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against them! There are no religionists, there never were any, on whom the lex talionis would fall with such terrible severity. But we will say that, with such limitations as humanity requires, and as our faith enjoins, no sect is entitled to ask for more toleration than it is willing to give, and than it actually gives wherever it is dominant. If our principles are declared by them to be so pernicious, that a Protestant however blameless, however amiable, however virtuous and pious, must necessarily be excluded because of them, from the kingdom of heaven,--surely they ought not to complain, as of a grievance and injustice, that the British Protestant Government has deemed it necessary, because of theirs, to exclude them from seats in the legislature, and from a few offices in the state.

"So much for the principle of toleration, as urged in favour of further concessions to the Roman Catholics.

"The matter (to use Mr. Burke's words) does not concern toleration, but establishment. The complaint arises from confounding private judgment, where rights are anterior to law, and the qualifications which the law creates for its own magistracies, whether civil or religious. To take away from men their lives, their liberty, or their property-those things, for the protection of which society was introduced--is great hardship and intolerable tyranny; but to annex any

condition you please to benefits artificially created, is the most just, natural, and proper thing in the world.'"

"The Roman Catholics (said the late Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1805) have obtained all that belongs to toleration. After the 18th of his Majesty, which removed from the Roman Catholics the restraints that affected the grant and acceptance of leases, and provided against the consequences of the conformity of the son with the Established Church, so far as those consequences concerned the estates of the Roman Catholic parents; blotting for ever from the Irish statute book, that corrupt and unhallowed motive of conversion: after the 22d of his Majesty, which enabled the Roman Catholic, on taking the oath of allegiance, to purchase and dispose of lands in like manner as his Majesty's Protestant subjects, and on the same terms, freed the ecclesiastic of that persuasion from the pains and penalties of former acts; after the statute of the same year, authorizing Roman Catholics to teach 'schools, and giving new facilities to the guardianship of Roman Catholic children after the 32d of his Majesty, which removed disqualifications from lawyers and attorneys of that persuasion, sanctioned the intermarriages of Protestants with Roman Catholics, and repealed laws that prohibited foreign, and embarrassed domestic education: after the 33d of his Majesty, which was said to have left the Ro

man Catholic nothing to ask, (and well might the assertion be credited,) after the 33d of his Majesty, which swept from the Irish statute book almost all the disqualifications of that description of his Majesty's subjects, modelled the oath of allegiance to the taste and scruples of the Roman Catholics, put down the oath of abjuration, the declaration, the sacramental test, and enabled the Roman Catholics to vote at elections, to hold commissions of the peace, to execute offices civil and military, and to enjoy all manner of places of trust and emolument, except such as relate to the Established Church, and such as are expressly specified in the body of the act; after this long string of statutes, each of which, in its turn, was supposed to comprehend and redress all that was of grievance among them, they have no just cause of complaint. They are as free as the Protestant in the acquisition, in the enjoyment, and in the disposal of property of every species; they can purchase lands, settle their estates, and enjoy all the profits of commercial industry equally with him; they possess every benefit of civil liberty as fully as any other subjects.

"The question is not whether they shall have a full toleration; they have it already. It is not whether they shall be protected in their persons and in their property; they are under the protection of the same laws as the rest of the King's subjects:-but whether they shall unconditionally share in every part of political power. The

religious restraints, under which the petitioners once laboured are already removed. And we must no longer speak of pains and penalties* as attaching to the religion which they profess, when they are empowered by the law of the land, to exercise their religious worship, and to maintain their religious opinions, with the same freedom, as the members of the Established Church.

* "Dr. Troy, in a pastoral letter dated Dublin, 25th of May, 1798, makes a warm and handsome eulogy on the large share of civil, political, and religious rights with which the Roman Catholics were now legally invested. But another prelate, Dr. Moylan, expresses the same sentiments so much better, that I would prefer making use of his words. I would have you,' says he, addressing the Roman Catholics of his diocese, Cork, 16th April, 1798, I would have you not unmindful of the blessings you enjoy, and the favours you have received: certain privileges excepted, you possess the advantages of the Constitution. The penal laws under which our fathers groaned, have been almost all done away. You have the comfort of exercising your holy religion without control; and to the benignity of government and the liberality of Parliament, we are indebted for the establishment and endowment of a Roman Catholic college on an extensive plan, which will afford a liberal education to our youth, and a supply of clergy to our Church, when the present generation have finished their career.' These are favours that should excite and call out all our gratitude; and this gratitude we should evince by a steady attachment to the Constitution, an unshaken loyalty to our gracious Sovereign,-a Sovereign who has done more for the Roman Catholic body, and, indeed, for this kingdom in general, than any or all of his predecessors.'-See Rev. Dr. Phillpotts's very able and powerful Letter to Mr. Canning, p.

128-9."

We are not, therefore, concerned with the question, whether we shall extend their religious liberty; for of that liberty they are already in complete possession. We are concerned with the question whether we shall extend their political power. And surely we may venture to oppose an extension of political power without incurring, either the charge of intolerance, or the charge of inhumanity."

III.

That Roman Catholics can found no claim to further Privileges on the ground of abstract right.

"THE argument (again observes the Quarterly Reviewer) which demands these further concessions on the ground of justice, rests on no better ground. We hear much declamation upon the abstract right of every man to worship God as he pleases; and, in God's name, who-but the Roman Catholic--disputes it? It is a right which has long been enjoyed by every denomination of sects in these kingdoms, which every man exercises at his own peril, and from which there is nothing in the laws, usages, or disposi

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