No one doubts that, if the Reform Bill had been the first measure carried, the Catholic Relief Bill would never have been the second. The present House of Commons (1862), even with the addition of the fifty Catholic members for Ireland, is greatly more hostile to the Catholics than that of 1829 was. The opposition to them is to be found now rather in the Lower than the Upper House. This is a very remarkable circumstance in a country so much influenced by public opinion as England, especially during the last half-century, has been. It was carried by the liberal opinions of the holders of a majority of the close boroughs, which brought the Government into such straits as compelled it to force through the measure. Catholic emancipation was the greatest, as it was THE LAST, triumph of the nomination system.

unworthy means to sustain his for- the aristocratic, and the greater part tunes, and sent the begging-box round of the highly educated classes, over the to every beggar in Ireland to swell the sincere conviction and honest resist"rent," he spent it as liberally in sup-ance of the vast majority of the people. porting the cause in which he was embarked, and maintaining his many needy or destitute followers: if he was "alieni appetens," he was "sui profusus." Immense sums passed through his hands, but he died poor. His ambition, and it was great, was not for himself: it was for the Roman Catholic Church and his distressed countrymen that he exerted his talents, and with their prosperity that he felt himself identified ;-noble objects, if pursued by worthy means, but only the delusive light which leads to perdition if pursued by unworthy, and involving in a tortuous and dishonest policy. His faults were rather those of his faith and his position than himself. In appearance he was striking; he would have been remarked among a thousand. His countenance was neither handsome nor commanding, but it had something in it which irresistibly attracted the attention. Strong and square built, his figure conveyed the idea of great personal strength; quick, but evasive, his eye gave the impression of Jesuitical cunning. He scarce ever looked you in the face; a rare peculiarity, but which, when it exists, is eminently descriptive of character. In manners he was, when he chose, extremely pleasing; none could exhibit, when he desired it, more courtesy, or was a more agreeable companion; and none, when otherwise inclined, could let fly a more fearful volley of vulgar abuse.*

158. Catholic emancipation, the first change on the Protestant constitution of the State, and the first great triumph of the democratic over the aristocratic powers in the empire, was brought about, so far as Great Britain is concerned, in a very peculiar way. It was a victory gained by a large portion of * The Author was once examined for eight hours before a Committee of the House of Commons (that on Combinations, April 1838) by Mr O'Connell, who conducted the examination with equal acuteness and courtesy.

Many of the features in the foregoing portrait

were then drawn from nature.

159. It could not have been carried, however, if the divisions in the English aristocracy at that period had not been powerfully aided by two circumstances, which told with decisive effect at the same time on the social and political condition of Ireland. The first of these was the contraction of the currency, commenced in 1819, and rendered so fearfully stringent by the suppression of small notes by the bill of 1826. As these decisive measures lowered the price of agricultural produce nearly a half, and nearly the whole population of Ireland was either engaged in agriculture or directly dependent on it, the entire labouring classes of that country had been for the last ten years involved in difficulties and suffering. The only breathing-time they had known was during the extension of the currency in 1823, and the two next years, when, with the rise of prices, distress and disaffection had in a great measure disappeared, to be followed only by redoubled suffering after the bill of 1826 had again contracted it. These measures, by producing universal discontent, prepared the soil for the reception of the seed

which the Catholic agitators were of years, of 250,000 persons, which for ready so plentifully to cast upon it. the first time at once thinned the reThe second was, that the Romish dundant numbers, and removed the clergy possessed such unbounded in- political dangers of the Emerald Isle. fluence over their flocks that they were Catholicism, so far from receiving an able to organise the whole Catholic impulse, has, from the same cause, met population into a vast and disciplined with the greatest check it has received array, alike docile to the voice of their in Great Britain since the Reformation. chiefs, and inspired with the most vio- It has become rampant, and revealed lent hatred towards those whom they its inherent ambition; and the consehad been taught, and not without rea- quence has been a vast revulsion of son, to regard as their oppressors. It opinion in the middle and ruling classes was owing to this combination of cir- of the empire against the tenets of the cumstances that England was so di- Vatican, and a determination to resist vided, and Ireland, so far as the Ca- its encroachments, unexampled since tholics went, so united, that emanci- the Revolution. The Catholic faith pation had become, in a manner, a has been embraced by several ladies of matter of state necessity before it was rank who sighed for an ecclesiastical actually conceded by the Government. opera, and many of fashion who desired 160. Never, perhaps, was there a the sway, and required perhaps the great public measure which was at- comfort, of confession, and by some intended with results so entirely opposite experienced men of genius, who dreamt to what was both prophesied and ex- of the amiable illusion of unity of bepected in both islands, as Catholic lief. But it has been sturdily resisted emancipation. The Liberals predicted by the great body of the people. The an entire cessation of agitation and grant to Maynooth, small as it is, with violence, the extinction of all causes difficulty passes the House of Comof discord between the two islands, mons; and no one doubts that a reand the knitting together of the Saxon formed House of Commons would never and Celtic population in the bonds of have passed the Relief Bill. peace, tranquillity, and loyalty. The opponents of emancipation anticipated from it a vast impulse to the Romish persuasion in Great Britain, the destruction of all the safeguards of Protestantism, and possibly the eventual restoration of the Catholic as the ruling faith of the whole empire. It is hard to say which set of predictions has been most completely falsified by the event. Ireland, so far from having been pacified, has been more agitated than ever since the great healing measure; the cry for the repeal of the Union succeeded that for the removal of the disabilities; monster meetings followed, and shook the island to its centre; the Whigs themselves were constrained, within five years of the passing of the Relief Bill, to pass a Coercion Act of surpassing severity; and at length matters came to such a pass that "a famine of the thirteenth fell on the population of the nineteenth century," and relief was obtained only by the annual emigration, for a series

161. Yet though the results have thus falsified the predictions, and been at variance with the expectations of all parties, an impartial consideration of the circumstances of the case leads to the conviction that emancipation was a wise and just measure, and such as, under the administration of a beneficent Providence, might be expected to be attended, even in this world, with its deserved reward. It was not for the reasons of policy and state necessity, which were so powerfully put forward by Mr Peel, strong and unanswerable as they undoubtedly were; it was advisable for a greater and more lasting reason- that it was in itself just and equitable. Opinion is not the fit ground either of exclusion, penalty, or punishment; it is acts only which are so. Differences of religious belief are imprinted on the mind so generally by the influence of parentage, habit, country, and circumstances,

*Written in 1854. It passed, in February 1856, only by a majority of eight votes.

selves to different intellects; the difference in the moving powers by which different nations or individuals are influenced. Could one creed ever be embraced by the impassioned Italian, who seeks in religion a gratification of his passion for art, and his susceptibility of emotion; the obsequious Russian, who accepts, as the commands of Heaven, the words of the Czar; and the sturdy Scot, to whom polemical dis

that they are for the most part as unavoidable as the colour of the hair or the stature of the body. The legislator is entitled to take cognisance of them only when they lead to external acts; and when they do so, let those acts, if illegal or dangerous, be coerced or punished with vigour and justice. So great have been the evils which have arisen from persecution for differences of religious opinion, that they have gone far to neutralise the whole bless-putes are the very salt and zest of life? ings of Christianity, and led some scep. Therefore it is that the Gospel is so tical observers to hesitate whether it silent on the matters of church governhas brought most happiness or misery ment and form, and directs the whole to mankind. It is the disgrace of Ca- weight of its authority to combat the tholicism that it first began this atro- selfish principles, the root of all evil cious system, and forced retaliation in the whole of mankind. The differupon its opponents as a matter, at the ence lies not in the truths delivered, time, of necessity. It is the glory of but the people taught. Truth, indeed, Protestantism that it first inscribed is ever the same, but so also is the light toleration on its banners, and practised of the sun; yet in what different asit, like the Duke of York in answer to pects do his rays present themselves the decree of the Convention forbidding to the various situations of man-on quarter, upon the most inveterate and the sunny hill and in the level plain, unrelenting of its opponents. on the watery waste and in the burning desert, when piercing the murky clouds of the city, and when illuminating the mountain turf, when striking on the summits of the Alps,.and feebly struggling through the mists of the valley!

162. Unity of belief is the dream of the inexperienced, the goal of the ambitious; dissent is the history of man. If, as is the case in many countries, one creed is embraced by a whole na tion, it is a proof, not that all think 163. But although emancipation was alike on these points, but that none thus decisively recommended by the think at all. So naturally and uni- highest considerations of justice and versally does difference of opinion arise expedience, yet there can be no doubt on every subject, and especially on that that the granting of it was a very great the most interesting which can occupy effort of political virtue on the part of the human mind, that a more correct England, and that the concession was measure of the intellectual activity and against the wishes and adverse to the general intelligence which pervades a sincere and disinterested, and therepeople cannot be found than in the fore respectable, opinions of the great amount of religions division which pre-majority of the inhabitants of the emvails among them. The great object pire. As such, it should have been of a wise legislator should be to prevent received in a grateful and worthy spirit the difference of thought from leading by the Catholics of Ireland, who beheld to conflicting actions; and the only a great act of justice done against the way to do this, is to abolish all poli- inclinations of a majority of their feltical differences founded on varieties low-subjects, and at a time when no of religious persuasion. No prophecy corresponding steps towards liberality of our Saviour was ever more com- had been taken by the governments pletely accomplished than the memor- still adhering to the See of Rome. It able one, that He came to bring, not was just the reverse: the act of justice peace on earth, but a sword. The rea- was received in the most ungrateful, son is to be found in the varieties of and even revengeful spirit. So far the human mind; the opposite lights from being pacified, Ireland was only in which the same truths present them- the more distracted by the great heal

Rome. On the contrary, they were most seriously aggravated by the introduction of a body of men of this description into the Legislature; because agitation, the bane of the country, was increased by the knowledge that so powerful a phalanx was always ready to support it in Parliament; and the phalanx itself, being entirely directed by foreign ecclesiastical influ

ing measure. The admission of the Catholics to Parliament became the platform on which additional attacks were directed against Protestantism, and even the political institutions of the empire. "The Orangemen," says Miss Martineau, "became more furious and bigoted through fear and jealousy of their triumphant neighbours, and those triumphant neighbours were urged on by their leaders to insuffer-ence, pursued on every occasion measable insolence towards the Government and sister nations which had granted them relief no longer possible to be withheld. The list of Irish outrages, the pictures of Irish crime which follow in the registers of the time, the record of Catholic emancipation, are very painful; but they show, not that there was anything wrong in the procedure of relief, but that it had been too long delayed."

ures calculated to embarrass the English Government and weaken the English aristocracy, without any regard to their effect in augmenting the difficulties and increasing the sufferings of their own constituents.

The

165. If, however, Catholic emancipation has failed in realising any of the benefits predicted from it in the sister isle, it has removed one great stumbling-block in the way of good 164. But although nothing can ex-government in Great Britain. cuse or even palliate the ingratitude difficulty which Mr Peel so strongly and oblivion of promises which, from felt and so feelingly deplored, arising the moment when Catholic emancipa- from the divided state of the Cabinet tion was passed, characterised the con-- on this vital question, has disappeared. duct of the Irish agitators, yet it was Subsequent times have seen weak govneither wholly nor chiefly owing to ernments and embarrassed cabinets in that cause, and still less to its being so abundance, but never to such an exlong delayed, that the measure so to- tent on Irish affairs. On them unanitally failed in producing the expected mity has almost constantly pervaded results. It failed because it did not both the Government and the Legislaalleviate in the slightest degree, but, ture. The ingratitude with which the on the contrary, fearfully aggravated, gift was received, the increased agithe real causes of evil in the country. tation which followed it, the turmoil These were the indolent, improvident, in which the country was constantly and yet reckless character of the pea- kept by the efforts of the agitators, santry, the extravagance and embar- and the ready acquiescence of the rassment of the landholders, the divi- people in their measures, have united sion of the land among a million of all classes in Great Britain against starving cultivators, the habit of in- them. The cry for the repeal of the cessant and overwhelming increase Union was met in a very different encouraged by the priests, the absence spirit from that for Catholic emancipaof manufactories to absorb the redun- tion. Such is the effect and the reward dant numbers, and the total unfitness of just measures; they detach the genof the people for self-government or erous and noble-hearted from the side direction. These evils could not in by whom they have been abused, and any degree be alleviated by the admis-unite them in support of that by which sion of forty or fifty zealous Catholics the injustice has been removed. into Parliament, some of them gifted with considerable natural talents, but for the most part destitute of property, without a cultivated education or business habits, and entirely devoted, one and all, to the interests of the See of

166. It is commonly said by the Liberals in England, that emancipation has failed because it was conceded too late; by the Catholics in Ireland, because it was incomplete, and did not give that entire ascendancy to their