the guides whom the Roman Catholics have unhappily selected, led them at this day. But the wish is now, alas! so far as Ireland is concerned, vain; and I can only utter it with deep regret and unavailing forebodings.

June 4, 1828.

SPEECH

ON THE

THIRD READING OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC

RELIEF BILL,

MAY 10, 1825.

MR. SPEAKER,

A LARGE part of the debate which has taken place hitherto upon this great question has, on one side, proceeded on the assumption that there has been a considerable change in the principles and character of the Church of Rome; a change so considerable as to justify the removal of all those securities against that Church, or at least of almost all those securities, with which the wisdom of a former age had surrounded the Protestant constitution of this country. I contend, on the contrary, that the Church of Rome is not merely unchanged, but unchangeable.—I contend, that the evidence on which a change is, in the

judgment of the honourable Member for the County of Armagh, (Mr. Brownlow) sufficiently proved, is, in itself, and on other points, so little trust-worthy, as, at any rate, not to justify a great experiment on the Constitution.-I contend that this experiment, the object so long and so clamorously sought under the name of "Catholic Emancipation," is of little benefit to the great mass of those, in whose name and behalf it is urged.-I contend, that those, the very few, to whom it would be beneficial, it would still leave dissatisfied and discontented.—I contend, that the claim so urged is not a right founded, either in abstract natural justice, or in specific convention.-I contend, lastly, that under these circumstances, it is wiser and safer, in the choice of many ways full of difficulties, to keep to that path, which, though not without its difficulties, is still the path by which the country has advanced to her present greatness, and the people to the largest aggregate of individual happiness ever yet combined.

The honourable member for the County of Armagh, and the Right honourable and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General for Ireland, (Mr. Plunkett) have (very conveniently, I admit, for their views of the subject) desired us to give them nothing of that old almanack-history. The honourable Member for the County of Armagh desired that he might be met, not by old facts and old prejudices, but by new and contemporary evidence, and fair reasoning. Though I deny the

right (in argument on a question involving the probabilities of human conduct in future) to expunge from our consideration all that is past, to deprive us of all the benefits which history might give us, and to limit us to the observations of our own ephemeral existence, yet I feel so confidently the strength of our position, even on the ground which our adversaries have chosen for us, that I am willing to meet them there, and with their own weapons. I will, therefore, pledge myself, in my endeavour to prove the unchanged character of the Church of Rome, to use nothing but new and contemporary evidence, and all, I trust, without prejudice. The evidence which I shall offer shall be as accessible as that on the table of this House, and more authoritative; because, in great part, it shall be the evidence of the Papal See itself.

I am willing, indeed, to admit, that, in many things, the Church of Rome has changed since the Reformation; but in none has she changed, connected with her influence on the present question. I am willing to admit, that the physical power of the Church of Rome, over the bodies of men, is considerably less; but I contend that she still exercises over the conscience, and over the intelligence of men, a despotism as complete, and as dangerous (so far as her power extends) as she ever did.

If I were asked to measure the progress of public opinion, and the state of the human mind in any country, I should refer, not so much to her laws, not so much to her institutions, as to her literature

-to that which represents man in every condition of his social and private life, which models his character, and is itself modelled by it. Now by that test I am willing to try the Church of Rome. I will tell you, not what her literature is, but what it is not. Her tyranny over literature, her proscription at this day of all the great masters of the human mind, can be paralleled only by the tyranny and the proscription which she exercised five centuries ago, over minds and bodies alike.

The volume which I hold in my hand, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, contains a list of the books which are at this time, in the Church of Rome, forbidden under the penalties of the Inquisition. It was printed at Rome in 1819; and I bought it there, in the College de Propagandâ, in 1821'. The list was framed at different times: the best victims from every nation and in every age are selected to be sacrificed upon this altar :-the most distinguished men in science, the most learned, and the most pious, are alike and unsparingly devoted.

When, however, I shall quote the names of earlier greatness proscribed in it, let me not be supposed to violate the pledge with which I began: for I make no charge against the sixteenth century, which cannot in the same words be applied to the nineteenth; none against a Pius V. to which a Pius VII. did not actually and honestly expose him

See Appendix, p. 62.