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ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE, ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH; WITH AIDS TOWARD A RIGHT JUDGMENT ON THE LATE CATHOLIC BILL |
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SECOND PART: OR, AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION OF THE BILL ADMITTING CATHOLICS TO SIT IN BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, &c. &c.
YES, Sir, I estimate the beauty and benefit of what you have called "A harmony in fundamentals, and a conspiration of the constituent parts of the Body Politic," as highly as the sturdiest zealot for the petition, which I have declined to subscribe. If I met a man, who should deny that an imperium in imperio [Google translate: the command in the command] was in itself an evil, I would not attempt to reason with him: he is too ignorant. Or if, conceding this, he should deny that the Romish Priesthood in Ireland does in fact constitute an imperium in imperio, I yet would not argue the matter with him: for he must be a Bigot. But my objection to the argument is, that it is nothing to the purpose. And even so, with regard to the arguments grounded on the dangerous errors and superstitions of the Romish Church. They may be all very true; but they are nothing to the purpose. Without any loss they might pair off with "the Heroes of Trafalgar and Waterloo," and "our Catholic ancestors, to whom we owe our Magna Charta," on the other side. If the prevention of an evil were the point in question, then indeed! But the day of prevention has long past by. The evil exists: and neither rope, sword, nor sermon, neither suppression nor conversion, can remove it. Not that I think slightingly of the last; but even those who hope more sanguinely, than I can pretend to do respecting the effects ultimately to result from the labours of missionaries, the dispersion of controversial tracts, and whatever other lawful means and implements it may be in our power to employ -- even these must admit that if the remedy could cope with the magnitude and inveteracy of the disease, it is wholly inadequate to the urgency of the symptoms. In this instance it would be no easy matter to take the horse to the water; and the rest of the proverb you know. But why do I waste words? There is and can be but one question: and there is and can be but one way of stating it. A great numerical majority of the inhabitants of one integral part of the realm profess a religion hostile to that professed by the majority of the whole realm: and a religion, too, which the latter regard, and have had good reason to regard, as equally hostile to liberty, and the sacred rights of conscience generally. In fewer words, three-fourths of His Majesty's Irish subjects are Roman Catholics, with a papal priesthood, while three-fourths of the sum total of His Majesty's subjects are Protestants. This with its causes and consequences is the evil. It is not in our power, by any immediate or direct means, to effect its removal. The point, therefore, to be determined is: Will the measures now in contemplation be likely to diminish or to aggravate it? And to the determination of this point on the probabilities suggested by reason and experience, I would gladly be ardant, as far as my poor mite of judgment will enable me. Let us, however, first discharge what may well be deemed a debt of justice from every well educated Protestant to his Catholic fellow-subjects of the Sister Island. At least, let us ourselves understand the true cause of the evil as it now exists. To what, and to whom is the present state of Ireland mainly to be attributed? This should be the question: and to this I answer aloud, that it is mainly attributable to those, who during a period of little less than a whole century used as a Substitute what Providence had given into their hand as an Opportunity; who chose to consider as superseding the most sacred duty a code of law, that can be excused only on the plea, that it enabled them to perform it! To the sloth and improvidence, the weakness and wickedness of the gentry, clergy, and governors of Ireland, who persevered in preferring intrigue, violence, and selfish expatriation to a system of preventive and remedial measures, the efficacy of which had been warranted for them by the whole provincial history of ancient Rome, cui pacare subactos summa erat sapientia; warranted for them by the happy results of the few exceptions to the contrary scheme unhappily pursued by their and our ancestors. I can imagine no work of genius that would more appropriately decorate the dome or wall of a Senate house, than an abstract of Irish history from the landing of Strongbow to the battle of the Boyne, or a yet later period, embodied in intelligible emblems -- an allegorical history-piece designed in the spirit of a Rubens or a Buonarroti, and with the wild lights, portentous shades, and saturated colours of a Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Spagnoletti. To complete the great moral and political lesson by the historic contrast, nothing more would be required, than by some equally effective means to possess the mind of the spectator with the state and condition of ancient Spain, at less than half a century from the final conclusion of an obstinate and almost unremitting conflict of two hundred years by Agrippa's subjugation of the Cantabrians, omnibus Hispaniae papulis devictis et pacatis [Google translate: a pimple having been conquered and subdued all of Spain]. At the breaking up of the empire, the West Goths conquered the country and made division of the lands. Then came eight centuries of Moorish domination. Yet so deeply had Roman wisdom impressed the fairest characters of the Roman mind, that at this very hour, if we except a comparatively insignificant portion of Arabic Derivatives, the natives throughout the whole peninsula speak a language less differing from the Romana Rustica, or Provincial Latin, of the times of Lucan and Seneca, than any two of its dialects from each other. The time approaches, I trust, when our political economists may study the science of the provincial policy of the ancients in detail, under the auspices of hope, for immediate and practical purposes. In my own mind I am persuaded, that the necessity of the penal and precautionary statutes passed under Elizabeth and the three succeeding reigns, is to be found as much in the passions and prejudices of the one party, as in the dangerous dispositions of the other. The best excuse for this cruel code is the imperfect knowledge and mistaken maxims common to both parties. It is only to a limited extent, that laws can be wiser than the nation for which they are enacted. The annals of the first five or six centuries of the Hebrew nation in Palestine present an almost continued history of disobedience, of laws broken or utterly lost sight of, of maxims violated, and schemes of consummate wisdom left unfulfilled. Even a yet diviner seed must be buried and undergo an apparent corruption before -- at a late period -- it shot up and could appear in its own kind. In our judgments respecting actions we must be guided by the idea, but in applying the rule to the agents, by comparison. To speak gently of our forefathers is at once piety and policy. Nor let it be forgotten, that only by making the detection of their errors the occasion of our own wisdom, do we acquire a right to censure them at all. Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland; yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety of the Constitution by improving the quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the former limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes of his faith; and the Irish Catholics collectively were held accomplices in the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance. At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as a sedative, in order to the application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions, but above all as bona fide accompaniments of a process of emancipation, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been remembered in Ireland only as when recalling a dangerous fever of our boyhood we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and congratulate ourselves, that our doctors nowadays know how to manage these things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a substitute, et hinc illae lacrymae! [Google translate: And hence those tears.] And at this point I find myself placed again in connection with the main question, and which I contend to be the only pertinent question, viz., The evil being admitted, and its immediate removal impossible, is the admission of Catholics into both Houses of Legislature likely to mitigate or to aggravate it? And here the problem is greatly narrowed by the fact, that no man pretends to regard this admissibility as a direct remedy, or specific antidote to the diseases under which Ireland labours. No! it is to act, we are told, as introductory to the direct remedies. In short, this Emancipation is to be, like the penal code which it repeals, a sedative, though in the opposite form of an anodyne cordial, that will itself be entitled to the name of a remedial measure in proportion as it shall be found to render the body susceptible of the more direct remedies that are to follow. Its object is to tranquillize Ireland. Safety, peace, and good neighbourhood, influx of capital, diminution of absenteeism, industrious habits, and a long train of blessings will follow. But the indispensable condition, the causa causarum et causatorum [Google translate: the cause of causes and effects], is general tranquillity. Such is the language held by all the more intelligent advocates and economists of Emancipation. The sense of the question therefore is, will the measure tend to produce tranquillity? Now it is evident, that there are two parties to be satisfied, and that the measure is likely to effect this purpose according as it is calculated to satisfy reasonable men of both. Reasonable men are easily satisfied: would they were as numerous as they are pacable! We must, however, understand the word comparatively, as including all those on both sides, who by their superior information, talents, or property, are least likely to be under the dominion of vulgar antipathies, and who may be rationally expected to influence (and in certain cases, and in alliance with a vigorous government, to over-rule) the feelings and sentiments of the rest. Now the two indispensable conditions under which alone the measure can permanently satisfy the reasonable, that is, the satisfiable, of both parties, supposing that in both parties such men exist, and that they form the influencive class in both, are these. First, that the Bill for the repeal of the exclusive statutes, and the admission of Catholics to the full privileges of British subjects, shall be grounded on some determinate PRINCIPLE, which involving interests and duties common to both parties as British subjects, both parties may be expected to recognize, and required to maintain inviolable. Second, that this principle shall contain in itself an evident definite and unchangeable boundary, a line of demarcation, a ne plus ultra [Google translate: not more than any more], which in all reasonable men and lovers of their country shall preclude the wish to pass beyond it, and extinguish the hope of so doing in such as are neither. But though the measure should be such as to satisfy all reasonable men, still it is possible that the number and influence of these may not be sufficient to leaven the mass, or to over-rule the agitators. I admit this; but instead of weakening what I have here said, it affords an additional argument in its favour. For if an argument satisfactory to the reasonable part should nevertheless fail in securing tranquillity, still less can the result be expected from an arbitrary adjustment that can satisfy no part. If a measure grounded on principle, and possessing the character of an ultimatum should still, through the prejudices and passions of one or of both parties, fail of success, it would be folly to expect it from a measure that left full scope and sphere to those passions; which kept alive the fears of the one party, while it sharpened the cupidity of the other. With confidence, therefore, I re-assert, that only by reference to a principle, possessing the characters above enumerated, can any satisfactory measure be framed, and that if this should fail in producing the tranquillity aimed at, it will be in vain sought in any other. Again, it is evident that no principle can be appropriate to such a measure, which does not bear directly on the evil to be removed or mitigated. Consequently, it should be our first business to discover in what this evil truly and essentially consists. It is, we know, a compound of many ingredients. But we want to ascertain what the base is, that communicates the quality of evil, of political evil, of evil which it is the duty of a statesman to guard against, to various other ingredients, which without the base would have been innoxious: or though evils in themselves, yet evils of such a kind, as to be counted by all wise statesmen among the tares, which must be suffered to grow up with the wheat to the close of the harvest, and left for the Lord of the Harvest to separate. Further: the Principle, the grounding and directing Principle of an effectual enactment, must be one, on which a Catholic might consistently vindicate and recommend the measure to Catholics. It must therefore be independent of all differences purely theological. And the facts and documents, by which the truth and practical importance of the principle are to be proved or illustrated, should be taken by preference from periods anterior to the division of the Latin Church into Romish and Protestant. It should be such, in short, that an orator might with strict historical propriety introduce the Framers and Extorters of Magna Charta pleading to their Catholic descendants in behalf of the measure grounded on such a Principle, and invoking them in the name of the Constitution, over whose growth they had kept armed watch, and by the sacred obligation to maintain it which they had entailed on their posterity. This is the condition under which alone I could conscientiously vote, and which being fulfilled, I should most zealously vote for the admission of Lay Catholics, not only to both houses of the Legislature, but to all other offices below the Crown, without any exception. Moreover, in the fulfilment of this condition, in the solemn recognition and establishment of a Principle having the characters here specified, I find the only necessary security -- convinced, that this, if acceded to by the Catholic Body, would in effect be such, and that any other security will either be hollow, or frustrate the purpose of the Bill. Now this condition would be fulfilled, the required Principle would be given, provided that the law for the repeal of the sundry statutes affecting the Catholics were introduced by, and grounded on, a declaration, to which every possible character of solemnity should be given, that at no time and under no circumstances has it ever been, nor can it ever be, compatible with the spirit or consistent with safety of the British Constitution, to recognize in the Roman Catholic Priesthood, as now constituted, a component Estate of the Realm, or persons capable, individually or collectively, of becoming the Trustees and usufructuary Proprietors of that elective and circulative property, originally reserved for the permanent maintenance of the National Church. And further, it is expedient, that the Preamble of the Bill should expressly declare and set forth, that this exclusion of the Members of the Romish Priesthood (comprehending all under oaths of canonical obedience to the Pope as their ecclesiastical sovereign) from the trusts and offices of the National Church, and from all participation in the proceeds of the Nationalty, is enacted and established on grounds wholly irrelative to any doctrines received and taught by the Romish Church as Articles of Faith, and protested against as such by the Churches of the Reformation; but that it is enacted on grounds derived and inherited from our ancestors before the Reformation, and by them maintained and enforced to the fullest extent that the circumstances of the times permitted, with no other exceptions and interruptions than those effected by fraud, or usurpation, or foreign force, or the temporary fanaticism of the meaner sort. In what manner the enactment of this principle shall be effected, is of comparatively small importance, provided it be distinctly set forth as that great constitutional security, the known existence of which is the ground and condition of the right of the Legislature to dispense with the other less essential safeguards of the constitution, not unnecessary, perhaps, at the time of their enactment, but of temporary and accidental necessity. The form, I repeat, the particular mode in which the principle shall be recognized, the security established, is comparatively indifferent. Let it only be understood first, as the provision, by the retention of which the Legislature possess a moral and constitutional right to make the change in question, as that the known existence of which permits the law to ignore the Roman Catholics under any other name than that of British subjects; and secondly, as the express condition, the basis of a virtual compact between the claimants and the nation, which condition cannot he broken or evaded without subverting (morally) the articles and clauses founded thereon. N. B. -- I do not assert that the provision here stated is an absolute security. My positions are, -- first, that it may with better reason and more probability be proposed as such, than any other hitherto devised; secondly, that no other securities can supersede the expediency and necessity of this, but that this will greatly diminish or altogether remove the necessity of any other: further, that without this, the present measure cannot be rationally expected to produce that tranquillity, which it is the aim and object of the framers to bring about; and lastly, that the necessity of the declaration, as above given, formally and solemnly to be made and recorded, is not evacuated by this pretext, that no one intends to transfer the Church Establishment to the Romish Priesthood, or to divide it with them. One thing, however, is of importance, that I should premise -- namely, that the existing state of the Elective Franchise [1] in Ireland, in reference to the fatal present of the Union Ministry to the Landed interest, that true Deianira Shirt of the Irish Hercules, is altogether excluded from the theme and purpose of this disquisition. It ought to be considered by the Legislature, abstracted from the creed professed by the great majority of these nominal Freeholders. The recent abuse of the influence resulting from this profession, should be regarded as an accidental aggravation of the mischief, that displayed rather than constituted its malignity. It is even desirable, that it should be preserved separate from the Catholic Question, and in no necessary dependence on the fate of the Bill now on the eve of presentation to Parliament. Whether this be carried or be lost, it will still remain a momentous question, urgently calling for the decision of the Legislature -- whether the said extension of the elective franchise has not introduced an uncombining and wholly incongruous ingredient into the representative system, irreconcilable with the true principle of election, and virtually disfranchising the class, to whom, on every ground of justice and of policy, the right unquestionably belongs -- under any circumstances overwhelming the voices of the rest of the community; in ordinary times concentering in the great Landowners a virtual monopoly of the elective power; and in times of factious excitement depriving them even of their natural and rightful influence. These few suggestions on the expediency of revising the state of the representation in Ireland are, I am aware, but a digression from the main subject of the Chapter. But this in fact is already completed, as far as my purpose is concerned. The reasons, on which the necessity of the proposed declaration is grounded, have been given at large in the former part of the volume. Here, therefore, I should end; but that I anticipate two objections, of sufficient force to deserve a comment, and form the matter of a concluding paragraph. First, it may be objected, that after abstracting the portion of evil, that may he plausibly attributed to the peculiar state of landed property in Ireland, there are evils directly resulting from the Romanism of the most numerous class of the inhabitants, besides that of an extra-national priesthood, and against the political consequences of which the above declaration provides no security. To this I reply, that as no bridge ever did or can posses the demonstrable perfections of the mathematical arch, so can no existing state adequately correspond to the idea of a state. In nations and governments the most happily constituted, there will be deformities and obstructions, peccant humours and irregular actions, which affect indeed the perfection of the state, but not its essential forms; which retard, but do not necessarily prevent its progress: casual disorders, which though they aggravate the growing pains of a nation, may yet, by the vigorous counteraction which they excite, even promote its growth. Inflammations in the extremities, and unseemly boils on the surface dare not be confounded with exhaustive misgrowths, or the poison of a false life in the vital organs. Nay -- and this remark is of special pertinency to our present purpose -- even where the former derive a malignant character from their co-existence with the latter, yet the wise physician will direct his whole attention to the constitutional ailments, knowing that when the source, the fons et fomes veneni, [Google translate: the source and the spark of poison] is sealed up, the accessories will either dry up of themselves, or, returning to their natural character rank among the infirmities, which flesh is heir to; and either admit of a gradual remedy, or where this is impracticable, or when the medicine would be worse than the disease, are to be endured, as tolerabiles ineptiae [Google translate: tolerable absurdity], trials of patience, and occasions of charity. We have here had the state chiefly in view; but the Protestant will to little purpose have availed himself of his free access to the Scriptures, will have read at least the Epistles of St. Paul with a very unthinking spirit, who does not apply the same maxims to the church of Christ, who has yet to learn, that the church militant is "a floor whereon wheat and chaff are mingled together;" that even grievous evils and errors may exist that do not concern the nature or being of a church, and that may even prevail in the particular church, to which we belong, without justifying a separation from the same, and without invalidating its claims on our affection as a true and living part of the Church Universal. And with regard to such evils we must adopt the advice that Augustine (a man not apt to offend by any excess of charity) gave to the complainers of his day -- ut misericorditer corripiant quod possunt, quod non possunt patienter ferant, et cum delectione lugeant, donec aut emendet Deus aut in messe eradicet zizania et paleas ventilet [Google translate: mercifully to correct the that they are able, that they can not calmly endure distress, and mourn with delectione until it either correct the God of be rooted out, or in the harvest the weeds and straw for ventilet.] Secondly, it may be objected that the declaration so peremptorily by me required is altogether unnecessary, that no one thinks of alienating the church property, directly or indirectly, that there is no intention of recognising the Romish Priests in law, by entitling them, as such, to national maintenance, or in the language of the day, by taking them into the pay of the state. In short, that the National Church is no more in danger than the Christian. And is this the opinion, the settled judgment, of one who has studied the signs of the times? Can the person who makes these assertions, have ever read a pamphlet by Mr. Secretary Croker? Or the surveys of the Counties, published under the authority of the now extinct Board of Agriculture? Or has he heard, or attentively perused the successive debates in both Houses during the late agitation of the Catholic Question? If he have -- why then, relatively to the objector, and to as many as entertain the same opinions, my reply is: -- the objection is unanswerable. _______________ Notes: 1. Though by the Bill which is now Law, the Forty Shilling Freeholders no longer possess the elective franchise, yet as this particular clause of the Bill already has been, and may hereafter be, made a pretext for agitation, the following paragraph has been retained, in the belief, that its moral uses have not been altogether superseded by the retractation of this most unhappy boon.
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