and strange joy with his new friends on the other-his words must be taken with large allowances. His speech in the Times, March 19, is full of useful information to the world; and shews what he is himself, and what conduct will justify mistrust of a public man in England; and to what extent he may, nevertheless, be trusted, and under what precautions. He there misrepresents, under an unworthy subterfuge, his own words "Breaking in upon the Constitution," and admits the stratagem to which he has been party. If notice had been given by the Cabinet, his words are thus reported in the Times: "Men would have been provoked into declarations, from which they would have afterwards felt that they could not recede; and preliminary obstacles would have been raised to our proceeding, which it would have been almost impossible to overcome."

If the authority of Mr. Peel, without the facts and reasonings on which he supports himself, be now current, it is the bounden duty of every individual to do his utmost to prevent Englishmen bartering for such a currency the powers and privileges of a free Protestant country.

CHAPTER IV.

THE question in consideration amounts to this: Shall powers and privileges, which the Constitution at present vests in Protestants exclusively, be thrown open to Papists? And the ground for its consideration is now to be changed; and we are to inquire, how far it is consistent with our duty, as Christians, to take these powers and privileges from Protestants, and give them to Papists. It must be said over and over again, that it is not any interference with conscience or liberty, to refuse Papists their demands; and it is at least dangerous to grant them; and dangerous in two points of view, in Politics and in Religion. The danger in Religion is now to be stated; and one principle runs through the whole statement. If neither Popery, nor any of its forms or practices or worship, be idolatrous, it may be from our attaching more force to that word than it now bears and there may yet be so near an approach to Idolatry that it is absolutely necessary, both directly and indirectly, for us to refuse, as far as lawfully we may, to be governed by Papists. What Idolatry was among the Jews, Popery resembles among Christians: what Papists plead for their image worship, might, in great measure, have been pleaded for the worship of Aaron's golden calf, and could not in any measure have been pleaded for the worship of Moloch or Bel by the devoted nations of Canaan. If the Old Testament prohibit idolatry, if the New Testament enjoin a brotherhood of those whose characteristic is obedience to the word of God, the spirit of this prohibition and injunction oblige us to keep our nation under the exclusive rule of Protestants. The opposition the Papists make to the

circulation of the Bible is alone enough to render it offensive to religion that Papists should receive any share in our Legislature.

In one sense, so high is our calling, every question is a religious question, 1 Cor. x. 31: but that is not the sense in which any doubt can exist, as applied to this question. Mr. Peel says, according to the "Times" of March 19, "This question is not a religious question: but when he said this, he would ask whether the Honourable Baronet supposed that he meant that this question had no regard to the Religious Establishment of this country, nor to the preference of the Protestant over the RomanCatholic Religion? What he meant to say was this, that the present question was not a question of conscience." (Of this last sentence, I conclude the next sentence to be intended as explanatory.) "That there was no precept of the Protestant Religion which forbade them from considering this great and important question. He had been referring to the argument, in which it was stated, that the House was not at liberty to discuss this question, because, forsooth, we were forming an alliance with idolatry by discussing it." We may hope that "forsooth' did not issue from Mr. Peel's lips. If the words "considering" and “ discussing" were his words, they were meant to convey what, in the next sentence, is expressed by "seeking to repeal" the declaration against Transubstantiation. For Mr. Peel's reported speech then goes on: "Now that position he positively denied. He found it stated in the paper to which he had referred, and which was drawn up by a very eminent Gentleman of the name of Faber, that as we were obliged to make the declaration against Transubstantiation on taking our seats, we were forming an union with idolatry in seeking to repeal it."

If any member of the Legislature would refuse a share in it to those who confessedly and openly bowed down to stocks and stones, yet were what is called in these days good citizens in the common sense of that character, it is for him to clear up to his own mind the distinction in England between such a con

fessed idolater, and one whose worship and sacrament, as used at this time, he pronounces to be superstitious and idolatrous. It is most certainly my persuasion, that a Papist may be more dangerous, and less fit to share our legislation, than some one idolater; but the arguments that would at once be admitted, as conclusive against a confessed idolater, could not, nevertheless, be fairly urged against a Papist: and for myself, I disapprove, in the strongest manner, the language of the Declaration, as mixing up those, many of whom mean at least to be branches of the true vine, and name the name of Christ, under a common condemnation, with those who do not.

That, according to their own ritual and practices, Papists are Idolaters, in a strict sense of that term, appears to me most true: and so is covetousness, idolatry: so, in a lesser sense, all sin is idolatry. But the reason that this Declaration was introduced by Charles and his Parliament, was yet unconnected with the admitted fact, that this worship and sacrament were idolatrous; and was to exclude bad subjects from the Legislature, by a test connected with their religion, and essentially at variance with it. Mr. Peel seems to me perfectly right, when he says, in the same speech, "That the religious test was applied to the Papists, not to detect any tenet of their religion, but to discover the bad intriguing subject:" and if, indeed, "the exclusion were deemed unnecessary, the test of exclusion might be dispensed with." By parity of reasoning, when the exclusion is held necessary, the mode of exclusion may be varied. The reason that such a test was chosen, appears to me to have been, that the priesthood would have enabled the Papists to elude any test that was not essentially at variance with Popery. By an intelligible misuse of words, the lesser idolatry of the Papists may well be a greater offence before God and man than the idolatry of those upon whom it may fairly be said the Sun of Righteousness has not yet risen with healing upon his wings. But by such offence, whether more or less idolatrous in its essence, the Papists appear to me so far idolatrous in any the most mitigated sense, in prac

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tice and tendency, that, waving every consideration of policy, nay, supposing for one moment that policy made entirely for them, still on Scriptural grounds they ought to be excluded from any share in the Legislature of Great Britain and Ireland. It may be thought wrong in such an one as myself to take up this high ground; but it is in fairness due to those who differ from me, to stand committed a good and sufficient alteration might be, the repeal of the Declaration for the present. If, hereafter, need were, it might be re-enacted, leaving out a word so far ambiguous in its application as "Idolatry," and changing the condemnation of the sins and errors of Popery into a positive assertion that they were contrary to the known word of God: or it might be better to leave out of the Declaration the second sentence altogether.

The proper order for considering the propriety of any measure proposed in Parliament, appears to me, first, to consider its bearings towards our Maker; and secondly, towards the Constitution: and then its expediency. The first and second have been of late so generally satisfied, or so little affected, that the third, by being the only one debated, has seemed to be the principal, if not the only consideration. Hence the mistaken exaggerations of the value of expediency, forced into Mr. Peel's mouth by the Times of March 19, third side, near the head of the sixth column. When expediency comes into play, it is all in all; and nothing before: so that "public affairs cannot be conducted upon the principles of expediency," in any sense, which will not make expediency a secondary consideration.

The oath which was passed by the Commons does not appear such as to invalidate any of the objections here urged against the claims of the Papists.

Mr. Platt, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, has well objected to this oath, that it is such that an honest and conscientious Papist can hardly take it; and will feel himself in conscience bound to weaken the Protestant Religion, the professors of which he believes to be living in dangerous error, as to their