for of all calamities which could befall this kingdom, it would be the most fatal, they may perhaps think is already in sight, and certainly they could, by their presence in the legislature,

accelerate it.

A monstrous combination has been formed against that church, which, for its perfect tolerance and the blessings which it has produced, will be the admiration of future ages. The old orthodox dissenters, who differ from it only upon points of discipline, and whose hostility a century of peace seemed to have eradicated, till these recent agitators stirred up the smothered embers, have leagued with the socinians, whom they hate, and who despise them; with unbelievers of every description, from the scoffers and hot sensualists of the school of Fernay, to the cold, hard, and heavy metaphysicians of the north; and all these parties unite in promoting the claims of the catholics, who, looking upon them all as equally in the way of perdition, would, if they had the power, compel them all to come within St Peter's fold, or, in pure papistical charity, burn them out of its neighbourhood. Even the quakers, who expel from their own society every member that marries one of another sect, join in the senseless clamour for toleration and political power, (toleration, which they already possess, and power, which, from their notions respecting war, they could not use,) because they hope that it will shake the steeple-house. To these must be added the united methodists, and the united Calvinists, both formidable bodies, fearfully numerous even now, and increasing with fearful rapidity; proud of their numbers, conscious of their strength, active and indefatigable, inflamed with the fiercest zeal, and directed with the coolest foresight; two Manchineals, which day by day striking their roots deeper, and sending forth wider branches, threaten

to overshadow the land, and darken it with their baleful shade. If, in addition to these confederated enemies, other co operating circumstances be consider ed; the growth of indifference on one side, and of fanaticism on the other the long torpor of the clergy themselves, from which they are now only. beginning to awake; the ruinous po licy, which makes birth or interest the guide to the dignities of the church, and is thus filling the bench of bishops. with men, some of whom are unwilling, and others incapable of defending her; the outcry against tithes, kept up by ignorant or half-thinking men; the combinations and litigations arising from this cause; the temptation which the tithes offer to the first needy minister of a bold and decisive temper, who shall have no feelings of reverence and religion to restrain him; above all, that endemic moral malady, which makes the character of these times, when the spirit of Revolution seems to be going his rounds :-he who considers these things, and has a due sense of the benefits which we derive from our establishment, and the tremendous evils from which it preserves us, though he should not himself entirely accord with that church, or be in communion with it, ought strenuously to oppose every attempt at giving political power to its old, inveterate, and irreconcilable enemies.

The catholics, if admitted into par liament, will lose no means, which their share in the legislature may allow them, of injuring our church, and advantaging their own. Ours they would have an opportunity of injuring whenever its interests were discussed; for instance, if it should be proposed to sell the tithes, and fund the produce. Their own they have a direct prospect of serving, by accomplishing its establishment in Ireland. It may perhaps be contemptuously asked, how half dozen, or half a score, Irish members

are to effect this? They who think this a satisfactory reply know little of the nature of popery, and can have reflected little upon the state of the British parliament. In addition to the power which property will always procure, there is one great borough interest, which in the next succession will revert to the catholics. If it were supposed important to the success of their object, that more members of their community should be returned, and money could purchase their return, which, in spite of all enactments against bribery, it will do (unless the whole form and system of representa tion be changed,) money would be raised for that purpose throughout every catholic kingdom in Europe; it would be begged as it is for the souls in Purgatory, and part of the re

gular commutation for sin would be converted into a tax for this great purpose. This too must not be forgotten; that a body of members, insignificant as they might be upon general questions, who could turn the scale when weighty ones make the beam tremble, would be able to make their own terms with an English minister, such as ministers are upon our misera. ble party-system.

Whether any means can preserveTM the church of England, is a question which may, perhaps, be regarded with more of fear than of hope; but it ought not to be doubted that the admis sion of the catholics to political power, which is what is meant by emancipation, would increase its danger, and might, too probably, accelerate its overthrow.

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Bribery Bill.

Meeting of the Radical Reformers

A LIST of such proceedings as had been instituted ex officio by the attor ney-general against state libels, during the last ten years, was moved for by Lord Holland. "An act," he said, "altering the ancient law March 4. of the land, giving to the silent and spontaneous act of one man all the powers and consequences of a solemn proceeding of a grand jury, had been passed this parliament at the lag end of a session, and without any person to explain the nature of its provisions, or assign the reasons on which they were founded. When he recollected, that to justify that extraordinary innovation, to lay grounds for that unexpected attack on the liberty of the subject, to prove the necessity of arming the attorney-general with the power of holding to bail, and, in some cases, of imprisoning whomever he thought guilty of a libel, no papers were moved for, no enquiry instituted, no documents produced, nay, no statement whatever made, further than was to be found in the meagre, unsatisfactory, and unsubstantiated preamble of the bill; when he recollected this, he felt that his expectation of his motion being acceded to by the supporters of that bill, was rather a proof of his own simplicity, than a fair consequence to be drawn

from the former conduct of those noble persons. He complimented them on their consistency in refusing all infor mation respecting the consequence of a law, for the enactment of which they had assigned no reasons, and for the allegations in which they had adduced no evidence; but surely it was natural for their lordships, who, if they had reasons for adopting the law, must have adopted it for the purpose of preventing offences and securing the ends of public justice, to enquire whe ther those ends had been accomplished; to learn how often, and with what effect the provisions of the new law had been resorted to; to ascertain whether libels had increased or diminished since these new powers had been granted; and, above all, to discover whether the convictions obtain ed bore a greater proportion to the informations laid, than they did before the latter were armed with such unusual, and, hitherto, unconstitutional consequences. When he perceived a vigilance in the attorney-general, that in three years discovered near four times the number of heinous offences that his predecessors had detected in twice the time; when he looked at his rigour on one hand, and the solitary instance of his mercy on the other, it would not be charity, it would

be blindness, not to suspect; it would not be candour, it would be hypocrisy, not to say that the attorney-general had exercised these powers for the purposes of influence, instead of confining them to the legitimate cases of necessity, for which alone they were intrusted to him. He wished the house to consider what was the effect of such information, even where no sentence was passed, no verdict obtain ed, no trial instituted; the bare operation of an attorney-general so accusing a man, put him at once to an expence of from 601. to 2001., without the possibility of being indemnified. It was to all intents and purposes a fine of that sum, at the discretion of the attorney-general to inflict as often as he chose, on every writer, proprie. tor, editor, or printer of a public news paper. Such a power might be right, might be necessary; but surely it was one, in the exercise of which the officer intrusted with it should be narrowly watched, according to every dictate of public prudence, and every maxim of our jealous constitution.

"On some future occasion," Lord Holland continued," he should propose, 1st, A limitation of the time at which it should be lawful to file informations for libel, after the first publication; 2dly, To fix a period at which the attorney-general should, after filing an information, be compelled to bring the accused to trial, to drop the prose cution, or to assign reasons and ask leave of the court for further time to collect his witnesses; 3dly, To limit the period at which the persons convicted for state libels should be liable to be called up for judgement; for a verdict, in the present state of the law, might be perverted from the general purposes of punishment and example, into the means of intimidation and influence. He should also move in the course of the session, unless such a measure came recommended from the

other house, the repeal of that part of the 48th of the king, which gave to the attorney-general the power of holding to bail on ex officio informations for misdemeanors."

Lord Ellenborough objected to the motion. "During the whole time," he said, "that he had presided in the Court of King's Bench, he knew that the greatest facility existed in getting at the files of these ex officio informations, and there was not a document of which the noble lord and any one else might not soon be in possession. But it was not a search for information that the noble lord proposed to himself; it was not in order to be informed that he had made the present motion; a motion, upon which the files of the Court of King's Bench were to be ransacked and rummaged, in order that a mass of useless and unnecessary papers should be cast upon their lordships' table. What," he asked, "was law, if the law of informations ex officio was not? It had been made law by the same authority as all the laws which held the government together. It was as old as the common law. If Lord Holland questioned the expediency of the law, why not propose that it should be repealed? That would be the direct and manly course: nothing could be more mischievous than, by declamatory speeches in that assembly, to impress upon the public mind the false notion that informations ex officio were not perfectly legal. The noble lord had particularly alluded to the Indictment Bill, an act made within the last four years, giving the attorney-general power to hold persons to bail against whom informations ex officio had been filed. And now he would ask their lordships, how often did they think this bill had been acted upon since its enactment? but once in the whole four years; there was but one solitary instance of its being acted upon, and he would tell their lordships in what case