ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND.

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influence of fear or anger, would think it no great crime to put to death people whose names begin with O or Mac. The violent death of Smith, Green or Thomson, would throw the neighbourhood into convulsions, and the regular forms would be adhered to- but little would be really thought of the death of anybody called O'Dogherty or O'Toole.-[E. R. 1824.]

ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND.

THE idea of danger from the extension of the Catholic religion in England I utterly deride. The Catholic faith is a misfortune to the world, but those whose faith it conscientiously is are quite right in professing it boldly, and in promoting it by all means which the law allows. A physician does not say, "You will be well as soon as the bile is got rid of;" but he says, "You will not be well until after the bile is got rid of." He knows, after the cause of the malady is removed, that morbid habits are to be changed, weakness to be supported, organs to be called back to their proper exercise, subordinate maladies to be watched, secondary and vicarious symptoms to be studied. The physician is a wise man-but the anserous politician insists, after 200 years of persecution, and ten of emancipation, that Catholic Ireland should be as quiet as Edmonton or Tooting.-[Preface to Works.]

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

Ir ever a nation exhibited symptoms of downright madness, or utter stupidity, we conceive these symptoms may be easily recognised in the conduct of this country upon the Catholic question. A man has a wound in his great toe, and a violent and perilous fever at the same

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SECTARIAN IRRITATION.

TOLERATION.

time; and he refuses to take the medicines for the fever, because it will disconcert his toe! The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive him;-that if he dies, there can be no digital life apart from him: yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly with little plasters, and anile fomentations, while the neglected fever rages in his entrails, and burns away his whole life. [E. R. 1807.]

SECTARIAN IRRITATION.

GIVE a government only time, and, provided it has the good sense to treat folly with forbearance, it must ultimately prevail. When, therefore, a sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill-disposed to the Government, we may be certain that Government has widened its separation by marked distinctions, roused its resentment by contumely, or supported its enthusiasm by persecution.-[E. R. 1807.]

TOLERATION.

TOLERATION never had a present tense, nor taxation a future one. The answer which Paul received from Felix, he owed to the subject on which he spoke. When justice and righteousness were his theme, Felix told him to go away, and he would hear him some other time. All men who have spoken to courts upon such disagreeable topics, have received the same answer. Felix, however, trembled when he gave it; but his fear was ill-directed. He trembled at the subject-he ought to have trembled at the delay.-[E. R. 1808.] ·

POLITICAL INACTION. HERESY.

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POLITICAL INACTION.

To lie by in timid and indolent silence,-to suppose an inflexibility, in which no court ever could, under pressing circumstances, persevere,—and to neglect a regular and vigorous appeal to public opinion, is to give up all chance of doing good, and to abandon the only instrument by which the few are ever prevented from ruining the many.-[E. R. 1808.]

HERESY.

WHAT right has any Government to dictate to any man who shall guide him to heaven, any more than it has to persecute the religious tenets by which he hopes to arrive there? You believe that the heretic professes doctrines utterly incompatible with the true spirit of the Gospel ;first you burnt him for this, then you whipt him,then you fined him,-then you put him in prison. All this did no good;-and, for these hundred years last past, you have left him alone.-[E. R. 1811.]

ance.

TENACITY OF INTOLERANCE.

NOTHING dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerThe fires are put out, and no living nostril has scented the nidor of a human creature roasted for faith; -then, after this, the prison-doors were got open, and the chains knocked off:-and now Lord Sidmouth only begs that men who disagree with him in religious opinions may be deprived of all civil offices, and not be allowed. to hear the preachers they like best. Chains and whips he would not hear of; but these mild gratifications of his bill every orthodox mind is surely entitled to.[E. R. 1811.]

ALL establishments die of dignity. They are too proud to think themselves ill, and to take a little physic. [E. R. 1811.]

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STRENGTH OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT.

I AM heartily glad that all our disqualifying laws for religious opinions are abolished, and I see nothing in such measures but unmixed good and real increase of strength to our Establishment.-[Preface to Works.]

ECCLESIASTICAL BIGOTRY.

It is a melancholy thing to see a man, clothed in soft raiment, lodged in a public palace, endowed with a rich portion of the product of other men's industry, using all the influence of his splendid situation, however conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and inflame the fury, of his fellow creatures. These are the miserable results of that policy which has been so frequently pursued for these fifty years past, of placing men of mean, or middling abilities, in high ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of less importance who fills them; but when the bitter period arrives, in which the people must give up some of their darling absurdities;-when the senseless clamour, which has been carefully handed down from father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged; when it is of incalculable importance to turn the people to a better way of thinking; the greatest impediments to all amelioration are too often found among those to whose councils, at such periods, the country ought to look for wisdom and peace.-[E. R. 1813.]

CATHOLIC CONSPIRACIES.

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COUNT YOUR ENEMIES.

KIND providence never sends an evil without a remedy:—and arithmetic is the natural cure for the passion of fear. If a coward can be made to count his enemies, his terrors may be reasoned with, and he may think of ways and means of counteraction.—[E. R. 1813.]

EPISCOPAL VIOLENCE.

THE Bishop appears to be in a fog; and as daylight breaks in upon him he will be rather disposed to disown his panic. The noise he hears is not roaring-but braying; the teeth and the mane are all imaginary; there is nothing but ears. It is not a lion that stops the way, but an ass. [E. R. 1813.]

CATHOLIC CONSPIRACIES.

THE Catholics, says his Lordship, will enter into a conspiracy against the English Church. But, is it not also the decided interest of his Lordship's butler that he should be Bishop, and the Bishop his butler? That the crosier and the corkscrew should change hands, and the washer of the bottles which they had emptied become the diocesan of learned divines? What has prevented this change, so beneficial to the upper domestic, but the extreme improbability of success, if the attempt were made; an improbability so great, that we will venture to say, the very notion of it has scarcely once entered into the understanding of the good man. Why then is the Reverend Prelate, who lives on so safely and contentedly with John, so dreadfully alarmed at the Catholics?