THE HISTORY OF CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.* Tuns is an interesting and
instructive book, and not less interesting and instructive to the average English Protestant than to the rising generation of Catholics (we use the word in Father Amherst's sense) for whom it was primarily intended. We confess that we opened it without expecting to find it so thoroughly controversial as it is. But the strong element of controversy which it contains must be put down, like the occa- sional bitterness which Father Amherst allows himself, as the unfortunate effect of the persecution and intolerance which were for three centuries the lot of English Catholics. It is certainly well that Englishmen should realise that the bitter fruits of persecution and oppression remain, though the penal laws have been repealed for more than a genera. tion. Every one knows that by the penal laws a Catholic was excluded from the public life of this country ; that he could not practise at the Bar ; that he could not be a Colonel in the Army ; that he could not keep a school ; that he could not send his child to be educated abroad, though he was not allowed to bring him up a Catholic at home ; that it was felony for a priest to say mass ; that the nearest Protestant heir could oust his Catholic kinsman from his property. These were some of the horrors which were considered at one time the bulwarks of the British Constitution. But every one does not realise that even now an educated Catholic like Father Amherst feels that "the hatred of the Church, and the manner in which Catholics are regarded, are pretty much the same as they were a hundred years ago." Of course, it is not so. It is certainly not possible to find a prominent man who would say now, as John Wesley said in 1780, " that every convert to Popery was by principle an enemy to the Constitution of this country ;" or, as John Wesley also said, that " no Government not Roman Catholic ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion." But the sense of ostracism is still so strong among this once hated and persecuted minority, that they think it necessary to assert that they are Englishmen, as if any one doubted the fact. The soreness felt by Father Amherst as to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets on Vaticanism is evidently not much less than that which he feels about the Durham letter of Lord John Russell, and such sentences as, " Our wish is to be thoroughly English as well as thoroughly Catholic" (Vol. I., p. 111), and the advice to the Catholic laity to "remember they are Englishmen" (Vol. I., p. 177), are constantly recurring. The almost passionate way in which Father Amherst resents the charge that to be Catholic and to be loyal are inconsistent, and the taunts thrown out against those who are only loyal as long as the Act of Settlement remains on the Statute-book, are marks of the same state of mind. We certainly should hardly have supposed that Catholics felt the gulf which cuts them off from other Englishmen as deeply as they do ; but the explanation is easy. For three cen- turies, and those the centuries of English history of which other Englishmen are most proud, the Catholics have been in opposi- tion to the prevailing current of English opinion, and to the course which English history has taken at each important crisis. Thus, little as we should wish it to be so, it is a fact that Catholics are on many points Englishmen as Englishmen were before the Reformation, and have no sympathy with much that-has become characteristically English since. How far apart from ordinary English sentiment that feeling can .carry Father Amherst, is shown by one remarkable sentence. He is speaking of the lesson in agitation taught by O'Connell, and he adds :—" But • The History of Catholic Ememeination, and the Progress of the Catholic Church in the British Isles (chiefly in England) from 1771 to 1820. By W. J. Amherst, 8.J. London : Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.
he has taught that lesson in vain, if moral force can no longer be brought to influence the action of the British Legislature, if it cannot do here what was done in South Africa by the unerring aim of the Boers." An allusion more out of harmony with English feeling we cannot well imagine.
Turning from the indirect interest of the book to the book itself, we think it is a pity that it is not more of a history and less of an exhortation to the " Catholic youth " of England. The book suffers from the fact that it was originally written as a series of magazine articles, and has never been properly revised. It also might have been very much condensed, and allusions to events of momentary interest, which already require footnotes to explain them, might have been erased. As it is, we are only brought as far as the }•ear 1819 in two good-sized volumes. Nevertheless, the history of the movement for CatholicEmancipa.- tion from the Catholic point of view is extremely interesting. Father Amherst views the whole movement not as a great advance in human progress, not as the sweeping away of a system as bad for the oppressor as for the oppressed, but exclusively as a move- ment guided by the special favour of Providence, which he acknowledges with almost tiresome iteration, for the benefit of the Roman Catholic Church in England. It never seems to occur to him that the growth of the principle of tolerance, the exten- sion of human freedom, the abolition of barbarities which dis- graced the Statute-book, and the gradual breaking-down of prejudice which the movement for Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the penal laws produced, were of the greatest benefit not so much to the Catholics themselves as to the Pro- testant majority which had formerly oppressed them. Another interesting point is brought out by Father Amherst. It is not, perhaps, very widely known that the Catholics them- selves were by no means agreed as to the conditions of emancipa- tion. The two great heroes of emancipation in England, Charles Butler, the conveyancer, and Bishop Milner, were generally, and sometimes violently, opposed, and even between Milner and O'Connell there were occasional disputes and apologies. The two questions which seem to have most divided the opinion of Catholics were the question of the Oath of Allegiance, and the question of the veto on the appointment of Bishops. The former arose in 1791, and led to something very like a schism even among the clergy themselves. Butler at that time represented a strong party among the Catholics, not wholly, but chiefly consisting of laymen, while Milner was the embodiment of orthodoxy and clerical influence. Butler had negotiated with the Government a form of oath which he supposed to be satisfactory to the main body of the Catholics ; but he had counted without the Clerical party. Milner saw heresy in the oath itself, and objected perhaps even more strongly to the title, " Protesting Catholic Dissenter," a title which, as applied to one who " professes the faith of St. Ed ward," Father Amherst does not know whether to call "horrible and monstrous, or ridiculous and absurd." Butler was beaten about the oath, and an unobjectionable form was substituted, and we need hardly say how Father Amherst dwells upon the lesson to be derived from the incident, namely, that a Catholic layman should be most careful never to deal with a question involving " faith and morals " without the entire co-operation of his spiritual pastors and masters. The other main point on which Catholic opinion was divided for many years was first mooted about the year 1800. Several times between that year and 1815, Bills were proposed in some respects more favour- able to the Catholics than the Act of 1829, but all clogged with the condition that the election of Catholic Bishops should be subject to some kind of veto on the part of the English Crown. Father Amherst is, we suppose, in full accord with current Catholic opinion in his undisguised re- joicing that these plans never succeeded. We do not know how much truth there may be in the often-repeated allegation that negotiations, informal but effectual, do take place between the English Government and the " Holy See " with regard to individual appointments ; but we think Sir Robert Peel was right in principle in rejecting the plan of veto, which afforded " no rational security," and might not only constantly embroil us with the Pope, but was not unlike " a qualified establish- ment" of the Roman Catholic Church. As to any future Concordat, and he tries to avert the omen with a pious ejaculation, Father Amherst lays it down that the Church could not accord it except under compulsion. "But," he characteristically adds, " if circumstances should unfortunately make it prudent on the part of the Church to come to some formal agreement with the State in matters ecclesiastical, then it should be most certainly the object of every true Christian to fetter the Holy See as little as possible."
With one very important part of his subject, the history of emancipation in Ireland, Father Amherst does not propose to deal, except so far as it affects the history of emancipation in England, Bat he points out very clearly that not only did the immense emigration of Irish into England put a completely different aspect on the question of English emancipation, but that in 1778 and 1791, as well as in 1829, the condition of Ireland forced an instalment of Catholic Emancipation upon England. Neither the American War in 1778, nor the French War in 1791, could be faced with equanimity without some measure of relief being applied. As to the reason of Irish discontent, and what are the legitimate claims of Ireland, the following passage, as expressing the point of view of an English Catholic, is not without some
interest at the present time :—
" And why are they not content P Because, bring Irish and Catholic, they are governed by a public opinion which is English and Pro- testant. No statesman has yet had sufficient impartiality or sufficient
moral courage to govern Ireland as a Catholic nation Of what
avail is it to be the advocate of Equality and then write
a letter denouncing the mummeries of superstition 'P To
have disestablished the Irish Protestant Church is a great boon to Ireland, no doubt ; but if that boon is followed by a series of pamphlets, to prove that Catholics cannot be loyal to the Queen, because they believe the Holy Father to be infallible in spiritual matters—the man who can do both these things will never content a Catholic country If from the year 1829, the year of the Emancipa- tion Act, our public men had not been under the influence of English public opinion, if they had governed Ireland as a Catholic country according to Irish and Catholic opinion, instead of English and Pro- testant opinion, the Irish would have been well contented to be ruled by an Imperial Parliament, and would never have asked for a separate Government for themselves."
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