TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TRE POPE AND THE PROTESTANT ALLIANCE:
TuE winter is not, it seems, to pass without a renewal of the politi. co-theological agitation with which we might —writers, speakers, and readers—have been naturally supposed to be satiated. Unde- terred by the utter barrenness of six months' popular excitement and• almost a whole session of Parliamentary eloquence—unwarned by the experience of centuries—and, it may be, disappointed at not having yet seen a Popish bishop cooling his ambitious zeal in the retirement of Newgate—Lord Shaftesbury and the gentlemen of the Protestant Alliance are inviting us with singular consistency to denounce the spirit of Papal persecution abroad, and to inaugurate a new reign of Protestant persecution at home, by cancelling the national endowment of Maynooth College. It would be idle to urge upon the leaders of this crusade the various motives of justice and expediency which actuated Sir Robert Peel, and the statesmen of all parties who cooperated with or assented to him, in passing that wise and patriotic measure. It would be idle to point out to them that those motives are still in full force, and have even gathered additional weight from the events of last year and the present condition of Ireland. To all reasons of mundane policy they are superior : appeals to experience they quash with quotations from Scripture ; common sense they regard as impiety ; and, having elevated passion and prejudice to the rank of principles, they rush upon a disastrous future blinded to the consequences of their actions by theological narrowness and sectarian rancour. It is not to them that we would speak, but to those who, exasperated by the insolent de- meanour of certain of the Popish hierarchy, may fancy that they see in the proposed measure a just and well-merited retaliation, and a means of procuring more courteous and considerate treatment from the supreme head of the Church Catholic.
The enlarged endowment of. Maynooth, with whatever hopes of conciliating the Roman Catholics it may have been accompanied, had directly for its object to provide at home as good an education for the Irish priesthood. as they had formerly been compelled to seek in one or other of the foreign seminaries of their religion. It was expected that, by elevating the character of the native institu- tion, those priests who were too poor to go abroad* for instruction would become mare refined in their manners, more accomplished in the learning of their profession, and so exercise a more wholesome influence on the people who looked up to them as models as well as teachers ; and that for those of ampler means a temptation would be removed out of their way to spend the most plastic years.of life in a foreign country, and so inevitably lose somewhat of patriotic and citizen feeling; and return home aliensin•sentiment and opinion. Sir Robert Peel would have smiled gravely and sadly, and would have had more reason than ever for that low opinion of the wisdom of mankind which a popular writer attri- butes to him as the source of his reserve, had he been told thatpeo- ple -would cry out that his experiment had failed after a trial of a few years, and amid the difficulties of an unusually, angry collision of the two Churches. A single generation of students can hardly have passed through their Maynooth course since the College was rendered habitable and, furnished with an adequate corps of pro- fessors, and years must elapse before the effects of the experiment can even begin to be appreciated ; yet we are called upon to stop an undertaking of this importance, because the Pope has committed an offence against our national independence, and in so doing-has made us acquainted not only with the extent of his own anti-national claims, but with the Ultramontane tendencies of a large portion of the Roman priesthood in Ireland and England, upon which the endowment of Maynooth was thought likely to have a mitigating effect. We are called upon to withdraw the remedy just when the symptoms of disease have most virulently exhibited. themselves' We are advised that, because the Flemish priesthood have weakened or lost the sentiments of nationality, we are to give up attempting to inspire those sentiments or prevent them from being impaired, and are to drive these unpatriotic indi- viduals, and all who may hereafter fill their office, to St. Omer, Louvain, or Rome ; where we may rest' assured that their first lesson will he to unlearn all attachment to their coun- try and its institutions, and to substitute for it a blind zeal for their order and an unscrupulous obedience to the Pope in temporals as well as spirituals. And this we are to do when; amid all' the fury and mutual recriminations of the past year, nothing, came more clearly out than that a large and most respectable party in the Romish communion saw and felt as clearly as any. Protestant what was due to the State ; disclosing a division in that Church, of which we will not say that advantage ought to betaken on the principle of " divide et impera," but- which cer- tamly ought to encourage the British people and Government in reverting to the work of conciliation which seemed to• be pros- pering before, and in continuing their attempt to solve that most difficult but important problem, the relation of the Romanists to the constitution of the country. Itis on this party that the attention of our statesmen should be mainly fixed, because it is on them that hopes of amicable settlement depend; and it is j,ust this party that Exeter Hall ignores, and the country knows little about; be- Wise it behaves -itself more decorously and makes less noise than the howling crew of ambitious priests and reckless donagegues which is the misery' and disgrace of Ireland. Should Lard-Shaftes- bury and- his-friends succeed iniindueing. the ooutitry, to retrace it it steps; art& in ottrrying on the goverment of a peopleofi dif-.
. .„
fercnt beliefs, and various shades of each belief, as though this dif- ference had• no existence and no bearing upon laws, the national party in the Romish Church must inevitably be alarmed and ex- asperated, and will certainly and with good reason take refuge in Lltramontanism against the bigotry that vilifies their patriotism and the nationality that refuses them their rights. A single glance at the Education question which is agitating the Irish Romanists, and the most superficial estimate of the immense service likely to be done to Ireland by the " Godless Colleges," would, one should fancy, be sufficient to deter all men of sense from joining in pruceedings which, whatever other and more dis- tant issues they may have, will at once determine that contest, by uniting the Irish Catholics as one man against a Government and a people animated by resentment against them and their re- ligion, and showing it by such a petty and contemptible retaliation. A firm persistence on the part of Parliament and the nation, in liberal and comprehensive measures for the wellbeing of the Catho- lic population, with marked abstinence from even the wish to check or interfere with the legitimate development of their religious in- stitutions, will disarm the anti-national party in that Church of . their most effective weapons, and strengthen the hands of those who have for more than a century been among the most loyal, peaceable, and accomplished citizens.
But the withdrawal of the grant from Maynooth, and the recur- rence to a sectarian legislation, may be imagined likely to weigh with the Pope himself, and to induce the Court of Rome to treat the English nation for the future with more caution and respect. In other words, the Protestant portion of the nation is recom- mended to regard its Catholic fellow-countrymen in the light of hostages for the good behaviour of the Pope, and to practise towards them the sort of retaliation which may be used towards the subjects of a foreign power resident among us, in order to ob- tain from that power security or privilege for our countrymen abroad. The manifest injustice of so dealing with our fellow- citizens would not perhaps prevent it, were it likely to be effectual. But that is just the question. Can we lessen the Pope's authority over the Romanists in Great Britain, or cause it to be exerted in a manner less prejudicial to our interests or offensive to our feelings, through the means proposed by the Pro- testant Alliance ? Can we make the Pope's decrees more in harmony with our national objects and temper, or the obedience of Catholics to them less absolute and unquestioning, by a course of legislation which practically amounts to a declaration of war against Catho- lics, and converts them from citizens contented with the laws, and having confidence in a general wish to do them equal jus- tice, into a band of conspirators, a secret society, burning with a sense of wrong, and eager to revenge themselves upon their op- pressors? Or will the persons selected by the Pope to command such an organization be as satisfactory to us as if the duties to be- performed were simply those of a recognized religious body, re- garded with no disfavour by the State? Common sense must answer, that the influence of the Pope increases in proportion as Catholics are estranged from the commonwealth to which they locally belong ; and that Catholic bishops and priests must have a far more danger- ous power over their flocks when regarded as captains and leaders, in place of mere religious teachers—when the ecclesiastical question absorbs all social and political questions, because these areincluded in it and dependent upon it. If the Pope were merely an ambitious priest, and cared fur nothing but power, he would desire for his religious subjects in Protestant countries ex- actly the state of things which Lord Shaftesbury and his friend's are anxious to establish: if he were what Exeter Hall would term him if Exeter Hall had a turn for epigram, an usurper in his own country and a conspirator in every other, Lord Shaftesbury and colleagues would be just strengthening his hands. But, ambitious as Popes are, and ambitious priests into the bargain, we have no belief in any deliberate wish on their part to rank as the arch- conspirators of Europe. Give them the choice, and they will pre- fer for themselves and their hierarchy purple, palaces, and friendly relations with governments, to' rags, gaols, and the melodramatic grandeur of torch-light meetings and mystical Carbonari symbols. But it is necessary to remember that they can play the part of conspirators if they are forced to it ; and play it they will, to our cost. This is the effect we can produce upon the policy of Rome in rbference to England by the means advocated by the Pro- testant Alliance. We can change that policy from an open stand-up-fight fur privileges plainly claimed and urged by methods which legislation and diplomacy can deal with, to a dark and in- scrutable influence, stirring up civil factions, sending among us emissaries of sedition, harassing our Legislature and frightening our people by the presence of an unseen malignant power. It it ours to choose between the two. We cannot annihilate those who do not agree with us in religion ; we must have relations with them, and it remains to place those relations on the safest possible footing. Had we attended to this some years ago, we should have been saved the agitation of last year, of which this• is but a rebound. But we refused, with a churlish and puerile obstinacy, to have diplomatic dealings with the Pope as head of his Church, and chose to impose conditions which he could not submit to. To this may be in great measure attributed the seeming dis- courtesy and arrogance of last year's aggression. We sowed the wind, and we reap the whirlwind—we snubbed Antichrist, and we got as good as we sent. And so we shall find it to the end of the chapter. The power of the Pope to annoy us will be in exact proportion to the extent to which we ignore his existh. nee ; and his will to exercise it will vary with our civility. His authority.
choose to run our heads against facts, it is our heads, not MACBETH.
Previous page
