LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLADSTONE AND THE PROTESTATION OF 1789.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"]
SIR, —I have read the letters signed "An Outsider," "J. T.," -and "Fair-Play," in your last number, and I have to ask you to give me leave to reply to them.
"An Outsider" ought to read books before writing letters on topics touching which he is imperfectly informed. His letter is a -tissue of blunders from end to end. He begins by alleging that I lave made a "patent misstatement " in saying that the Pro- testation emanated from persons calling themselves "Protesting Catholic Dissenters." I quoted the heading from p. 9 of a • collection of documents entitled "Declaration and Protestation of the Roman Catholics of England, to which is added the Corre- spondence of their Committee, and an Encyclical Letter from their Vicars- Apostolic," published by Stockdale in 1812. There the document is headed "The Declaration and Pro- testation signed by the English Catholic Dissenters in 1789, with the names of those who signed it." The editor -was evidently a sincere and zealous Protestant, and he published his little collection for the purpose of doing as much damage as he -could to the Catholics of that day. But it was a time of different tactics from those of the present, and accordingly, instead of telling the public, as Mr. Gladstone does, that the Protestation is " in the strictest sense a representative and binding document," he says In his preface, "it is not without the deepest regret that his- torical fidelity compels me to record that alter this solemn declara- tion, so advisedly signed by their names, the greater part of the Catholics withdrew their signatures, which they had deliberately -and solemnly affixed to the Protest, in passive obedience to the fiat of-their Vicars-Apostolic." And he exclaims, "Surely this is raatter of deep reflection for the Protestant reader," then being called upon to emancipate people who thus repudiated the posi- tion that they were represented and bound by this remarkable -.document. Touching this point, your correspondent again asserts, *" On no occasion of official authority, neither in the Protestation nor in the Act of Parliament, is any mention made of Protesting • Catholic Dissenters ; and to insinuate, therefore, that the former .document emanated from an unauthorised body is a grave error." In the collection already cited there is, on the contrary, a very -official document indeed, the Address to the Catholics of England of the Committee who undertook to get the Protestation signed for its author, Lord Stanhope. They say (p. 34), "The promi- nent feature of the protestation and the oath certainly is their introducing to the notice of our laws, and that in a very marked and pointed manner, of a description of persons wholly unknown to them before, the Protesting Catholic Dissenters ;" and they go -on to add "that the description is both accurate and pointed, And that by far the greatest part, if not the whole body of the English Catholics, fall under it. The description," they continue, " is contained in the preamble of the Act. It recites that 'by divers laws now in force among Papists, or persons pro- fessing the Popish religion, divers persons, who, according to the laws now in being, are within the description of Papists, or persons professing the Popish religion, do not hold and have protested against such pernicious doctrines, .although they continue to dissent in certain points of faith from the Church of England, and are therefore called Protesting Catholic Dissenters, and that such persons are willing solemnly to protest against and declare that they do not hold such per- micious doctrines." The Committee were premature, however, in wing the word "Act," for, as I have shown in my first letter, the Bill was enlarged in the House of Lords by striking out both the 'words "Protesting Catholic Dissenters" and the clause in the -oath disavowing acknowledgment of the Infallibility of the Pope. But the Bill, as it passed the House of.Commons, was "a Bill to relieve upon conditions and under restrictions persons called 'Pro- testing Catholic Dissenters' from certain penalties and disabilities to which Papists, or persons professing the Popish religion, are by law subject." Its heads are printed at p. 61 of the same col- lection. I may as well close this part of the case now by simply -stating that in no oath imposed upon Roman Catholics by any Act of the Parliament of England, or of Great Britain, or of the United Kingdom, are the words "infallibility of the Pope," or any equivalent words, so much as named. Accordingly, such statements as that "the Roman Catholic community in this realm solemnlydisowned the doctrine of Infallibility," and that there was 4' an oath every Catholic was made to take," in which, "he was made to swear that the Infallibility of the Pope was no part of his creed," are statements not merely inaccurate, but the very opposite of fact, Parliament having been, and not once only, urged to legis- late in that sense, and having, as I have al-ready proved, deliber- ately declined to do so. The Irish Oath of 1793, no doubt, de- clared that the Papal Infallibility was not "an article of faith ;" and as I have already said, it is a plain matter of fact that no Catholic could swear it was "an article of faith" before 1870; but as to " disowning " and " repudiating " the doctrine, which is quite another affair, I claim to have proved, on the best possible evidence, that "a very great majority" of the Catholics of Eng- land absolutely refused in 1791 to disown or repudiate the doc- trine of Infallibility on oath, as they conceived they would do, if they were to take the oath originally proposed by the Bill, which ran in these terms :—" I do also in my conscience believe and solemnly swear that I acknowledge no Infallibility in the Pope." I repeat now, in the most specific terms, my statement that, neither in the oath of 1778, nor that of 1791, nor that of the Scotch Act of 1793, nor that of the great general Act of 1829, is the Papal Infallibility so much as named. Parliament, in its wisdom, struck out in 1829 even the clause of the Irish Act of 1793 declaring that Infallibility is not an article of faith, and sub- stituted a clause binding Catholics not to use any power or privi- lege they were to obtain by the Act for the purpose of subvert- ing the Protestant Church Establishment. I could understand Mr. Gladstone in a very casuistical mood of mind hesitating as to whether Irish Catholic Members, who had at some time taken this oath of 1829, should be called upon to support him in disestablish- ing the Irish Church, which itwas designed to protect ; but! cannot understand how he can bring himself to believe that we are to continue to be bound to the end of time by the terms of an oath concerning Infallibility, which Parliament, before admitting Catho- lics to sit in it, of its own good-will and in its wisdom abrogated and repealed, and which, in any case, never bore the construction he puts upon them ; or, on the other hand, by the statements of a Protestation, written by a Protestant, and indignantly repudiated by the Catholic hierarchy and people when they saw how it was construed, and what sort of legislation was proposed to be founded upon it. Your correspondent's statements that "no. dissent on the part of thd Holy See was expressed" against the Protestation, and that "after the concurrence of the Heads [i.e., Vicars-Apostolic] in the form of the oath, they received from Rome instructions in a contrary sense," are mere assertions and assumptions. He has not an atom of evidence to prove them. But here is evidence that tells quite the other way. In the Ency- clical Letter of 1791, the Vicars-Apostolic refer to what happened in 1789 thus :—" The four Apostolical Vicars, by an Encyclical Letter dated October 21, 1789, condemned an oath proposed at that time to be presented to Parliament, and which oath they also declared unlawful to be taken. Their condemnation of that cath was confirmed by the Apostolic See, and sanc- tioned also by the Bishops of Ireland and Scotland." I am really sorry to be. obliged to trespass on your space at such length in this reply to "An Outsider," but it is very easy to make sweeping assertions, and it takes somewhat more space to rebut them carefully and completely. His free- and-easy erudition in these matters reminds me of a saying of, I think, it was Lord Plunket, in some by-gone discussion over this very ground, when he spoke of a class of professed oracles in Catholic affairs, "who see a little, imagine a good deal, and so jump to a conclusion." I advise him to carry his superfluous abstruseness elsewhere—to expostulate, say, with Marshal Moltke on the defective strategy of his last campaign, or correct Faraday's views on the Polarity of Diamagnetics.
In regard to your second correspondent, "J. T.," a very few words will suffice. The question being what assurance the Irish Catholics, before obtaining civil relief from Parliament in 1829, gave the State that Papal Infallibility was no part of the Catholic faith, and never could be made a part of it—he says my curiosity will be at once satisfied if I will only read a speech made in 1870 by the American Archbishop of Baltimore, and another by the English Bishop of Clifton at Rome. What evidence is this to the point? What evidence is it to cite Galilean writers, or even writers not Galilean, who said a century ago that the doctrine of Infallibility was not then de fide? What evidence is Bishop Thirlwall's opinion as to our honour and good faith ? If he had only read his predecessor, Bishop Horsley's, speech in 1791, he would have learned with what scrupulous honour and good faith the Eng- lish Catholics acted in these matters, and how manfully the then Bishop of St. David's vindicated their principles and their conduct.
Your correspondent " Fair-play's " letter contains one or two ilippancies, which I do not feel that it is necessary to notice and a complaint that I have - misrepresented Mr. Gladstone's argument in failing to give the words which are italicised in the following passage from " Vaticanisra-:"—
" So that either that See and Court had at the lasMianied date, and at he date of the Synod of 1810, abandoned, the dreanmof ertfordng Infal- libility on- the Church ; or else, ,by wilful silence,..they were ,guilty of practising on the British Crown one, of the blackest frauds recorded in history."
I am bound to add that Mr. Gladstone in another passage also de- clares that he believes the former to be the truer of the twe alterna- tives. I regret to have made any such apparently material omission in the recital of Mr. Gladstone's somewhat complicated statement, but I think I did not fail to answer both his alternating, though I only stated that couched in the stronger terms. If the Catholic,s of this country dedired they could not receive civil' privi- leges so long ago as 1791 on the, terms of denying the doctrine of Infallibility, ' it is, I submit, plain that even They, not to say the See and Court of Rbme, were, full of hope that the:-.1-ay would, in the good providence of God, yet come when that- doctrine -skink]: be proehitriect i.alt defined dogma of the Church.ThVhpere mil p gq,Sielre, but most outspoken candour on the subjectA and- 1 r.ie.:nii)deception of Parliament, ng fraud nrin the prowhr yrgige pilof upon proof. But I will complete wVaire .1 . tAil I. 2 ckfriksthis branch of the case, if you will allo.47lielifirwri*-'-'silgtei-;q;? kftier with special reference to thaPutioaliamal:101) A 4013-.„,91.i, Sir, &c.,
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