God they are unimaginable for all into whose hands these volumes will pass, the few alone excepted who have seen the books wherein, by authority of the Romish Church, they are exposed. Do not call upon me here for vouchers, Sir,.. you know to what I am alluding! But, setting aside these abominations, I affirm that the Confessional, in its ordinary effects, has done more toward producing a general corruption of manners than the Press itself, even where the Press is altogether free, and its freedom most abused. It is in the most Catholic countries of Europe that the Cicisbeo and the Cortejo are recognized persons in the drama of domestic life. A Frenchman who lived in England when English morals were at the worst, observed, nevertheless, that the Protestant religion was as advantageous for husbands, as the Romish for those persons whom he was pleased to call lovers. The reason has been well expressed by the Piemontese writer Maranda. "Nature," says that author, "has placed two barriers for the preservation of female virtue...modesty and By confession and absolution the priest removes them both." Injurious in every

remorse.

* Saint Evremont. Eng. trans. vol. i. 41.

+ La nature avoit posé deux barrières pour maintenir la chas

way as the practice of confession is, it is the celibacy of the clergy which has rendered it especially intolerable; and without that celibacy, we are told that the Roman Catholic Church could not exist.

*

teté chez les femmes, la pudeur et les remords. Le prêtre les annéantit toutes les deux, par la confession et l'absolution.-Tableau du Piémont sous le régime des Rois, p. 106.

This book was written by a Revolutionist about the year 1800, but the chapter which it contains on the clergy is not the less worthy of attention. Observe l'Italie toute entière, he says, à quelques nuances près, la confession y est générale et fréquente, et les femmes d'un débordement effroyable. And that these things are cause and effect he gives abundant proof!

"La religion Catholique ne sauroit exister, et n'a jamais existé, sans avoir dans son sein des hommes détachés d'eux-mêmes, de leurs biens, de leur volonté même ; c'est-à-dire des hommes engagés dans le célibat par un lien religieux, dépouillés de leurs biens par un tau religieux, renonçant à leur volonté même par le cœu

d'obéissance."-Le Génie de la Révolution considéré dans l'Education, t. iii. p. 438.

Of Catholic religion this is not true, of the Roman Catholic it is.

345

LETTER VIII.

THOMAS A BECKET.

I HAVE now, Sir, to consider your observations upon the view which is taken in the Book of the Church of Becket's character and conduct. When Dr. Milner says that "the Poet copiously discharges his bile upon this celebrated champion of the Church," I am not surprized at the remark; ..." his similia multa evomuit verius quàm† dixit;"...and it is quite natural that I should appear bilious in the eyes of one who has the black jaundice. But I did not expect that you would have charged me with trying St. Thomas of Canterbury " by the present constitution, the present laws and the present manners of Christian states, and by the present notions of what is fit and proper." With better cause may I complain that, in your statement of the case, you have passed over the main point upon which it + Erasmus. + Page 80.

* Page 17.

turns, and then from loose general assertions deduced inferences which cannot be supported. The clerical immunities, you say, "founded a part of the constitution of every Christian state,..they had been granted and confirmed by wise and great Princes, and from the time in which they were granted, had been observed and respected by the good."* But the facts are as I have stated them... Before the Conquest the Bishop and the Sheriff sate together in the County Court, and clerical causes as well as other were heard before their joint tribunal. William the Conqueror was induced to grant a charter† empowering the clergy to be tried in a court of their own; after which, not so much by grants from wise Princes or weak ones as by aid of the forgeries which they foisted into the Decretals, they claimed an exemption from all secular jurisdiction.

It has been argued that the extension of this privilege to criminal cases was a refuge provided by common law to save the lives of literate offenders. This, if it were so, would be analogous to the custom which prevailed (if I remember rightly) in some of the Italian

* Page 80.

+ Turner, i. 208. Coleridge's Ed. of Blackstone, vol. iv. p. 369. N. 3.

States, whereby a criminal obtained his pardon if he could show that he was the best workman in his craft. But it appears to have grown immediately out of that exemption which the clergy claimed when none but their own body could read, and which they grounded not upon the utility of sparing a learned man, but upon the sanctity of their order, perverting to their purpose the text of Scripture, which says, "touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.' Mr. Barrington has observed that we are not to judge the propriety of this privilege by the present state of things, for, while it was confined to actual priests, the inconvenience was far less than is commonly supposed: because such crimes only were within the benefit as a munificently provided priesthood had little temptation to commit. This observation is confuted by history. It is true that the poorest of the clergy could in those days be under no temptation to steal for want; but the complaints which were made against their immunity, prove that they were not less liable than other men to other temptations; and from the unnatural state wherein they were placed

* Blackstone, b. iv. c. 28. N. a.

+ Ibid. N. 3. p. 369.