only wealth of the country See the Catalogue of the ottonean 385. lately printed by the House of Commons, where several documents of the Duke's procedings in freland are mentioned.

Born there on Tuesday, October 21. Sce Wm. de Wyreestre.

Prynne's Erevia Parliamentaria Rediviva. The instrument was dated 1 June, 29 H. VI. See it recited Rons. Parl. yol. V. p. 394.

whose hands the King was even then little more than a passive instrument, selected him with Sir Thomas Scales to have the wardship of the young Duke of Suffolk's

estates.

The other canvassing letter addressed to Mr. Paston is from the Duchess of Norfolk, and bears date on the 8th of June, "It is

66

thought right necessary," she says, " for "divers causes, that my Lord have at this "time in the parliament such persons as 64 belong to him and are of his menial scr 61 vants:" wherefore she applies in favour of Mr. John Howard and Sir Roger Cham berlayn. The expressions here used point to some critical epoch, when the Duke himself was too much engaged elsewhere to attend to the election, and when every influence which he possessed may be expected to have been employed in its full extent. It was, in fact, at a moment when they with whom he acted in public had just gained the ascendency, and historians commonly de"scribe them as having every thing in their power. The date positively refers it to the parliament, which was summoned immediately after the first battle of St. Albans, to meet in the beginning of the following

July.

The appellation of menial servants may startle a mere modern reader; but anciently men of considerable rank had appointments in the households of those, who were of still higher rank. This Mr. John Howard was nearly related to his noble master, succeeded afterwards as heir to the estates, and acquired ultimately the title of his family. He was "the Jockey of Norfolk," who fell fighting valiantly for the House of York in Bosworth-field. Sir Roger held the office of Chamberlain to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, when that popular nobleman fell a sacrifice to the old animosity of Cardinal Beaufort, and the jealous ambition of the Queen and her favourite Suffolk. He was himself arrested, imprisoned, tried, and found guilty; in consequence, as he afterwards publicly asserted, of great menaces and intimidations practised on the jury, but he experienced what Hume justly calls the barbarous mercy of the court: he was carried to the place of execution, hanged, cut down alive, marked with a knife to be quartered, and then pardoned. He had lately been restored in blood by the last parliament. The memory of his late noble

His words are << for fere and drede of gret ma"naces, and doute of losse of their lyves and goodes "heryn." See his petition to be restored in blood, which was granted, and ordered to be exemplified 15th May, 32-H. VI. Rolls. Parl. vol. V. p. 450.

master was almost idolized by the common people, and his sufferings in that cause must have endeared him to them. His present friends pursued the same course of politics, and endeavoured in all respects to identify themselves with the party of the deceased Duke of Gloucester; and they were now triumphant in an appeal to the sword. Yet, Sir, could you suppose it? Such was the dependence of the House of Commons, on great men through the servility of the elec tors, that, instead of Mr. Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlayn, with all their own proper recommendations, and "with all appliances and means to boot," the county returned William Calthorp and John Heydon, names which never before ap peard in the list of their representatives.

Now I am on the chapter of elections, suffer me, Sir, to mention another disappointment hitherto unknown, of the same Duke of Norfolk. I do it the rather, because it collaterally applies to my principal subject; it coincides with the time of the Duke of York's first protectorate. A va cancy then happened in Suffolk, where the interest of the two Dukes seems to have prevailed more decidedly than in the neighbouring county. The Duke of Norfolk's tenants and servants proceeded in a body to the Hustings, the Sheriff, who was probably in the opposite interest, pronounced their behaviour riotous, shut the poll-books, and refused to make any return. A complaint was brought against him before the council, but in the meantime, one member at least, who would probably have fa voured the power of Richard, was thus excluded from a session most critically impor

tant.

These three instances, which I have exa. mined, afford us the only satisfactory insight, which I know, into the interior movements of any election in those days; and these happened precisely in the three seve ral occasions, when the Yorkists made the greatest exertions, and were most advan tageously circumstanced for making such exertions. Yet, we have seen that the Duke of Norfolk failed in four out of five members, whom he wished to carry. On the other hand, there is a memorable instrument extant which shews, that in the composition of one of these Parliaments at

least, another sort of influence was more prevalent. Annexed to the return of the Sheriff of Huntingdonshire, in 1450, is a declaration under the seals of 124 freeholders stating, that à candidate not a gentleman bybirth, (as a recent law then required him to be) had been put in nomination by a body of 70 freeholders, whose franchises the complainants dispute, but 47 of whom they allow to have been admitted to take the oath, and give their votes without interruption; after which the complainants say, they could not themselves get up to take the oaths, and give their votes, without a breach of the peace, and so from a dread of the inconveniencies that might ensue, they went away without voting at all. This proceeding clearly could not be called any election of their two candidates; it could not even afford a fair conjecture of the sense of the county, as they confess there were 300 good freeholders more. They were returned, however, and as far as appears, sate too. Their qualifications were irresistible. The consideration avowed for nominating them was, that they were of the King's household,* and therefore, as a great aid to the crown was necessary, they would be most likely to dispatch the supplies and grant

away

the money of their constituents to the King's satisfaction. The mutual proscriptions which soon ensued in the civil wars will assist us in obtaining some additional information, though imperfect. The names of the principal knights and gentlemen who adhered to one party or the other may there be traced. If we compare thein with such lists as remain of the members of the House of Commons, we shall see when one or the other succeeded, though not when they were foiled, as we cannot know what elections were contested; only we may presume, that, in moments of popular ferment and political animosity, both sides would put forth their utmost

The result

of such an inquiry, I believe from my own examination, would not essentially vary what we have seen to be the conclusion of a more accurate though very confined inves tigation.

Here I must at present pause. All which I have now written relates to the princi

This seems to be the sense. But there is some error in the printed copy. The words are, 66 your men, of your honourable household, named in your Cheaker-Roll, should be most like the expedition, and to execute and assent to the said aydes for yowe our Sovereigne Lord, &c. &c. There are some declared chasms in the instrument, perhaps it stood originally to intend the expedition, or some similar phrase. Prynne in the errata apologizes that be could not revise the sheets.

ples, which as far as we can discover, entered into the origin and first formation of the popular branch of those Parliaments, whose conduct is hereafter to be more particularly considered. But there are also some imputations which have been cast, partly by enemies, and partly by misjudging friends, on the general dispositions of those assemblies, in some passages of history that' bear upon my present subject. To these with your permission, Sir, I shall next address myself. I am, Sir, &c. &c. T. M, Middle Temple.

REPEAL OF THE TEST-LAWS.
LETTER I.

SIR, I take the liberty of sending you some considerations on the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, which have occurred to me on reading a letter signed Z., in your last Political Register. At the same time I beg to add, that if there can be adduced any proof of danger to the Protestant church established in England by the enlargement of the privileges of the followers of the Presbyterian and Catholic persuasions, I will most sincerely retract these my opinions. I understand the objections to the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts to be-1. The solemn oath taken by His Majesty, at his coronation, to maintain, to the utmost of his power, the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion, as established by the law. To preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do, or shall, appertain unto them or any of them.-2. The. danger of violating one of the articles of the union between England and Scotland, expressly declared to be a fundamental and essential article, and so to be held in all time coming. (5 Anne c. 8. article 25. section 10. 11.)-3. The fear of re-establishing Popery or Presbyterianism within His Majesty's dominions, by opening a door to the places of power and influence to the enemies of the Protestant church. To the first objection I beg leave to propose the following answer, -We are to recollect, that the oath is imposed and taken by virtue of an Act of Parliament, and that, Parliaments being. omnipotent with regard to temporal matters, may repeal that act. But here it will be asked, would not His Majesty violate his conscience, should he assent to the repeal? by whose assent only can such oath and the duties, consequent thereon be dispensed with; and without which no such dispensation can be, lawful? This we need not at present con