Catholics residing in Spain. You have likewise heard with what
circumstances of severity they have been lately expelled from the
seaports of that kingdom, driven into the inland cities, and there
detained as a sort of prisoners of state. I have good reason to believe
that it was the zeal to our government and our cause (somewhat
indiscreetly expressed in one of the addresses of the Catholics of
Ireland) which has thus drawn down on their heads the indignation of the
court of Madrid, to the inexpressible loss of several individuals, and,
in future, perhaps to the great detriment of the whole of their body.
Now that our people should be persecuted in Spain for their attachment
to this country, and persecuted in this country for their supposed
enmity to us, is such a jarring reconciliation of contradictory
distresses, is a thing at once so dreadful and ridiculous, that no
malice short of diabolical would wish to continue any human creatures in
such a situation. But honest men will not forget either their merit or
their sufferings. There are men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out
of love to their country and their kind, would torture their invention
to find excuses for the mistakes of their brethren, and who, to stifle
dissension, would construe even doubtful appearances with the utmost
favor: such men will never persuade themselves to be ingenious and
refined in discovering disaffection and treason in the manifest,
palpable signs of suffering loyalty. Persecution is so unnatural to
them, that they gladly snatch the very first opportunity of laying aside
all the tricks and devices of penal politics, and of returning home,
after all their irksome and vexatious wanderings, to our natural family
mansion, to the grand social principle that unites all men, in all
descriptions, under the shadow of an equal and impartial justice.
Men of another sort, I mean the bigoted enemies to liberty, may,
perhaps, in their politics, make no account of the good or ill affection
of the Catholics of England, who are but an handful of people, (enough
to torment, but not enough to fear,) perhaps not so many, of both sexes
and of all ages, as fifty thousand. But, Gentlemen, it is possible you
may not know that the people of that persuasion in Ireland amount at
least to sixteen or seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all
exaggerate the number. A _nation_ to be persecuted! Whilst we were
masters of the sea, embodied with America, and in alliance with half the
powers of the Continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote corner of
Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there is a revolution in
our affairs, which makes it prudent to be just. In our late awkward
contest with Ireland about trade, had religion been thrown in, to
ferment and embitter the mass of discontents, the consequences might
have been truly dreadful. But, very happily, that cause of quarrel was
previously quieted by the wisdom of the acts I am commending.
Even in England, where I admit the danger from the discontent of that
persuasion to be less than in Ireland, yet even here, had we listened to
the counsels of fanaticism and folly, we might have wounded ourselves
very deeply, and wounded ourselves in a very tender part. You are
apprised that the Catholics of England consist mostly of our best
manufacturers. Had the legislature chosen, instead of returning their
declarations of duty with correspondent good-will, to drive them to
despair, there is a country at their very door to which they would be
invited,--a country in all respects as good as ours, and with the finest
cities in the world ready built to receive them. And thus the bigotry of
a free country, and in an enlightened age, would have repeopled the
cities of Flanders, which, in the darkness of two hundred years ago, had
been desolated by the superstition of a cruel tyrant. Oar manufactures
were the growth of the persecutions in the Low Countries. What a
spectacle would it be to Europe, to see us at this time of day balancing
the account of tyranny with those very countries, and by our
persecutions driving back trade and manufacture, as a sort of vagabonds,
to their original settlement! But I trust we shall be saved this last of
disgraces.
So far as to the effect of the act on the interests of this nation. With
regard to the interests of mankind at large, I am sure the benefit was
very considerable. Long before this act, indeed, the spirit of
toleration began to gain ground in Europe. In Holland the third part of
the people are Catholics; they live at ease, and are a sound part of the
state. In many parts of Germany, Protestants and Papists partake the
same cities, the same councils, and even the same churches. The
unbounded liberality of the king of Prussia's conduct on this occasion
is known to all the world; and it is of a piece with the other grand
maxims of his reign. The magnanimity of the Imperial court, breaking
through the narrow principles of its predecessors, has indulged its
Protestant subjects, not only with property, with worship, with liberal
education, but with honors and trusts, both civil and military. A worthy
Protestant gentleman of this country now fills, and fills with credit,
an high office in the Austrian Netherlands. Even the Lutheran obstinacy
of Sweden has thawed at length, and opened a toleration to all
religions. I know, myself, that in France the Protestants begin to be at
rest. The army, which in that country is everything, is open to them;
and some of the military rewards and decorations which the laws deny are
supplied by others, to make the service acceptable and honorable. The
first minister of finance in that country is a Protestant. Two years'
war without a tax is among the first fruits of their liberality.
Tarnished as the glory of this nation is, and far as it has waded into
the shades of an eclipse, some beams of its former illumination still
play upon its surface; and what is done in England is still looked to,
as argument, and as example. It is certainly true, that no law of this
country ever met with such universal applause abroad, or was so likely
to produce the perfection of that tolerating spirit which, as I
observed, has been long gaining ground in Europe: for abroad it was
universally thought that we had done what I am sorry to say we had not;
they thought we had granted a full toleration. That opinion was,
however, so far from hurting the Protestant cause, that I declare, with
the most serious solemnity, my firm belief that no one thing done for
these fifty years past was so likely to prove deeply beneficial to our
religion at large as Sir George Savile's act. In its effects it was "an
act for tolerating and protecting Protestantism throughout Europe"; and
I hope that those who were taking steps for the quiet and settlement of
our Protestant brethren in other countries will, even yet, rather
consider the steady equity of the greater and better part of the people
of Great Britain than the vanity and violence of a few.
I perceive, Gentlemen, by the manner of all about me, that you look with
horror on the wicked clamor which has been raised on this subject, and
that, instead of an apology for what was done, you rather demand from me
an account, why the execution of the scheme of toleration was not made
more answerable to the large and liberal grounds on which it was taken
up. The question is natural and proper; and I remember that a great and
learned magistrate,[50] distinguished for his strong and systematic
understanding, and who at that time was a member of the House of
Commons, made the same objection to the proceeding. The statutes, as
they now stand, are, without doubt, perfectly absurd. But I beg leave to
explain the cause of this gross imperfection in the tolerating plan, as
well and as shortly as I am able. It was universally thought that the
session ought not to pass over without doing _something_ in this
business. To revise the whole body of the penal statutes was conceived
to be an object too big for the time. The penal statute, therefore,
which was chosen for repeal (chosen to show our disposition to
conciliate, not to perfect a toleration) was this act of ludicrous
cruelty of which I have just given you the history. It is an act which,
though not by a great deal so fierce and bloody as some of the rest, was
infinitely more ready in the execution. It was the act which gave the
greatest encouragement to those pests of society, mercenary informers
and interested disturbers of household peace; and it was observed with
truth, that the prosecutions, either carried to conviction or
compounded, for many years, had been all commenced upon that act. It was
said, that, whilst we were deliberating on a more perfect scheme, the
spirit of the age would never come up to the execution of the statutes
which remained, especially as more steps, and a coöperation of more
minds and powers, were required towards a mischievous use of them, than
for the execution of the act to be repealed: that it was better to
unravel this texture from below than from above, beginning with the
latest, which, in general practice, is the severest evil. It was
alleged, that this slow proceeding would be attended with the advantage
of a progressive experience,--and that the people would grow reconciled
to toleration, when they should find, by the effects, that justice was
not so irreconcilable an enemy to convenience as they had imagined.
These, Gentlemen, were the reasons why we left this good work in the
rude, unfinished state in which good works are commonly left, through
the tame circumspection with which a timid prudence so frequently
enervates beneficence. In doing good, we are generally cold, and
languid, and sluggish, and of all things afraid of being too much in the
right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style.
They are finished with a bold, masterly hand, touched as they are with
the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies,
whenever we oppress and persecute.
Thus this matter was left for the time, with a full determination in
Parliament not to suffer other and worse statutes to remain for the
purpose of counteracting the benefits proposed by the repeal of one
penal law: for nobody then dreamed of defending what was done as a
benefit, on the ground of its being no benefit at all. We were not then
ripe for so mean a subterfuge.
I do not wish to go over the horrid scene that was afterwards acted.
Would to God it could be expunged forever from the annals of this
country! But since it must subsist for our shame, let it subsist for our
instruction. In the year 1780 there were found in this nation men
deluded enough, (for I give the whole to their delusion,) on pretences
of zeal and piety, without any sort of provocation whatsoever, real or
pretended, to make a desperate attempt, which would have consumed all
the glory and power of this country in the flames of London, and buried
all law, order, and religion under the ruins of the metropolis of the
Protestant world. Whether all this mischief done, or in the direct train
of doing, was in their original scheme, I cannot say; I hope it was not:
but this would have been the unavoidable consequence of their
proceedings, had not the flames they had lighted up in their fury been
extinguished in their blood.
All the time that this horrid scene was acting, or avenging, as well as
for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instigators of this
unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, of all their crimes,
and screened in a cowardly darkness from their punishment, continued,
without interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of the
populace with a continued blast of pestilential libels, which infected
and poisoned the very air we breathed in.
The main drift of all the libels and all the riots was, to force
Parliament (to persuade us was hopeless) into an act of national perfidy
which has no example. For, Gentlemen, it is proper you should all know
what infamy we escaped by refusing that repeal, for a refusal of which,
it seems, I, among others, stand somewhere or other accused. When we
took away, on the motives which I had the honor of stating to you, a few
of the innumerable penalties upon an oppressed and injured people, the
relief was not absolute, but given on a stipulation and compact between
them and us: for we bound down the Roman Catholics with the most solemn
oaths to bear true allegiance to this government, to abjure all sort of
temporal power in any other, and to renounce, under the same solemn
obligations, the doctrines of systematic perfidy with which they stood
(I conceive very unjustly) charged. Now our modest petitioners came up
to us, most humbly praying nothing more than that we should break our
faith, without any one cause whatsoever of forfeiture assigned; and when
the subjects of this kingdom had, on their part, fully performed their
engagement, we should refuse, on our part, the benefit we had stipulated
on the performance of those very conditions that were prescribed by our
own authority, and taken on the sanction of our public faith: that is to
say, when we had inveigled them with fair promises within our door, we
were to shut it on them, and, adding mockery to outrage, to tell
them,--"Now we have got you fast: your consciences are bound to a power
resolved on your destruction. We have made you swear that your religion
obliges you to keep your faith: fools as you are! we will now let you
see that our religion enjoins us to keep no faith with you." They who
would advisedly call upon us to do such things must certainly have
thought us not only a convention of treacherous tyrants, but a gang of
the lowest and dirtiest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Had we
done this, we should have indeed proved that there were _some_ in the
world whom no faith could bind; and we should have _convicted_ ourselves
of that odious principle of which Papists stood _accused_ by those very
savages who wished us, on that accusation, to deliver them over to their
fury.
In this audacious tumult, when our very name and character as gentlemen
was to be cancelled forever, along with the faith and honor of the
nation, I, who had exerted myself very little on the quiet passing of
the bill, thought it necessary then to come forward. I was not alone;
but though some distinguished members on all sides, and particularly on
ours, added much to their high reputation by the part they took on that
day, (a part which will be remembered as long as honor, spirit, and
eloquence have estimation in the world,) I may and will value myself so
far, that, yielding in abilities to many, I yielded in zeal to none.
With warmth and with vigor, and animated with a just and natural
indignation, I called forth every faculty that I possessed, and I
directed it in every way in which I could possibly employ it. I labored
night and day. I labored in Parliament; I labored out of Parliament.
If, therefore, the resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to
commit this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among
the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of that House may have
been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose so infamous a
thing; and on full debate we passed the resolution against the petitions
with as much unanimity as we had formerly passed the law of which these
petitions demanded the repeal.
There was a circumstance (justice will not suffer me to pass it over)
which, if anything could enforce the reasons I have given, would fully
justify the act of relief, and render a repeal, or anything like a
repeal, unnatural, impossible. It was the behavior of the persecuted
Roman Catholics under the acts of violence and brutal insolence which
they suffered. I suppose there are not in London less than four or five
thousand of that persuasion from my country, who do a great deal of the
most laborious works in the metropolis; and they chiefly inhabit those
quarters which were the principal theatre of the fury of the bigoted
multitude. They are known to be men of strong arms and quick feelings,
and more remarkable for a determined resolution than clear ideas or much
foresight. But, though provoked by everything that can stir the blood of
men, their houses and chapels in flames, and with the most atrocious
profanations of everything which they hold sacred before their eyes, not
a hand was moved to retaliate, or even to defend. Had a conflict once
begun, the rage of their persecutors would have redoubled. Thus fury
increasing by the reverberation of outrages, house being fired for
house, and church for chapel, I am convinced that no power under heaven
could have prevented a general conflagration, and at this day London
would have been a tale. But I am well informed, and the thing speaks it,
that their clergy exerted their whole influence to keep their people in
such a state of forbearance and quiet, as, when I look back, fills me
with astonishment,--but not with astonishment only. Their merits on that
occasion ought not to be forgotten; nor will they, when Englishmen come
to recollect themselves. I am sure it were far more proper to have
called them forth, and given them the thanks of both Houses of
Parliament, than to have suffered those worthy clergymen and excellent
citizens to be hunted into holes and corners, whilst we are making
low-minded inquisitions into the number of their people; as if a
tolerating principle was never to prevail, unless we were very sure that
only a few could possibly take advantage of it. But, indeed, we are not
yet well recovered of our fright. Our reason, I trust, will return with
our security, and this unfortunate temper will pass over like a cloud.
Gentlemen, I have now laid before you a few of the reasons for taking
away the penalties of the act of 1699, and for refusing to establish
them on the riotous requisition of 1780. Because I would not suffer
anything which may be for your satisfaction to escape, permit me just to
touch on the objections urged against our act and our resolves, and
intended as a justification of the violence offered to both Houses.
"Parliament," they assert, "was too hasty, and they ought, in so
essential and alarming a change, to have proceeded with a far greater
degree of deliberation." The direct contrary. Parliament was too slow.
They took fourscore years to deliberate on the repeal of an act which
ought not to have survived a second session. When at length, after a
procrastination of near a century, the business was taken up, it
proceeded in the most public manner, by the ordinary stages, and as
slowly as a law so evidently right as to be resisted by none would
naturally advance. Had it been read three times in one day, we should
have shown only a becoming readiness to recognize, by protection, the
undoubted dutiful behavior of those whom we had but too long punished
for offences of presumption or conjecture. But for what end was that
bill to linger beyond the usual period of an unopposed measure? Was it
to be delayed until a rabble in Edinburgh should dictate to the Church
of England what measure of persecution was fitting for her safety? Was
it to be adjourned until a fanatical force could be collected in London,
sufficient to frighten us out of all our ideas of policy and justice?
Were we to wait for the profound lectures on the reason of state,
ecclesiastical and political, which the Protestant Association have
since condescended to read to us? Or were we, seven hundred peers and
commoners, the only persons ignorant of the ribald invectives which
occupy the place of argument in those remonstrances, which every man of
common observation had heard a thousand times over, and a thousand times
over had despised? All men had before heard what they dare to say, and
all men at this day know what they dare to do; and I trust all honest
men are equally influenced by the one and by the other.
But they tell us, that those our fellow-citizens whose chains we have a
little relaxed are enemies to liberty and our free Constitution.--Not
enemies, I presume, to their _own_ liberty. And as to the Constitution,
until we give them some share in it, I do not know on what pretence we
can examine into their opinions about a business in which they have no
interest or concern. But, after all, are we equally sure that they are
adverse to our Constitution as that our statutes are hostile and
destructive to them? For my part, I have reason to believe their
opinions and inclinations in that respect are various, exactly like
those of other men; and if they lean more to the crown than I and than
many of you think _we_ ought, we must remember that he who aims at
another's life is not to be surprised, if he flies into any sanctuary
that will receive him. The tenderness of the executive power is the
natural asylum of those upon whom the laws have declared war; and to
complain that men are inclined to favor the means of their own safety is
so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the ridicule.
I must fairly tell you, that so far as my principles are concerned,
(principles that I hope will only depart with my last breath,) that I
have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I
believe that any good constitutions of government, or of freedom, can
find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a
permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in
effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest
faction; and factions in republics have been, and are, full as capable
as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. It is but too
true, that the love, and even the very idea, of genuine liberty is
extremely rare. It is but too true that there are many whose whole
scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They
feel themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their souls
are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man or some body of men
dependent on their mercy. This desire of having some one below them
descends to those who are the very lowest of all; and a Protestant
cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling
church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the
peer whose footman's instep he measures is able to keep his chaplain
from a jail. This disposition is the true source of the passion which
many men in very humble life have taken to the American war. _Our_
subjects in America; _our_ colonies; _our_ dependants. This lust of
party power is the liberty they hunger and thirst for; and this Siren
song of ambition has charmed ears that one would have thought were never
organized to that sort of music.