which, for the present, perhaps, we had better not anticipate.

10. Under the presumption that this state of the law would oppose no serious obstacle to the contemplated coup d'etat, the Papal Bull was issued, brought into this country, and published in the cheapest of all forms, with a view to give it the most extensive circulation among all classes of her Majesty's subjects. This instrument is drawn up in a genuine legislative form; it acknowledges no authority, asks for no sanction, proceeds upon no principle but that of a transcendental irresponsible power, lodged in the hands of a foreign prince, entitling him to command the unqualified obedience of all mankind, without distinction of race, nation, religion, or government. It ignores, passes by as if they had no existence, Queen, and Government, Church and State, religious bodies and associations of every kind: with studied ingenuity all recognition of the state of the law, or the religious condition subsisting since the Reformation, is avoided— a territorial denomination long since abolished by law, is significantly adopted-three centuries, and those the most glorious and prosperous of our history, are blotted out of ecclesiastical memory, and we are forcibly carried back to an age of comparative darkness, superstition, and tyranny to obtain a glimpse of the principle upon which the "re-edified" church is henceforward to be governed. We therefore go back to the point of time to which the Pope himself has conducted us; we examine the principles in question, and find

their "essential features," their "distinguishing attributes," to be, intolerance in religion, temporal ambition, transcending all worldly might, majesty, or dominion, manifest incompatibility with social honesty, integrity, and good faith, and inconsistency with the existence of civil or religious liberty in the world.

11. After expounding the Bull by itself, and with the aids to which the instrument itself refers us, we went on to consider how it had been interpreted by those who procured it, and are now engaged in carrying it into execution. And we find in their public addresses and writings all our previous inferences confirmed to the letter. Almost every line of these performances is stamped with the impress of ultramontane canonism, leaving no doubt upon our minds that nothing short of an absolute submission of conscience, and with it, of all religious rights, (with just such a chance for our civil liberties as may remain, after the surrender of our will and conscience to the absolute disposal of a foreign priest,) will be accepted in satisfaction of the fictitious bond now put in suit against us.

12. In the last place we adverted to the legal arguments of the advocate selected by Dr. Wiseman and his associates, and submitted that the inferences he draws from the 10th Geo. IV. c. 7, § 24, and the oath in that statute prescribed to be taken by Roman Catholics, are untenable in law. We contended that his protest against inference from the spirit of the law" is without foundation, and

amounts to no more than an attempt to persuade us to consent to be cheated with our eyes open; so that in calling upon our legislature to correct a blunder of their predecessors, we do not ask them to make an ex post-facto law, but simply to arm the law, as it stands, with the powers necessary to maintain itself. The 24th clause of the "Emancipation Act" was, we say, intended to protect the RIGHT as well as the title of the national hierarchy; but, by a palpable oversight, the latter object only was effected; and we now say to them, "Do both effectually; perform your promise; rectify this clause, and obliterate from the Statute-book every vestige of recognition from which an inference favourable to the pretensions of the Roman hierarchs could be drawn. thus also has the Pope of Rome dealt with you. He is a dangerous acquaintance; you must not know him; you have no chance against him in spiritual diplomacy; you are plain men, and nothing but plain dealing can sustain you against that artillery of knavery and guile, in the use of which he has the advantage of many centuries of familiar practice."

§. 14. Remedial Suggestions.

For

Under all these considerations, the great question arises-how are we to reconcile the safety of our national religious edifice, with the maintenance of the civil rights of the Pope's spiritual subjects within these kingdoms? The difficulty is considerable, and under many conceivable circumstances may become insurmountable. But the difficulty is of

their own making. They were safe; they lived and worshipped in peace and honour amongst us; the thought of molesting them was abhorrent to us; but the ambition of their leaders put an end to this desirable relation, and opened the old sores afresh. The sword of religious strife has been unsheathed, and neither party can now withdraw with honour from the contest. Still the Papists know that their faith is in no danger from the carnal weapon in our hands; this we have for the last thirty or forty years proclaimed from our housetops; but beyond all doubt, ours would not be permitted to subsist one moment after that weapon should be transferred from our possession to theirs. Our position is, therefore, in the strictest sense defensive; and, until some new phasis of the contest shall make a different set of measures necessary, our efforts must be confined to the steps requisite to reduce the Roman communion in this country as nearly as may be to the position they held before the publication of the Pope's Bull.

With this view I take leave to call the attention of the Protestants of this country to the following scheme of resistance to the project of the Pope and Dr. Wiseman.

I should propose early in the ensuing session of Parliament, that a bill be brought in to declare and amend the laws relating to the ministers and persons professing the Roman Catholic religion; and that it should contain among others the following provisions:

1. Reciting as a matter of experience, that when

religious or other associations, bodies and professions, are mentioned in acts of Parliament by name, a danger arises that the name may be mistaken for the thing itself, and that by some ambiguity of language the law may be made to legalize or establish that which it only intended to describe; and that for this reason the Acts of the 10 Geo. IV. c. 7, and the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 59, require such explanation, and amendments as may effectually rebut every presumption of law that might be drawn from the words of those acts, tending to legalize, establish or endow the persons acting as ministers of the Roman Catholic religion, with any privileges, rank, title, or precedence, ecclesiastical, civil, or social, whatsoever it be enacted that wherever in any act or acts of Parliament, any names or descriptions of such associations, bodies or professions, or any titles or distinctive designations, ecclesiastical or civil, are named or specified, such titles, designations, or names, shall hereafter be taken and deemed in law to be simply descriptive, and not as implying any legal or legislative recognition, right or title, or as conferring any honorary, social, ecclesiastical, civil, or political precedence, rank, or privilege, other than those which the same persons, associations, bodies, or professions, do and have heretofore enjoyed in common with all Her Majesty's subjects.

2. Reciting that whereas during the late recess of Parliament, the Bishop of Rome has through his agents in this country, illegally issued and published in Great Britain, a certain printed paper or instrument, commonly called a Bull, in Latin,