the Roman Catholics and for Protestant Dissenters: we ask liberty. The very term toleration implies that you possess a power which no human creature ought to claim over the mode in which another worships that Being," in whom," according to the words of the Church of England Liturgy, than which man never devised better," in whom standeth our eternal life," and "whose service is perfect freedom." Toleration is but as a scabbard to cloathe the sword of persecution: whilst it covers the keenness of the edge, it preserves for use the weapon within, and retains its form. That weapon it is which a government, conforming to the spirit of Christianity or of Liberty, must cast away and renounce for ever.'-pp. 13, 14.

Equally clear and cogent is the argument used by his lordship, in order to prove that the footing of equality with their fellowsubjects, which is all that they seek, is not political power. Mere eligibility to civil office, is not power; it is privilege. Privilege is what belongs to a member of the state; power is what belongs to the state itself. We cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of extracting from this well-reasoned and spirited production, another passage, in which the dangers apprehended by some persons, as likely to attend Catholic emancipation, are shewn to be utterly

futile.

'Parliament, I have heard it said, might be filled with Catholics; all places of trust and honour might be filled with Catholics; and England might by degrees become again a Catholic country. Indeed!-If the House of Commons were to be filled with Catholics, whose fault would it be? The fault of the electors. I have known the having voted for the Catholics urged with some success as an objection to a candidate at an election. I do not think that the being a Catholic would in many places be a successful recommendation of one. What power is it apprehended is to deprive the people, after Catholic Emancipation shall have passed, of the means of returning Protestants to the House of Commons, if they choose it? And if any where the people should prefer the electing a Catholic, I only ask a free choice for the people. But it appears to me that the answer to the whole objection is simpler yet. A religion can prevail in a state only from one or more of these three causes,-its own intrinsic truth and excellence, or the property and talents of its professors, or a simultaneous inclination and consent of the majority of the people. If, then, we say, that by the removal of the present restrictive laws, the Roman Catholic religion would, in any natural, or probable, or even possible event, ultimately prevail, we must admit that our alarms are founded on one at least of these three premises; either that we are now by penal power oppressing the cause of Truth; or that we are excluding the majority of the property and talents of our country; or that we are counteracting the general wish of the people. Now, in fact, I do not believe, nor would our antagonists admit, any one of these positions; and therefore I do not apprehend the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion. Indeed, it is a supposition which I should reluctantly adopt, because insulting to Protestantism itself, that there is any danger that a form of 'church government, which the spirit and energy of the people overthrew at the beginning of the sixteenth century, should be re-established by common

consent in the nineteenth. It would, in other words, be to suppose that the advances of civilization, learning, and liberty, have impaired the popularity, and therefore endangered the security of the Protestant faith. When we argue the right to exclude the Roman Catholics, we represent them as a contemptible minority; but when we argue the danger of admitting them, we suppose them a formidable majority. Both cannot be true. But then it is said, "What is now a minority, contemptible for the smallness of its numbers, and contemptible for the bigotry and folly of its professors, may in process of time become a majority.' No high compliment this to the zeal, talents, virtue, or popularity of the Established Church.

"If, then, says a minister of our own church, the Rev. John Fisher, rector of Wavendon, in this county, in a sermon published some years ago, and entitled, "The Utility of the Church Establishment, and its Safety consistent with Religious Freedom,"-" If, then, the Protestant religion. could have originally worked its way in this country against numbers, prejudices, bigotry, and interest; if, in times of its infancy, the power of the prince could not prevail against it; surely, when confirmed by age, and rooted in the affections of the people,-when invested with authority, and in full enjoyment of wealth and power,-when cherished by a sovereign who holds his very throne by this sacred tenure, and whose conscientious attachment to it well warrants the title of Defender of the Faith,-surely any attack upon it must be contemptible, any alarm of danger must be imaginary."-pp. 16-18.

It is not difficult, we think, to provide securities against all these imaginary dangers; we shall mention one, which has been suggested by a most respectable divine, and which appears to us quite unobjectionable. If complete emancipation be granted to the catholics, let the noblemen and gentlemen of that persuasion, who may have seats in either house of parliament, be precluded by law from voting on any question essentially connected with the property or other concerns of the Protestant Church. This would be a simple, but a most effectual barrier against all the dangers which conscientious protestants apprehend.

The charge of a divided allegiance has been lately revived against the Catholics, after it had slumbered more than a hundred years. It is a charge difficult to be dealt with, because it relates entirely to an operation of the mind, viewless and intangible. Lord Liverpool admits, that the Catholics take the oath of allegiance in its plain and manifest sense. But he insists, that while they acknowledge the spiritual jurisdiction of the pope, they cannot pay so full an allegiance to the king as a Protestant does. It is true that the Catholics do not acknowledge the king as the head of their church, but neither do the Dissenters; and, therefore, the charge of an imperfect, though not perhaps of a divided allegiance, falls as heavily upon the latter as the former. But the truth is, that obedience to the king, as the head of the established church, is an act wholly distinct from allegiance. The latter is a civil tie, which has nothing whatever to do with spiritual matters; moreover, it is a tie which a subject contracts at the moment of his birth, and it is not

in his power to divest himself of it, to tamper with it, much less to divide it, even if he had any desire to do so, unless, indeed, he chose to expose himself to the consequences of high treason. But let us see the sort of answer which the conduct of the Catholics has given to this metaphysical charge; and here again we avail ourselves of the eloquent and forcible reasoning of Lord Nugent.

'But it is said, and from high authority too, that to a king who is not a Roman Catholic, they cannot bear other than a divided allegiance. I say the charge is unsupported by fact; and if it were true, would not be a very discreet charge to make against more than seven millions of people, now living within the allegiance of the king of this empire. I say, further, that it is disproved wherever Roman Catholics are admitted (and that is every where but here), to a full enjoyment of civil rights under sovereigns not of their creed. I say that it is disproved in Prussia, disproved in Denmark, disproved in Sweden, disproved in Hanover, disproved in the Netherlands, disproved throughout the Russian empire, and proved no where.

It is a charge not imputed by the laws of England, nor by the oaths which exclude the Catholics; for those oaths impute only spiritual errors. But it is imputed, which is more to the purpose, by those persons who approve of the excluding oaths, and wish them retained. But, to the whole of this imputation—even if no other instance could be adduced; as far as a strong and remarkable example can prove the negative of an assumption which there is not a single example to support,-the full, and sufficient, and incontestible answer is Canada. Canada, which, until you can destroy the memory of all that now remains to you of your sovereignty on the North American continent, is an answer practical, memorable, difficult to be accounted for, but blazing as the sun itself in sight of the whole world, to the whole charge of divided allegiance. At your conquest of Canada, you found it Roman Catholic; you had to choose for her a constitution in church and state. You were wise enough not to thwart public opinion. Your own conduct towards Presbyterianism in Scotland was an example for imitation; your own conduct towards Catholicism in Ireland was a beacon for avoidance; and in Canada you established and endowed the religion of the people. Canada was your only Roman Catholic colony. Your other colonies revolted; they called on a Catholic power to support them, and they achieved their independence. Catholic Canada, with what Lord Liverpool would call her half-allegiance, alone stood by you. She fought by your side against the interference of Catholic France. To reward and encourage her loyalty, you endowed in Canada bishops to say mass, and to ordain others to say mass, whom, at that very time, your laws would have hanged for saying mass in England; and Canada is still yours, in spite of Catholic France, in spite of her spiritual obedience to the Pope, in spite of Lord Liverpool's argument, and in spite of the independence of all the states that surround her. This is the only trial you have made. Where you allow to the Roman Catholics their religion undisturbed, it has proved itself to be compatible with the most faithful allegiance. It is only where you have placed allegiance and religion before them as a dilemma, that they have preferred (as who will say they ought not?) their religion to their allegiance. How then stands the imputation? Disproved by history, disproved in all states where both religions co-exist, and in both

hemispheres: and asserted in an exposition by Lord Liverpool, solemnly and repeatedly abjured by all Catholics, of the discipline of their church.' -pp. 34-36.

We really feel ashamed for our country, when we think of the mass of prejudice, which still exists amongst us upon this question of the emancipation of the Catholics. It is not for them alone we contend, but for all persons dissenting from the religion of the state. It is the principle of civil and religious liberty which we advocate; a principle acknowledged and acted upon now in every country in Europe, except Spain and England. Does not the reader blush to see the two countries thus placed in juxta-position? So dissimilar in every other respect, so immeasurably beneath us in laws, in commerce, in power, in wealth, in every thing that can constitute the pride of national character; must it be admitted that in matters of religion, England is as intolerant, as inquisitorial as Spain? Let us hope, in the name of justice and common sense, that this question is now to be agitated in parliament for the last time. For ourselves, we are tired of it. It would be a positive relief to us to see it removed for ever from the arena of political discussion. Session after session comes this eternal topic, and feeling is wasted, and time exhausted, in appealing to public opinion, against the continuance of these monstrous laws, which oppress seven millions of our fellow-subjects, and defame the remainder. And again and again we ask, to what useful purpose do they serve? Is it useful to England that discontent shall reign through every county of Ireland? That a million of Englishmen, with the Duke of Norfolk at their head, shall feel dissatisfied and indignant that they are deprived of their due station in the community to which they belong? Is it useful to the state, to set men about inquiring into the religion of their neighbours, and instead of teaching them, in the spirit of Christianity, to treat each other with kindness, rather to diffuse among them topics of discord and animosity? In any case, such policy is at least questionable; but when religion is made the instrument of such unseemly hatred, can a government that permits it be otherwise than criminal?

ART. IV. A Complete View of the Joint Stock Companies formed during the Years 1824, 1825; being Six Hundred and Twenty-four in Number: shewing the Amount of Capital, Number of Shares, Amount Advanced, Present Value, Amount liable to be called, Fluctuations in Price, Names of Bankers, Solicitors, &c. By Henry English. 8vo. pp. 43. Boosey and Son. 1827.

FUTURE historians will find themselves under great obligations to Mr. English, for having, in this pamphlet, brought within a small compass, and exhibited in a clear and luminous manner, the symptoms of the most extraordinary mercantile hallucination which is contained in the annals of the world,-a hallucination which un

settles, or, at least, tends to unsettle, our belief in that increase of judgment and discretion which is supposed to proceed, and which, by hypothesis, ought to proceed, from an increase of the means of knowledge, and the rapidity and uncertainty of its diffusion. If the details of this hallucination had been found in the chronicles of our ancestors, or if some scrutinising traveller had brought them from China or Japan; they would, to a certainty, have been set down, either as romances of the chronicler, and a license of the traveller, or they would have been considered as characteristic of a people in gross ignorance of the principles upon which business ought to be done, and among whom political economy, as a science, had never been so much as hinted at. But the thing has actually taken place before our eyes; we can no more question its existence, than we can question our own; and we still continue to give ourselves the same credit for wisdom and foresight, as if no such proof of the opposite qualities had taken place.

Between this malady and that which afflicted the country in 1719 and 1720, there are several points of resemblance: both lasted for nearly the same period, and both were fraught with disastrous consequences. The mania of the last century was, however, comparatively limited in its mischievous effects; and though it produced, probably, more instances of absolute destruction than the recent one, yet the wound which it inflicted upon the general commerce and prosperity, does not appear to have been so deep. This may be accounted for from the different circumstances of the times. In the eighteenth century communication was slow, and thus the connexion, the habits, and the ambition of the people were much more confined to their particular districts; and in this way, while the people of London were suffering severely the consequences of their own folly, those of the remote provinces were comparatively untouched. Nor is the difference confined to the greater facility with which people from every quarter of the country could, in the latter case, be more speedily involved in the bubbles; for now, also, the trade of the country partakes much more of the swiftness and the simplicity of one great engine, than it did a century ago. The system of credit, too, is incalculably wider; not only taken on the whole, but absolutely, in proportion to the whole business done at the two periods. Hence the machine of the national industry being extended in its dimensions, accelerated in its speed, and resting, in a great part at least, upon a much less secure foundation than it did then, is much more liable to get out of order, and, probably, also less easily put to rights, in consequence of its very immensity and speed.

Viewing the two manias in this light, it is easy to see the real difference between them: that of the last century was throughout a complete gambling concern, interfering with the general industry of the country in hardly any other way, than by absorbing the savings of that industry; while the gambling of the present century actu