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nected with the most pressing dangers," is really hard to be reconciled with the wisdom and patriotism they are known to possess. And it is the more extraordinary, as one would naturally suppose it would have occurred to them, that as these dangers were neither seen nor apprehended but by themselves and by their party, the free discussion of the question in Parliament would be the best mode of making them appear, if they did exist, and the most likely to impress a conviction of the necessity of removing them on the minds of all those who should become proselytes to their opinion; and when I consider all the concessions that were made to these noblemen, on this and on other points to which they attached great importance, I am at a loss to reconcile such a want of deference for the opinion of others; such an obstinate resistance to importunity, so much self-denial; and, I am sorry to add, so much want of generous feeling, with so much good sense and such exalted sentiments as they are known to possess.

We are sorry to say that we cannot assist the Author, in reconciling the steps which Lords Grey and Grenville took, on the Regent's application to them, with "good sense and exalted sentiments." To attempt this would be, in our opinion, a hopeless and an endless task.

Mr. Grattan, in a speech delivered April 20th, 1812, had spoken of the Papists as a class of men deprived of all civil Rights, On this the Author observes:

And have the Catholics of Ireland no civil rights?-do they in reality possess none? Has [have] all the privileges ceded to them, all the acts that have been repealed in the present reign, been registered in water, and such only as has [have] been refused engraved on brass? Have they not the right of franchise? Do they not vote for Members of Parliament ? Has not their intermarriage with Protestants been made legal? Have they not been admitted to plead as barristers and attorneys in our courts of law, &c. &c.? from all which advantages their vices and crimes had heretofore compelled the legislature to exclude them. How then can they be said to be deprived of all civil rights, merely for following the religion of their ancestors?

Mr. Grattan had said that "the State could not pretend to govern the religion of the people." The Impartial Observer replies:

I must, however, remind the Right Honorable Advocate, that the State does not pretend to govern the Catholic religion; it disclaims any

interference in its spiritual concerns. The restrictions from time to time imposed upon Catholics, was [were] in consequence of their interference with and disaffection to a Protestant government and a Protestant state. How they are crowding to its standard now, or every day dying in its defence, otherwise than by following a trade, unfortunately for the peace of the world, made more lucrative than any other, I cannot conceive; but I would remind all those who arrogate to themselves so much merit for being soldiers and sailors, that the honor attached to those occupations (and no one honors them more than I do) does for ever lessen in proportion as the pay and emoluments of them increase. Whether the Irish do or do not love a Prince of the House of Hanover [it] might be difficult to prove; I do not think it is so evident, from their conduct towards their Sovereign, that they do; nor do I say that they do not. But I do say that, looking at their conduct from the commencement of his Majesty's reign, it affords rather a negative than a positive proof of the fact. Scarcely was his Majesty seated on the throne, till his reign was disturbed by White Boys, Green Boys, Oak Boys, Steel Boys, United Irish Boys, Defenders, Grinders, and Carders, even up to the present moment. The wonder then, in reality, is not so much that they should love a Prince of the House of Hanover, as that he should love them, or have done so much for them as he has done. If the Pope's holding no temporal power over the people of Ireland be only proved by the assertion that every other Catholic country must have fallen into the same state of moral degradation, it is indeed a most unfortunate proof; for I must again remind the Right Honorable Advocate, that the Catholic religion at this moment holds the minds of the great mass of mankind in every Catholic country in Europe in the most abject state of degradation and slavery, and particularly in that country whose battles we are now fighting, where, more than the sword of the enemy, it has retarded our flight to conquest, and stopped us in the career of glory; where it has withered for ages, under the influence of that horrible tribunal the Inquisition; and where the people still remain in such a wretched state of bigotry and superstition as to glory in their infatuation. And though it can no longer sap the foundation of our liberties, by employing the influence of opinion, by setting men at variance with themselves, and different sects with each other; though it is no longer able to make itself the arbitrator between the altar and the throne, between kings and their subjects, and between one kingdom and another; all this I attribute to the light of science and philosophy, which in these kingdoms, since the reformation, has made such rapid progress, new moulded the man

ners, and improved the morals of the people; and not to any radical change in the doctrine or discipline of the Roman church.

One passage more we shall extract;-it is an answer to the Edinburgh Reviewers, who had spoken of America, as affording an instance of a government in which the sovereign authority takes no cognizance of the creed of its subjects." On this the Author makes some ingenious observations, respecting Mr. Locke's attempt at legislation. This ancient apostle of liberty prescribed some restraints, in organizing the constitution of Carolina, which would revolt the disciples of the new school of civil polity.

The Reviewers seem mightily smitten with the government of America; but they have not told us in what part of that vast continent the form of government exists which they call "the most primitive and complete of full and absolute toleration." If we look for it in South America, from the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, or of Peru by Pizarro, to the present day, either as to its civil or ecclesiastical form, we shall turn with disgust and horror from a scene so full of cruelty, and so repugnant to every principle of law, of justice, and of humanity. If we look for it in North America, from the time it was abandoned by the French in 1567, to the period at which Sir W. Raleigh obtained for a company the disposal of all the discoveries that should be made in it, there was no government in it to excite our wonder or to court our admiration. In 1589 the first regular government was established there; but, by the fate of that great and unfortunate man, the project, the government, and the colony, were forgotten. In 1602 two chartered companies were established, the one called the South Virginia and the other the North Virginia Company: from this period we trace the first formation of a regular, systematic, and established government in North America ; but, until the accession of Charles the First, in 1625, it was in the hands of monopolists, and cannot be said to have assumed any thing like that primitive form which the Reviewers so much admire; till, in 1653, Charles the Second made a grant of Carolina to certain individuals, and a plan for its government was drawn up by Mr. Locke, and said to be founded on the most full and ample toleration. When this form of government shall be examined a little closely, it will appear that Mr. Locke, whose mind was sufficiently enlightened to know that intoleration, however horrid it may appear, was a necessary consequence of superstition, did every thing he could to avoid introducing it into his

plan, for he had no right to pre-suppose its existence in America; but, unfortunately, he put his system of toleration under à restriction that in this country would not be submitted to for a moment, and that outraged every principle of liberty. It was a fundamental regulation of this government, that no person above seventeen years of age should have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor, who was not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one, religious record at once. This indispensable law shook, to its very centre, the foundation of his system of toleration, and introduced into the government all the disorders and abuses from which it was intended it should be exempt. Accordingly we find the several churches became a registry of party; hence arose competition, jarring interests, contention, and strife. The members of the church of England became jealous of the Non-conformists, and wanted to exclude them from government, and oblige them even to shut up the houses where they performed divine worship: from this collision of opinions, called into action by the imperfection of the government itself, perhaps something sooner than the weakness and frailty of human, nature would have produced or brought them forward, arose cabals, tumults, and disorders, the folly and violence of which bring us back to a conviction of this melancholy truth, that intolerance must, more or less, exist in every government, as the minds of men shall be more or less under the influence of prejudice, bigotry, and superstition; for, until they shall be altogether estranged from them, it will for ever obtrude itself into the title-page, and become part of the history of every human institution.

It was not till the year 1706 that England, by her interference, silenced and annulled these acts of violence and folly, and restored peace and order to the government of America.

If we inquire how far civil liberty was advanced in America by Mr. Locke, we shall find he was not much more successful: he gave to eight proprietors who founded the settlement, and to their heirs, not only all the rights of sovereignty, but all the powers of legislation. The abuses which arose from this part of his plan, and the consequences of them, are known to every one in the least conversant with the history of America.

As to the later government of Pennsylvania, which has so much excited the admiration of all those who delight in the language of fable, the people who flocked there, to speak in the language of a celebrated writer, were a people who had suffered persecution themselves, and had

learned mercy! William Penn, a Quaker, was a great as well as a good man; he made toleration the basis of his government in this part of America, but some of his laws and his internal regulations, though well adapted to promote the prosperity of an infant colony, would be thought very intolerable among a people more advanced in arts and civilization, and who had made some progress in the science of legislation. That every child, of what condition soever, above twelve years of age, should be obliged to learn a trade, was an indispensable law; whether good or bad I shall leave to the Reviewers to determine; and shall only observe, that the laws respecting the security of property in Pennsylvania have peither the sanction of strict justice nor the seal of wisdom upon them.

In any reference, therefore, which the Reviewers can make to any government existing in America, in order to "discover the true bearings of the Catholic question," whether to the civil or ecclesiastical form of it, they will be alike unfortunate; and, in spite of every thing they have said, of every thing that can be said on the subject, though volumes should be written upon it, it will be found that intolerance, or in other words civil restriction, either preceding the necessity of it, or emanating from it, is the mound and bulwark which every government on earth finds it necessary to erect more or less strong around itself, to secure its existence; and that in England it has been the rock and rampart of the constitution, against which the ever rolling ocean of innovation has beat for ages, and retired in froth.

Our author had better abstain in future from Latin quotations. We blush for his Latin; but the facts which he adduces, and his mode of reasoning, certainly deserve attention.

MUELINGAR RESOLUTIONS,

To the Editor of the Protestant Advocate.

Sir-My curiosity was strongly excited about a month ago, by an accidental sight of the Prospectus of the PROTESTANT ADVOCATE; and I waited the publication of your first Number, in order to judge whether your principles agreed with your professions. I believe you to be sincere; and I offer you my best services, if you choose to accept them.

I am descended from an ancestor of some note in his day; whose name I bear. He was as little liable to be imposed upon by trickery, as any man that ever lived. No false colourings

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