existed. The effects of these measures will be, to give consequence and consideration, where there is already property and character. It will be a cheap purchase, for the government will buy the support of a numerous party of the rich and respectable, at the expence of what it has no claim now to retain. It will be selling what is of no utility, for what is above all price. The Catholic landholder, merchant, and peasant, will derive an additional motive to maintain, at the hazard of their existence, the security of a government, the latest actions of which entitle it to their gratitude and love. These,' says Mr. Burke, are chains that, though light as air, are strong as links of iron. This repeal, while it joins the two persuasions in power, will unite them in affection. All the talent (and in what country is there so much ?) will then be employed on the side of the state, at a period when all that can be brought forward ought to be called into action.

"The next consideration will be, to provide for the support of that religion which it is thus proposed to admit into our establishment; and in so doing, the object should be, that the burden imposed upon the people for the purpose of obtaining the necessary funds, should be no more than just sufficient to enable every man, with decency and comfort, to live by his ministry. The Irish government allows, at present, salaries to the ministers of the Presbyterian worship. There seems to be no reason why the same indulgence should not be granted to the Catholics. Policy, as well as justice, demand it. A small, but independent hierarchy, ought to be established. Supposing the parishes to

amount to 1200, allowing a salary of 1001 per annum to each resident priest, and 4001 to each bishop, the amount of the whole extablishment would be less than 160,000l. per annum: an ecclesiastical establishment not of a very splendid nature, but perhaps sufficient for the moderate wants of the Catholics, and conformable to the principles, not of encou ragement but of toleration, on which it is proposed to acquiesce in their demands.* This establishment, when compared to the Protestant, which exceeds half a million, furnishes a proof, at how cheap a rate an institution of so much importance can be purchased. The Catholic religion now existing in Ireland, under all the disadvantages of ptnury and contempt, is still equal to the maintenance of public morals, and to the support of Christianity. The numbers too of the two sects, are of some consequence. The Protestants of the regular church do not exceed 600,000 souls, and their establishment costs the whole nation half a million. The Catholics amount to three millions of people, and they would be amply contented with the payment of 160,0001.”

Two objections to this plan deserve no tice.-Why introduce a political test at all? Cannot a republican be a good magistrate under a monarchy, and a royalist under a republic? Harmony of specula tive tenets is no more necessary in political than in religious theory. Coalitions of hostile factions have often governed well; experience justifies the joint employment of disagreeing dogmatists.

ART. XVII.-Serious Examination of the Roman Catholic Claims, as set forth in the Petition now pending before Parliament. By the Rev. THOMAS LEMESURIER, Rector of Neunton Langville, late Fellow of New College, Oxford. 8vo. pp. 60.

THE descendant of a French refugee may be allowed to feel some hereditary prejudice against the church, which procured a revocation of the edict of Nantes: but if this prejudice has so far abated against its doctrines, as to allow of conformity to an establishment, which Calvin accused of papism; and has so far abated against its practice, as to allow of a defence of that very intolerance, which protestants once ascribed to the clergy, as Romanists, and not as tithing-men; this prejudice can have little claim to indulgence, or to excuse: it borders on an ignoble apostacy to the creeds and the cruelties which his ancestors withstood.

6

The Rev. Mr. Lemesurier first analyzes the catholic petition, which in his opinion (p. 10), does not state the case of the petitioners with that clearness and precision which is or ought to be res quired.' This is a new ground for resisting the prayer of a petition, that it was not drawn up by a neat writer: happily this ground of objection is still more applicable to the reverend gentleman's own counter prayer.

He next compares the qualifications re quired of an Irish Roman Catholic, which are affirmative or juratory déclarations of opinion, with the qualifications required of a member of parliament, which are pe

"I have selected this sum in preference to a larger, because in the reformation of English curacies, laudably commenced by the English bishops, 1001. per annum was esteemed a competent provision for an English clergyman. The Scottish ministers are supposed to enjoy, upon an average, nearly the same sun, independent, however, of a house and glebe of

.trn acres."

ed; with an extreme of insult to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, that has, as it were, been reserved for the last outrage on his patience and forbearance, in this age of unparalleled apostacy from all religion, and for a characteristic winding-up of that horrible revolution, which laid its foundations in the temporary extinction of the religion of his blessed Son, and now braves heaven by the mockery of restoring that religion, only to outrage and profane it.

"In all the horrors of this revolution, I charge him with having made himself a party. In all the horrors of this revolution, I charge hun with having made our God, and our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier, parties, as far as his assumption of the divine commission, with which he invests himself, can accomplish so impious a purpose.

"It is the authority of the Most High which he pleads; it is the sanction of his commission of which he makes his boast; it is his highest prerogative in governing the affairs of men, that he pretends to exercise, while he confers the imperial crown, the price of all the enormities to which the French revolution gave birth, on its most distinguished parricide, and anoints with the holy oil of kings the merciless hands that sluiced the most innocent blood during its exterminating progress.

"It is in the name of the immaculate Jesus, and with the invocation of the Holy Spirit, that he consecrates a sceptre, wrested from its legitimate possessors by a series of such atrocities, flowing from this revolution, as never before stained the annals of human crimes, or drew down the curses of heaven on the hu

man race.

"It is the blessed Son of God whom he associates in the filiation * to which he admits a recorded apostate, who in the face of the christian and infidel world, and by a public proclamation sent into the world with his signature, while commanding the revolutionary armies in Egypt, asserted that God had no Son, no associate in his kingdom.

as head of the Roman catholic church, seated in the see of the prince of the apostles, and, as his successor, venerated, I might say adored, by such a portion of the christian world, I charge him with having betrayed its dignity. "He canonizes as the pious and zealous protector of that see, the man who made a merit with the people of Egypt, that he was the servant of their prophet of a Mussulman, who had marched to Rome to overthrow the Pope, because he invited the christians to make war against the mahometan religion.

"He recognizes with the warmest elfusions of gratitude, the most rapturous expressions of joy, the man who waged a war of extermi nation against his immediate predecessor in the pontifical chair; who plundered him of all that the zeal of christian emperors and princes had lavished on his see; who cast him into prison, loaded him with contumely, and at length, by his cruel treatment, and the ruin he brought upon the patrimony of St. Peter, as well as on the whole catholic church, broke that truly pious, upright, and venerable pontiff's heart, and brought his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

"To the royal family of France I charge him with the foulest ingratitude. He takes the crown of St. Lewis from the altar on which, by an eternal decree of Boniface the Eighth, his name was for ever to be invocated, and places it on the head of the murderer of his descendants.

"In the throne that had been filled by this race of kings, who for so many ages had been sanctified as the eldest sons of the Roman ca tholic church, the founders of all its temporal power, the liberal benefactors to whom the see he fills owes all its princely possessions, he seats the upstart usurper of their birthright, the plunderer of their inheritance, the tyrant who founds his power on their extinction.

"These are the charges I bring against this father of the faithful, this visible head of the church of Christ, this vicegerent of God. It is not a tale of old times; it is not a transar "It is to the grace of God, poured largely tion of ages of ignorance and superstition, to into the heart of this ferocious homicide, who which we scruple to give credence, as so diby a more insatiate thirst of blood, and a pre- similar to all that the principles and feelings eminence in every revolutionary crime, to which we are habituated can suppose po eclipsed the fame of all his revolutionary com- sible: it is the act of the hour in which I petitors, that he ascribes the desire to receive write:-enlightened Europe is witness to itthe imperial crown, the golden fruit of all these the astonished and indignant world bears tescrimes, from the hands of God's vicegerent timony to it. Stand forward, you who exer and representative; and it is to the immediate cise the office of advocate for this delegate inspiration of heaven, in answer to his own fer- of heaven; stand forward, and in the face et vent prayers, that he attributes his determi- your country defend him against these charge. nation to gratify this desire of his most du- Stand forward, and exculpate him to the nuntiful son,' who now professes to be a catholic, berless professors of your own religion, whe as, when it answered a revolutionary purpose, hang down their heads in shame and silence, he professed to be a Mahometan, and who and to the whole body of your protestant felnow venerates the health-bearing cross, as he low-subjects, whose indignation I but faintly then venerated the health-administering Ko- express."

ran.

"With respect to the high station he fills

In our opinion, the pope has acted con

* His dearly beloved son in Christ. See the Allocution to the secret Consistory, ↑ See his Proclamations.

sistently with the practice of his church, with the law of nations, and with the principles of morals, in crowning Bonaparte.

The catholic church does not interfere with any other title to sovereignty than faith. She always prefers the orthodox upstart to the heathen heir, and crowns without hesitation a Constantine or a Pepin, or fulminates without hesitation a Julian or an Elizabeth, whatever be the character of their civil claims to sovereignty. It is a proof of the forbearance and longsuffering of the catholic church to have tolerated the Bourbons so long. Both Louis XV. and Louis XVI., instead of repressing and persecuting the encyclopedic beresiarchs, connived at their impieties, extended legal toleration, and appointed deists and protestants to leading offices of the state. It was conformable to precedent, that under sovereigns so dangerously liberal (compare the conduct of the priest Savonarola under Lorenzo dei Medici), a Sieyes or a Gregoire should let slip the arguments of sedition, as a wholesome corrective, in order to teach the throne its dependence on the altar. The church well knows what Barruel teaches aloud, that a triumph of sedition is the school for kings; and that the magistrate only patronizes her jargon and her pantomime for the sake of the obedience which she knows how to inculcate. The directory of France was antichristian: it was correct therefore in the catholic ecclesiastics of France to transfer their allegiance to Bonaparte, who was a professing christian at least, and is probably a sincere one. The Egyptian proclamation drawn up by his staff of savans, and no doubt signed unread, proves nothing as to his personal religiosity: if it proved secret infidelity, there would be more glory due to the church for bending the stubborn neck of that courage which has doubted, than for keeping in curb the cowardice of habitual superstition.

The extravagant doctrines of the English tories concerning the indefeasibility of hereditary claims, and the imprescriptibility of royal titles, form no part of the law of nations. Right is power recognized by others. Might becomes right, as soon as a formal acknowledgment to that effect intervenes. After the peace of Ryswick, the rights of James the second to the throne of Great Britain were, as far as respected the rest of Europe, at an end. During the ensuing peace, it was a breach of etiquette in French writers to call him king:

and, during the ensuing war, it was in the French nation a recision of their own agreements, and an arbitrary unconsented revocation of implied compact, to assist James in 1715, as entitled to the British crown. Not only Vattel, Martens, and Günther, support this doctrine; but the French themselves, in their declaration of war against the emperor, in 1733, complain thus:

L'Empereur a entrepris de prononcer sans autorité sur ce qui s'etait passé dans l'interieur de la republique de Pologne.' They admit that a foreign power is never competent to pronounce concerning internal rights; and consequently that domestic recognition ought always to involve foreign. The pope therefore acts conformably to the law of nations in recognizing as sovereign of France the object of French recognition.

And now to the principles of morals. When could anarchy terminate if the claims of the expelled were perpetual? Who does not see the absurdity of treating as valid those claims of the Irish peasantry over lands whence their ancestors were ejected? If such claims were unexpirable (and the claims of ejected princes are of the same kind), each generation must fight anew for the whole mass of fixed property. For fields of harvest we should have fields of battle; for furrows, graves. In matters of domestic legislation, the law can efficaciously limit the exact date of prescription,; because society can call in the mass of possessors to support its definitions of title. But in questions of the law of nations, there being no executive police to employ, it is expedient, and therefore just, that prescription should be coeval with recognition. If the European powers made no bargain at the peace with the French government about the forfeited property of the emigrants, that property must remain a valid forfeiture. If no reservation was made of the rights of the house of Bourbon (and Bonaparte would not have treated as the occasional sovereign), those rights have been virtually resigned; and it would beun gentlemanly, and a breach of honour, in any member or minister of the British house of commons to propose now to reenact them; no single nation, no confederacy of nations, can have a right to declare them valid. As it is no object to the community whether an estate be held by John Doe or Richard Roe, provided there be no uncertainty about the proprietor; so it is no object to the commonwealth of

nations, whether a reigning dynasty be called Capet or Bonaparte, provided there 'be no doubt about the real sovereign. The friend of order therefore is to promote the ascertainment, not the litigation; he is, like the pope, to corroborate the decisions of international lawyers with the overawing sanction of the mother church.

The pope is the representative of the catholic interest; he promotes that in terest by crowning Bonaparte; he thereby reconquers to the Romish church the most powerful of the European kingdoms. Compared with this conversion of millions, and of their sons' sons, to the holy see, what are the puny interests of a family heretofore royal? The pope would

have been a traitor to his office to have acted otherwise.

We advise this trumpet-tongued declaimer to lay aside his passion, and to reexamine the argument at issue; he wants that power of voluntary transmigration, without which the merit of party-chieftains can never be equitably appreciated. It became the duke d'Enghien to die for the traditional rights of his family: but, in recommending a qu'il mourut to the pope, inpropriety is advised: he had to perform the humbler duty of living for the catholic church, and of crowning its restorer. A pope is not bound to die for Monsieur, but only for the church of Christ.

ART. XIX.-Cockburn's Dissertation on the best Means of civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India.

THE Rev. Claudius Buchanan, viceprovost of the college of Fort William in Bengal, gave in 1804 two hundred guineas to the University of Cambridge as a prize for the superior English prose dissertation, On the best means of civilizing the subjects of the British Empire in India; and of diffusing the light of the christian religion throughout the eastern world.' The question is studiously so put as to admit but one answer- endow churches.' Civilization may be best extended by the missions of commerce; and christianity best taught by the distribution of printed instruction, which can be accommodated to the languages of different provinces; but if the same engine is to be used for manufacturing such disconnected products as civilization and christianity, that engine must be an ecclesiastical corporation. Where the inference is prescribed, the philosopher will disdain to discuss; but there are men in modern times, whose ductile eloquence can always labour to popularize the very inferences of their patron; whose obedient souls aspire, as after a merit, at driving in the rut of prescriptive orthodoxy, and whose accommodating reason can always evolve the very creed of the cotemporary magistrate.

After noticing many peculiarities of the Hindoos with reprobation, the author proceeds to his main proposition.

It appears absolutely necessary that a church-establishment be immediately commenced; and at page forty-one it is further recommended that a bishopric be endowed in Bengal.

When this bishop and these clergy, of the value of whose importation only the wicked and the ignorant can doubt, are

arrived in Hindostan, what are they to do!? They are to disperse a partial version of the scriptures.

And thus, that mass of fanatical and ignorant absurdity, compiled by bishop Newton from popish and mystical theologians, which corrupts every source of history and confounds every faculty of judgement, and with a perverseness at which Mr. Halhed would blush, holds up, as prophetic and allusive, a multiplicity of passages in the scriptures, which have not the slightest pretensions, which lay not the feeblest claim to a prophetic character, is to be dispersed among the Hindoos, as a part of christian religion. Is this to dif fuse light, and to scatter civilization?

The various forms of christianity, while they subsist as sects, feel out their appro priate public, and serve to define the mo ral and intellectual attainments of their respective adherents: but, in an unoppos ed established shape, they have never yet been decidedly beneficial. From the es tablishment of christianity under Constantine, to the beginnings of its disestablishment under Pope Leo X., is the darkest and most uncivilized period of European society. Shall Britain prepare such a millennium for Hindostan ?

This author is not unwilling to learn of the enemy. Among the causes of the propagation of christianity, he reckons (p. 31.) in the words of Mr. Gibbon,

the exclusive or intolerant zeal of the christians.' With such views of fact, the determination to succeed cannot but be accompanied with the use of exceptionable means. Among those already sug gested, is a proposal to call in the aid of the civil power (p. 27.) to abolish the