The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act--carried in the violent, and, in fact,
unprincipled manner it was--was in effect a Surinam toad;--and the Reform
Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the
Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from
their parent brute.
* * * * *
If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,
inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial
Protestant sovereign, _cadit quæstio_. For if _that_ is once admitted,
there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the
religion of the majority of the _people_ be innocuous to the interests of
the _nation_, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the
nationalty--that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and
rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say--_for the nation's
use_.--I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and
perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.
* * * * *
How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself
doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds
the King as the executive power--thereby making a Highgate oath of it. But
the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on
the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that
affair.
_June_ 20. 1834.