Three great conflicts are before the progressive nations, between Christianity and Infidelity, between Papacy and Protestantism, and between the spirit of the old feudal and monarchical governments and the representative and republican system, as established in America. The Church of England, in addition to her infidel and Roman Catholic assailants, and the politicians of the anti-feudal class, has to contend with a formidable body of Protestant Dissenters. Amid these several and often combined attacks, how is she to maintain herself? From which of these enemies has she most to fear? Some are of opinion that Papacy is less formidable than Dissent, whose bias is republican, which is averse to monarchy, to a hierarchy, and to the tything system — to all which Romanism is strongly attached. The abstract principles embodied in the creed of the Dissenters’ catechism are without doubt full as politically dangerous as those of the Romanists; but fortunately their creed is not their practice. They are divided among themselves, they acknowledge no foreign jurisdiction, their organisation and discipline, are comparatively feeble; and in times long past, however powerful they proved themselves to overthrow, they are not likely to be able to build up. Whatever the Presbyterian form, as in the Church of Scotland, may have to recommend it, we find that the sons of the nobility and gentry of Scotland who choose the sacred profession almost invariably enter into the Church of England; and for the same reason, viz. the want of a hierarchy (you will excuse me for connecting views so humiliating with divine truth), the rich Dissenters, in the course of a generation or two, fall into the bosom of our Church. As holding out attractions to the upper orders, the Church of England has no advantages over that of Rome, but rather the contrary. Papacy will join with us in preserving the form, but for the purpose and in the hope of seizing the substance for itself. Its ambition is upon record; it is essentially at enmity with light and knowledge; its power to exclude these blessings is not so great as formerly, though its desire to do so is equally strong, and its determination to exert its power for its own exaltation by means of that exclusion is not in the least abated. The See of Rome justly regards England as the head of Protestantism; it admires, it is jealous, it is envious of her power and greatness. It despairs of being able to destroy them, but it is ever on the watch to regain its lost influence over that country; and it hopes to effect this through the means of Ireland. The words of this last sentence are not my own, but those of the head of one of the first Catholic families of the county from which I write, spoken without reserve several years ago. Surely the language of this individual must be greatly emboldened when he sees the prostrate condition in which our yet Protestant Government now lies before the Papacy of Ireland. ‘The great Catholic interest,’ ‘the old Catholic interest,’ I know to have been phrases of frequent occurrence in the mouth of a head of the first Roman Catholic family of England; and to descend far lower, ‘What would satisfy you?’ said, not long ago, a person to a very clever lady, a dependent upon another branch of that family. ‘That church,’ replied she, pointing to the parish church of the large town where the conversation took place. Monstrous expectation! yet not to be overlooked as an ingredient in the compound of Papacy. This ‘great Catholic interest’ we are about to embody in a legislative form. A Protestant Parliament is to turn itself into a canine monster with two heads, which, instead of keeping watch and ward, will be snarling at and bent on devouring each other.
Whatever enemies the Church of England may have to struggle with now and hereafter, it is clear that at this juncture she is specially called to take the measure of her strength as opposed to the Church of Rome — that is her most pressing enemy. The Church of England, as to the point of private judgment, standing between the two extremes of Papacy and Dissent, is entitled to heartfelt reverence; and among thinking men, whose affections are not utterly vitiated, never fails to receive it. Papacy will tolerate no private judgment, and Dissent is impatient of anything else. The blessing of Providence has thus far preserved the Church of England between the shocks to which she has been exposed from those opposite errors; and notwithstanding objections may lie against some parts of her Liturgy, particularly the Athanasian Creed, and however some of her articles may be disputed about, her doctrines are exclusively scriptural, and her practice is accommodated to the exigencies of our weak nature. If this be so, what has she to fear? Look at Ireland, might be a sufficient answer. Look at the disproportion between her Catholic and Protestant population. Look at the distempered heads of the Roman Catholic Church insisting upon terms which in France, and even in Austria, dare not be proposed, and which the Pope himself would probably relinquish for a season. Look at the revenues of the Protestant Church; her cathedrals, her churches, that once belonged to the Romanists, and where, in imagination, their worship has never ceased to be celebrated. Can it be doubted that when the yet existing restrictions are removed, that the disproportion in the population and the wealth of the Protestant Church will become more conspicuous objects for discontent to point at; and that plans, however covert, will be instantly set on foot, with the aid of new powers, for effecting an overthrow, and, if possible, a transfer? But all this is too obvious; I would rather argue with those who think that by excluding the Romanists from political power we make them more attached to their religion, and cause them to unite more strongly in support of it. Were this true to the extent maintained, we should still have to balance between the unorganised power which they derive from a sense of injustice, real or supposed, and the legitimate organised power which concession would confer upon surviving discontent; for no one, I imagine, is weak enough to suppose that discontent would disappear. But it is a deception, and a most dangerous one, to conclude that if a free passage were given to the torrent, it would lose, by diffusion, its ability to do injury. The checks, as your Lordship well knows, which are after a time necessary to provoke other sects to activity, are not wanted here. The Roman Church stands independent of them through its constitution, so exquisitely contrived, and through its doctrine and discipline, which give a peculiar and monstrous power to its priesthood. In proof of this, take the injunction of celibacy, alone separating the priesthood from the body of the community, and the practice of confession, making them masters of the conscience, while the doctrines give them an absolute power over the will. To submit to such thraldom men must be bigoted in its favour; and that we see is the case of Spain, in Portugal, in Austria, in Italy, in Flanders, in Ireland, and in all countries where you have Papacy in full blow. And does not history prove, that however other sects may have languished under the relaxing influence of good fortune, Papacy has ever been most fiery and rampant when most prosperous?
But many, who do not expect that conciliation will be the result of concession, have a farther expedient on which they rely much. They propose to take the Romish Church in Ireland into pay, and expect that afterwards its clergy will be as compliant to the Government as the Presbyterians in that country have proved. This measure is, in the first place, too disingenuous not to be condemned by honest men; for the Government acting on this policy would degrade itself by offering bribes to men of a sacred calling to act contrary to their sense of duty. If they be sincere, as priests and truly spiritual-minded, they will find it impossible to accept of a stipend, known to be granted with such expectation. If they be worldlings and false of heart, they will practise double-dealing, and seem to support the Government while they are actually undermining it; for they know that if they be suspected of sacrificing the interests of the Church they will lose all authority over their flocks. Power and consideration are more valued than money. The priests will not be induced to risk their sway over the people for any sums that our Government would venture to afford them out of the exhausted revenues of the empire. Surely they would prefer to such a scanty hire the hope of carving for themselves from the property of the Protestant Church of their country, or even the gratification of stripping usurpation — for such they deem it — of its gains, though there may be no hope to win what others are deprived of. Many
English favourers of this scheme are reconciled to what they call a modification of the Irish Protestant Establishment in an application of a portion of the revenues to the support of the Romish Church. This they deem reasonable; shortly it will be openly aimed at, and they will rejoice should they accomplish their purpose. But your Lordship will agree with me that, if that happen, it would be one of the most calamitous events that ignorance has in our time given birth to. After all, could the secular clergy be paid out of this spoliation, or in any other way? The Regulars would rise in consequence of their degradation; and where would be the influence that could keep them from mischief? They would swarm over the country to prey upon the people still more than they now do. In all the reasonings of the friends to this bribing scheme, the distinctive character of the Papal Church is overlooked.
But they who expect that tranquillity will be a permanent consequence of the Relief Bill dwell much upon the mighty difference in opinion and feeling between the upper and lower ranks of the Romish communion. They affirm that many keep within the pale of the Church as a point of honour; that others have notions greatly relaxed, and though not at present prepared to separate, they will gradually fall off. But what avail the inward sentiments of men if they are convinced that by acting upon them they will forfeit their outward dignity and power? As long as the political influence which the priests now exercise shall endure, or anything like it, the great proprietors will be obliged to dissemble, and to conform in their action to the demands of that power. Such will be the conduct of the great Roman Catholic proprietors; nay, farther, I agree with those who deem it probable that, through a natural and reasonable desire to have their property duly represented, many landholders who are now Protestant will be tempted to go over to Papacy. This may be thought a poor compliment to Protestantism, since religious scruples, it is said, are all that keep the Papists out; but is not the desire to be in, pushing them on almost to rebellion at this moment? We are taking, I own, a melancholy view of both sides; but human nature, be it what it may, must by legislators be looked at as it is.
In the treatment of this question we hear perpetually of wrong; but the wrong is all on one side. If the political power of Ireland is to be a transfer from those who are of the State religion of the country to those who are not, there is nothing gained on the score of justice. We hear also much of STIGMA; but this is not to be done away unless all offices, the Privy Council and the Chancellorship, be open to them; that is, unless we allow a man to be eligible to keep the King’s conscience who has not his own in his keeping; unless we open the throne itself to men of this soul-degrading faith.
The condition of Ireland is indeed, and long has been, wretched. Lamentable is it to acknowledge, that the mass of the people are so grossly uninformed, and from that cause subject to such delusions and passions, that they would destroy each other were it not for restraints put upon them by a power out of themselves. This power it is that protracts their existence in a state for which otherwise the course of nature would provide a remedy by reducing their numbers through mutual destruction; so that English civilisation may fairly be said to have been the shield of Irish barbarism. And now these swarms of degraded people, which could not have existed but through the neglect and misdirected power of the sister island, are by a withdrawing of that power to have their own way, and to be allowed to dictate to us. A population, vicious in character as unnatural in immediate origin (for it has been called into birth by short-sighted landlords, set upon adding to the number of votes at their command, and by priests who for lucre’s sake favour the increase of marriages), is held forth as constituting a claim to political power strong in proportion to its numbers, though in a sane view that claim is in an inverse ratio to them. Brute force indeed wherever lodged, as we are too feelingly taught at present, must be measured and met — measured with care, in order to be met with fortitude.
The chief proximate causes of Irish misery and ignorance are Papacy — of which I have said so much — and the tenure and management of landed property, and both these have a common origin, viz. the imperfect conquest of the country. The countries subjected by the ancient Romans, and those that in the middle ages were subdued by the Northern tribes, afford striking instances of the several ways in which nations may be improved by foreign conquest. The Romans by their superiority in arts and arms, and, in the earlier period of their history, in virtues also, may seem to have established a moral right to force their institutions upon other nations, whether under a process of decline or emerging from barbarism; and this they effected, we all know, not by overrunning countries as Eastern conquerors have done, and Bonaparte in our own days, but by completing a regular subjugation, with military roads and garrisons, which became centres of civilisation for the surrounding district. Nor am I afraid to add, though the fact might be caught at as bearing against the general scope of my argument, that both conquerors and conquered owed much to the participation of civil rights which the Romans liberally communicated. The other mode of conquest, that pursued by the Northern nations, brought about its beneficial effects by the settlement of a hardy and vigorous people among the distracted and effeminate nations against whom their incursions were made. The conquerors transplanted with them their independent and ferocious spirit to reanimate exhausted communities, and in their turn received a salutary mitigation, till in process of time the conqueror and conquered, having a common interest, were lost in each other. To neither of these modes was unfortunate Ireland subject, and her insular territory, by physical obstacles, and still more by moral influences arising out of them, has aggravated the evil consequent upon independence lost as hers was. The writers of the time of Queen Elizabeth have pointed out how unwise it was to transplant among a barbarous people, not half subjugated, the institutions that time had matured among those who too readily considered themselves masters of that people. It would be presumptuous in me to advert in detail to the exacerbations and long-lived hatred that have perverted the moral sense in Ireland, obstructed religious knowledge, and denied to her a due share of English refinement and civility. It is enough to observe, that the Reformation was ill supported in that country, and that her soil became, through frequent forfeitures, mainly possessed by men whose hearts were not in the land where their wealth lay.
But it is too late, we are told, for retrospection. We have no choice between giving way and a sanguinary war. Surely it is rather too much that the country should be required to take the measure of the threatened evil from a Cabinet which by its being divided against itself, which by its remissness and fear of long and harassing debates in the two Houses, has for many years past fostered the evil, and in no small part created the danger, the extent of which is now urged as imposing the necessity of granting their demands.
Danger is a relative thing, and the first requisite for being in a condition to judge of what we have to dread from the physical force of the Romanists is to be in sympathy with the Protestants. Had our Ministers been truly so, could they have suffered themselves to be bearded by the Catholic Association for so many years as they have been?
I speak openly to you, my Lord, though a member of his Majesty’s Privy Council; and begging your pardon for detaining you so long, I hasten to a conclusion.
The civil disabilities, for the removal of which Mr. O’Connell and his followers are braving the Government, cannot but be indifferent to the great body of the Irish nation, except as means for gaining an end. Take away the intermediate power of the priests, and an insurrection in Brobdignag at the call of the King of Lilliput might be as hopefully expected as that the Irish people would stir as they are now prepared to do at the call of a political demagogue. Now these civil disabilities do not directly affect the priests; they therefore must have ulterior views, and though it must be flattering to their vanity to shew that they have the Irish representation in their own hands, and though their worldly interest and that of their connections will, they know, immediately profit by that dominion, what they look for p
rincipally is the advancement of their religion at the cost of Protestantism; that would bring everything else in its train. While it is obvious that the political agitators could not rouse the people without the intervention of the priests, it is true that the priests could not excite the people without a hope that from the exaltation of their Church their social condition would be improved. What in Irish interpretation these words would mean we may tremble to think of.
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 338
