SUBSTANCE OF MR. CANNING'S SPEECII, JUNE 22, 1812. (Review, continued from Page 79.) HAVING shown the fatility of the three Principles on 'which Mr. Canning grounded his Speech, we conceive that we have Substantially refuted the Speech itself; unless, Indeed, these three principles, with which the right hon. gentleman paraded, be utterly unconnected with the arguments that follow, (and we suppose he would not like to be fold so) ;-if, therefore, his arguments, as he professes, rest upon his principles, they must fall to the ground, and the entire edifice which his invention reared must crumble into rubbish.-Indeed the case is nearly so; or if the pile which he raised by the magic of his genius (always plastic, always poetic), may be deemed yet to stand; its materials are of a nature so friable, and so flimsy, that they will hardly bear handling, and therefore it will cost us small pains to demolish them entirely. He now proceeds (leaving his three principles to their short-lived fate) to lay down what he calls "two general considerations," which "clash very much with each other," and yet it should seem that they "naturally present themselves to every reflecting mind;" and he adds that in reconciling these opposite and conflicting principles, and in assigning to each its 'due weight in 'human affairs, consists almost the whole art of practical policy."-Withbut making any remarks on these expressions, which really signify very little-we hasten to the two formidable, clashing and conflicting considerations! 1. The dread of innovation." 2. expediency of timely reformation or concession."-The right honorable gentleman shews us, with much unnecessary verbiage, (of which we hail him the greatest of masters, omnium facile princeps), that the Popery "Code existed in perfection only fourteen years;" and that "from the beginning of his present Majesty's reign, to the year 1774, when the first relaxing Statute was enacted, is the short period during which it was at once The In a speech "at Manchester the offer Way, Mr. C. admitted the folly of hoping for peace from making 'concessions' respecting “Anterića; "dóés he not see 'that the same argument holds good respecting the Papists ? complete and stationary.' "Every step since taken," says Mr. Canning, "has been in the spirit of irreverent innovation." Now if it is wrong to innovate, the friends of the Papists occasioned the innovation. But the childish fallacy of the argument lies here; the ingenious Senator himself introduces the term innovation, only for the purpose of running it down. He himself claps it into his parliamentary pillory, on purpose to pelt it. What man of sense, or what writer of authority ever complained of innova tion in altering the laws enacted against Roman Catholics? The true term should have been unnecessary and dangerous alteration. Mr. Canning's eloquence has been wasted upon an antagonist which no man could dread. He has fought with a fabrication of his own fancy. This part of his Speech is mere declamation. It is what he was accustomed to at school and the university. It is a mere hastiludium, a skiomachia, a running at the quintain, banging a man of straw, or a bag of sand. We must here an swer a wise man according to his wisdom; and if he expects to fob us off with a trick of logic, we must recollect what we learnt when we studied that art; and we must protest against a petitio principii, which Dr. Watts defines a supposition of that which is not granted. We do not allow a departure from the system restraining the Papists, to have been an innovation. Mr. C. would have served his clients materially, could he have proved that it was not a dangerous alteration for the worse. That was the beginning of sorrows. Hibernia pacata in 1774, was rendered Hibernia agitata by the concessions then made, furiata by those of 1793, and she has been insana ever since; except during the lucid interval in which the Union took place. The right hon. gentleman in this division of his Speech, quotes Mr. Justice Blackstone, who himself cites the opinion of Montesquieu, respecting the genius and spirit of the laws against Papists; but Mr. Canning omits a part of what Blackstone says in answer to the President Montesquieu, passing it over under the denomination of "some historical allusions." This is a common artifice with crafty plead .... * Did Montesquieu ever give an opinion on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz ? by which, at one stroke, without any civil crime, the French Protestants were driven from their homes and their native land, purely because they professed the reformed religion. This terrible blow was struck in 1685.-Montesquieu was born in 1689. ers of desperate causes; but it is nothing less than an act of disin-" genuousness in Mr. Canning ;-we shall here print what the right hon. gentleman suppressed. "The restless machinations of the Jesuits, during the reign of Elizabeth, the turbulence and uneasiness of the Papists under the new religious establishment, and the boldness of their hopes and wishes for the succession of the Queen of Scots, OBLIGED the parliament to counteract so dangerous a spirit by laws of a great and then perhaps (perhaps, Mr. Justice Blackstone?) necessary severity. The Powder-Treason, in the succeeding reign, struck a panic into James I., which operated in different ways: it occasioned the enacting of new laws against the Papists; but deterred him from putting them in execution. The intrigues of Queen Henrietta in the reign of Charles I., the prospect of a Popish Successor in that of Charles II., the Assassination-Plot in the reign of King William, and the avowed claim of a Popish Pretender to the crown in that and subsequent reigns, will account for the extension of these penalties at those several periods of time."-This is the passage omitted by Mr. Canning-who subjoins (because he supposes that it will answer his purpose), the remainder of Blackstone's Remarks. "But if a time should ever arrive, and perhaps it is not very distant, when all fears of a Pretender shall have vanished, and the power and influence of the Pope shall become feeble, ridiculous and despicable" (who but must think, [says Mr. Canning,] that the learned Judge anticipated the moment in which I am now speaking?) "not only in England, but in every kingdom in Europe, it probably would not then be amiss to review and soften these rigorous edicts, at least till the civil principles of the Roman Catholics called again upon the Legislature to renew them;" &c. And does Mr. Canning think that the civil principles of the Roman Catholics have been such as to justify a repeal of the Popery Code, or even any further concessions? Is rebellion no longer a civil crime?—We are persuaded that had Mr. Justice Blackstone lived to see the Rebellion of 1798, or to read Sir Richard Musgrave's account of it, founded on forensic evidence; and had that venerable lawyer's life been prolonged to this day, had he been enjoying otium cum dignitate, relieved from the toils of business, and spending the remnant of a long life in the bosom of his family; the use which Mr. Canning made of a mutilated passage in his immortal work, would have kindled a new flame of patriot ardour in his soul, and would have stimulated him to a protest like that which we now enter against the attempt of Mr. Canning to influence our minds by quoting a garbled portion of Blackstone's writings against his known principles.-In the same page of the Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 4, p. 58 (Williams's edition, 1791)— Blackstone speaks of the Corporation and Test Acts and calls them two bulwarks erected against "perils from Non-conformists of all denominations, Infidels, Turks, Jews, Heretics, PAPISTS." By the former Act the Oath of Supremacy is enjoined, and by the latter the declaration against transubstantiation is required.-If Mr. Canning thinks that the "influence of the Pope has become feeble, ridiculous, and despicable," in England and Ireland,—we' beg to refer him to Mr. Plowden, who will tell him, ore rotundo, that the Church of Rome is "semper eadem ;" to Dr. Troy, who will inform him that "the religious opinions of the Roman Catholics, being unchangeable, are applicable to all times;" and to any Bishop of the Romish Church, who will assure him that every Prelate must take an oath, part of which is thus worded-"I will be faithful and obedient to St. Peter the Apostle, and to the holy Roman Church, and our Lord the Lord Pope, and to his Successers canonically coming in ;" and as to the exercise of a Veto by the King, in diminution of the Papal authority, the Bishop of Castabala will solemnly declare that "he (once the accredited agent who proposed a Veto) will sooner lose the last drop of his blood, than be instrumental to an Anti-Catholic King's obtaining any power or influence over any part of the Catholic Church;" and he will add, that people "may as well pretend to pluck a beam from the Sun (this is nonsense in the oriental style) as touch a fibre of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction." The Papists adhere to the Pope at this moment with as much devotion as ever. Stripped as he is of temporal dominion, he still exercises spiritual domination; and the besotted disciples of Popery are just as papistical in our days as in the days of our fathers. The time is not yet come to make any further alteration in the Popery Code. If, however, Mr. Canning wishes to adhere to the word innovation, a substitution of his own, for a more appropriate term, we will indulge him; and we say, that whereas from the 18th day of January 1535, when Henry VIII. declared himself Head of the Church of England, under Christ (for which the then Pope excommunicated him on the 30th of August following); it became necessary to restrain and restrict the exercise of Popish power, from time to time, pro re natá, down to the year 1774, when the first concessions were made (according to Mr. Canning);-that departure from a system of 239 years' con tinuance, when the system itself was now rendered perfect, was a most ill-advised and dangerous innovation, as the intolerant, inso, lent, daring, tumultuous, and rebellious spirit of Popery has fully proved by repeated and horrible exemplifications of civil crime. The preambles of the relaxing Statutes, quoted by Mr. C. are founded on opinion, and negative assertion-not so the preambles of the restraining Statutes, wherein tremendous facts are set forth; and whatever good opinion the Legislature once entertained concern. ing the peaceable disposition of the Papists, and their professed wish to testify their loyalty;—the former has been proved unfounded, and the latter has been contradicted by many outrages, and by rebellion itself.-Mr. Canning asks with the imposing air of a sphinx,-" to what point of time do they (meaning the antipapistical constitutionalists) mean to refer; when they exhort us to adhere to the wisdom of our ancestors, and to avoid innovating upon the system our ancestors had framed ?" It requires not an Edipus to answer this; we will fix upon no individual point of time. The wisdom of our ancestors was exhibited in a continued series of legislation for the space of 239 years;-and it was an act of foolish temerity to innovate upon that system in 1774. When Mary reigned, that system suffered interruption.--Providence permitted Protestantism in those evil days, to receive the seal of Martyrdom ;-when Henrietta Maria influenced her uxorious husband in favour of the Papists, the Irish massacre took place and "the land was defiled with blood"-the blood of Protestants, young and old, men, women, children, yea, even unborn infants; and, a thing unheard of, the very cattle of the Protestants were barbarously mangled ;-after the Spirit of Popery was revived by the impartition of civil rights, by various well-meant, but unfortunate concessions from 1774 to 1793-the late Popish rebellion followed" hard upon," and resembled that of 1641 in many |