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towards Protestants; and I will abstain from all comment, all reflection on it, lest I should weaken the effect of it on the minds of those whom I wish to impress with a conviction of the existence of those feelings, and with a sense of the inevitable dangers that must result to England, if her parliaments give way to the claims of the Irish Catholics. To the Protestant supporters of those claims one may well 68 say, eyes have ye, and ye see not; ears have ye, and ye hear not."

Again, let me ask, is not the true spirit of the Roman Catholic towards the Protestant breathed in the very word tolérée as applied to the Reformed Church in France? The meaning of the word toleration, is sufferance, indulgence in matters where the person or persons so suffering, so indulging, has or have a right to withdraw such sufferance and indulgence. Is not then that most insidiously termed tolérée which exists by law, by right of the charter octroyée by Louis XVIII, and ratified, confirmed and sworn to by his successor on the ceremony of his consecration and coronation ?-Nevertheless, the Catholic clergy have pronounced the charter to be a "chef-d'œuvre d'impiété"-have declared Louis XVIII. damned for having been the author of it, and have promised a similar reward to Charles X. for having confirmed it. Thus are the noblest intentions and the most beneficent acts of two succeeding fathers of their people thrown into the shade, if not totally obscured, by the bigotry, fanaticism, and intolerance of the Catholic clergy, who,-in spite of a charter, the main object of which was to reconcile all opinions, all parties, and to ensure to all religions the most unrestrained freedom in its exercise and the most impartial protection,-have at length thrown aside the mask of toleration which they for a moment wore, and advance with rapid strides towards the overthrow and annihilation of the Reformed Church!

The hatred that is not only inwardly felt, but openly avowed by the Catholic clergy towards the Protestants, and instilled into the minds of all classes, high and low, from the sovereign on the throne down to the beggar in the street, is daily visible and audible to the eye and the ear of the commonest observer, the person the most indifferent to public affairs.-A Protestant minister pelted with stones, whilst reading the funeral service over the corpse of a departed brother, the walls of Protestant temples obscenely scrawled over, and otherwise disgustingly degraded:-a Protestant préfet deprived of his situation on the demand of a Catholic bishop, for the one offence alone of being a Protestant :-a Protestant general proposed and nominated to be governor of the École Politechnique: the ratification refused, because he was a Protestant.-In colleges, prizes refused to scholars who had gained them, because they were Protestants. In towns, where the majo

rity of the inhabitants are Protestants, every appointment and employment given to Catholics:-Messrs.les Missionnaires declaiming against and insulting them with atrocity and impunity, styling the very laws that protect them impious, and calling in question even to their right of existence.-A bookseller deprived of his brevet for having printed the translation of a German work, wherein the principles of the Reformed Church were defended with decency, moderation, and a spirit of Christianity throughout, truly Christian. Amidst all these insults and abuses, the members of the Reformed Church are condemned to suffer, if not with patience, at least in silence: they are attacked in the coarsest, in the grossest manner by the Catholic clergy, who, outraging in the most barefaced manner the decency of the press, dare to complain of its licentiousness; and who, at the very moment that they are themselves making it subservient to their own views, and using it as the channel of their base calumnies, and as the means of instilling into the public mind that deadly hatred which will ere long burst out and blaze forth against the Protestants,-are incessant in their hypocritical whinings and lamentations over what they call the abuse of it, and sing loudly and in full chorus the necessity of fettering its hands and of placing on its head the cap of censorship. The journals under the influence of the clergy and of the Jesuits, will be swoln out for weeks with the account of the conversion of a heretic to the Romish Church, (hors de l'enceinte de laquelle il n'y a pas d'espoir de salut, as a bishop lately informed his congregation in a sermon wherein he was thundering fire and flames against the Protestants,) while, at the same time, the sale is forbidden of a pamphlet containing a true and ungarbled statement of the conversion of a Catholic priest from the Romish to the Reformed Church. In the public schools, the few Protestant functionaries that yet remain are exposed to every species of mortification and of injustice; and dismissal from their places, is daily adding to the injuries that are showering down thick on their heads: indeed, the ministre de l'instruction publique has himself lately said, that " le moment n'est pas loin, où ils seront tout-à-fait exclus de tous les collèges." Thus the undeniable advantages of public education will ere long be impossible to be procured for the children of Protestant families, inasmuch as all schools are placed under the direction of the Catholic clergy, and are on the eve of being confided solely to the charge of the Jesuits. To open a school, a license from the ministre de l'intérieur is necessary; and if granted, the bishop of the department can at his own good-will and pleasure, and without qualifying his objections by any more reasonable argument than the one commonly resorted to by Napoleon when he was expostulated with on any of his acts of tyranny, je le veux, order its immediate suppression.

I am intimately acquainted with a Protestant minister, who had been for sixteen years head-master of a public seminary, who has lately been turned out of his situation, for no other reason than that he was a Protestant: a man loved and esteemed both by boys and parents; in every way calculated for the place he had held for so many years with satisfaction to all who had to do with him, and with credit to himself, possessing those mild, engaging manners so essential to those engaged in the education of youth; endowed with superior talents, and blessed with an unblemished character; a good Christian, a good minister-severe to himself, tolerant to others; in short, the man that every parent would seek for the instructor of his children." Vous vous faites trop aimés, vous finirez par convertir toute la ville," was charitably observed to him as a cause of his dismissal, coupled with his being a Protestant; and this, in spite of the declarations of every Catholic parent who had boys under his care, that in no instance had he inter fered the most remotely with the religious tenets of their children. The above are but a few of the grievances that the Reformed Church in France has to suffer under; but I set out with saying that I should confine myself to stating that, on which I could challenge contradiction. My motive in seeking to bring to light these grievances is not founded on any wish of rendering myself conspicuous as a party-man; my only object is to refute the asser tions of those persons who have drawn a contrast between the situation of the Catholics in Ireland, and of the Reformed Church in France, in favor of the latter-my object is to show that the principles of the Catholic clergy are of a nature so exclusive, so in tolerant, that they consider it a work acceptable to God Almighty, and even necessary to their own salvation to endeavor to undermine and overthrow all other Churches; and I contend that such being their principles, persons of that persuasion who live under a Protestant government, must be content to suffer a portion of those privations that are so lavishly inflicted by Catholic govern ments on the members of the Reformed Church.

Enough has been said to prove that the champions of Catholic Emancipation have not been happy in the choice of arguments in support of their cause. Has this proceeded from ignorance, or from design? They know best; but, at all events, if feelings of the latter description have attracted them, their insincerity merits to be exposed; and if they have sinned from ignorance, a little insight into the real situation of the French Protestants may perhaps serve to make them more contented with that situation of life in which it has pleased God to place them.

If any person who may happen to cast their eye over these pages should wish for any additional proof of the intolerant spirit of the Catholic clergy, I beg to refer them to a pamphlet which is

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to be met with in Paris, at the office of the " mémorial Catholique," and which has for title, "Catechisme du sens commun, pas M. T." The objects of this work are to instruct the rising generation, that the sovereign who grants liberty of conscience to any persons out of the pale of the Romish Church is guilty of heresy; and farther, to inculcate into their young minds, that it is not only lawful but meritorious to disobey a sovereign or a government who afford protection to the Reformed Church, which is above all others the object of their attacks. In chapter 19, pages 48 and 49, some edifying passages of this nature are to be found; but let those whom curiosity may induce to look at this revolting production, compare it with article 5 of the charter, which accords to all religions an equal protection, and to persons of all persuasions an entire liberty of conscience.

It remains now to show, that even supposing the members of the Reformed Church in France to be in that happy position that the declaimers for Catholic Emancipation have so disinterestedly vouchsafed to place them in, it does not necessarily follow that the British Parliament is called on to take off those restrictions and disabilities under which the Irish Catholics do and ought to labor. There can be no fair comparison drawn between Protestant subjects under a Catholic government, and Catholic subjects under a Protestant government. The respective subjects stand towards their respective governments in a situation totally different, and before which all attempt at analogy must fall to the ground. The government of a Catholic country can have nothing to fear from its Protestant subjects; for this simple reason, that they owe no mysterious allegiance to a foreign power: they can have but one object in view-the due observation of the laws, and the maintenance of tranquillity and good order in the state: they hold no secret connexion and correspondence with their co-religionists of other countries; and a Protestant congregation would be disgusted at any coarse attack from the pulpit on persons of other persuasions. The main-spring of the Reformed Church is toleration, and charity in its extended sense: to bless those that curse her, and to pray for those that despitefully use her. Whoever has attended divine service in a Protestant temple in France, knows that the king, the government, the magistrates, and the Catholic Church, as well as their own, are distinctly prayed for: thus, following the truly evangelical maxim of returning good for evil. Thus, a Catholic government may without any fear for future consequences receive its Protestant subjects with confidence into its bosom, and bestow on them any and all places of honor and responsibility; but, on the other hand, a Protestant government has every thing to guard against from its Catholic subjects, who do owe to the pope that blind, secret, and mysterious allegiance, the effects of which could not be otherwise

than prejudicial to a Protestant government, if its Catholic subjects were allowed to participate in the direction of it. The one circumstance alone of the state religion of a country being Protestant, makes it regarded by the Church of Rome with the jaundiced eye of prejudice and jealousy, and with that deadly hatred which are the consequences of bigotry and fanaticism. How then can England with safety, either to the Protestant succession or to its established religion, receive into its parliaments, its counsels, and into its strong holds, men who, from their very religion, are interested in the overthrow of her Church; men, whose attachment to king and country is counterbalanced by a spiritual obedience to a foreign power, which is to them superior to all other duties, and which must ever be dangerous to a Protestant government, who cannot but be aware that this foreign power is always on the watch to take advantage of that blind and absolute submission to their chief, which is unceasingly instilled into the minds of the Catholics by the keepers of their consciences,-their confessors. The very essence, the very soul of Popery is the opposite of the principles of the Reformed Church-it is oppressive, intolerant, and exclusive out of the pale of its despotism all is, in its eyes, heresy and sophism :-"hors de l'Eglise Romaine point de salut," is the first article in every Roman Catholic's Creed.

Thus, the Irish Catholics are unable, from the very nature, from the very soul of their religion, to offer those securities for good citizenship, without which no wise administration can decide on satisfying their claims. That every Protestant government has enemies more or less declared, according to times and circumstances, but ever silently vigilant, even if appearing to slumber, in that class of their subjects who acknowlege the supremacy and infallibility of the pope, cannot admit of a rational doubt; and I infer from thence, that the government of England cannot be accused of acting with injustice, in continuing to adhere to the one, the but one certain guarantee for its own safety, its own security-exclusion of the Roman Catholics from place and power. As long as the Church of Rome declares herself the enemy of all other religions-as long as she seeks to destroy and undermine all other churches-as long as she instils into all her members a spirit of bigotry and of intolerance-as long as she continues to treat Protestantism, et le néant réligieux, as synonymous terms-as long as we see the Catholic clergy all over Europe in constant opposition to the civil power, if every thing does not yield to their will-as long as they show themselves ambitious, intolerant, greedy of power; and as long as they betray that, though calling themselves ministers of heaven, their kingdom is of this world-as long as the court of Rome openly blames Catholic governments for allowing to Protestants the undisturbed exercise of their reli

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