Nor marvel, if athwart the exulting seas, A steam-highway bring soon to their firesides To plough them with the plough which havoc guides, The price of souls, death-freed on many a shore."--vol. i. p. 155. To the two following quotations Mr. Elliott has not blushed to give the name of Corn-Law Hymns: "The locustry of Britain Are gods beneath the skies; They stamp the brave into the grave; They feed on famine's sighs; They blight all homes, they break all hearts, Except, alas, their own! While a moan, and a groan, That move th' Almighty's throne, And move th' eternal throne! "The bread-taxry of England, What awful powers they are! They curse the land, the winds, the seas; Lord have they conquer'd thee? While they curse the land and sea, They rival hell, and libel heaven, But have not vanquished thee."-vol. iii. p. 187. "If he who kills the body A murderer's death shall die; If he who slays the human soul Then, they who make our hopes, our lives, Our children's souls their prey, Unforgiven, loathed of heaven, In life and death are they; Who kill the body and the soul, But first the spirit slay! "Behold the flag of England, They summ'd their debt at Mont Saint Jean, With a yell that in hell Turned meeker demons blue; For we had crushed their hated foe, And England's freedom, too!"-vol. iii. p. 171. The following extract from "The Village Patriarch," will exhibit, we think, a specimen of Mr. Elliott's exaggerated views of society: "Is that a Briton? that mean thing, Who dares not lift his eyes above the feet One specimen of Mr. Elliott's attempts at pleasantry, and we have done: "ARTHUR BREAD-TAX-WINNER. "Who is praised by dolt and sinner? Blucherloo, the bread-tax-winner! Whom feeds Arthur Bread-tax-winner? All our rivals, sire and son, Grinning, flint-faced Famineton !"-vol. i. p. 110. We now take our leave of Mr. Elliott, under the full conviction that the popularity which he has acquired, notwithstanding his genius, is chiefly attributable to his station in society, and will not maintain itself by rearing the defects which it has been our province to point out,-the most important of which, we fear, are incurable. ART. XIII.-Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Exeter, by Henry Lord Bishop of Exeter, at his triennial Visitation, 1836. London: 8vo. 2. Observations on the Roman Catholic Oath. Catholic. Ridgway. London, 1837. 8vo. DR. By a Roman R. PHILPOTTS, we believe, at his consecration, undertook a solemn obligation, "to act with gentleness and charity." In the course of last year he exemplified this "gentleness and charity," by addressing the following observations, from his episcopal throne, to his assembled clergy:— "I will first remark on the bill entitled An Act for the Regulation of Ecclesiastical Revenues, and the Promotion of Religious and Moral Instruction in Ireland,'-in plain English, for seizing on the revenues of the Protestant church in Ireland, and applying them to some undefined purpose of teaching morality without religion, and religion without a creed. I cannot but congratulate you*** that those moderate funds, (for such they have been proved to be,) which the piety and wisdom of former ages have provided for the maintenance and extension of a pure faith throughout Ireland, have not become the prey of a perfidious faction, which could not have acquired the powers of mischief which unhappily they possess and exercise, but by entering into engagements, and binding them selves by pledges, which Englishmen and Protestants would deem it impossible for any who call themselves Christians to dare to violate. In the discussion of the measure in parliament, I felt it my duty to rest my resistance to it on this point, to denounce as treachery, aggravated by perjury, such an exercise of rights, acquired under an oath 'not to weaken or disturb the Protestant religion." Such is a sample of the instruction delivered to the Anglican clergy, under the highest sanctions of their religion—within the walls of their cathedrals; promulgated with the deliberate energy of a second edition, and issued by a mighty champion of their orthodoxy-a sworn promoter of their ideas of gentleness and charity! Nor is the appeal unanswered: the accusation is hailed by an organ of that church, as the expression of "an indignation worthy of an English heart and a Christian prelate-the sentiment of every honest man."* So long as such charges were confined to the outpourings of postprandial orgies, and the wellpaid declamation of political partizanship, we were content to believe that the object was to lessen the ministerial majority in parliament, by influencing the votes of the timid or the uninformed, and we-were silent: we were content to leave our fellowcountrymen to the operation of time and their own good sense, for the discovery of the absurdity of charging those, who were never excluded from the right to sit in parliament by any other barrier than AN OATH, with "acquiring" and exercising that right at the expense of "treachery aggravated by perjury." But thanks to the very able writer in the Quarterly Review, whose views we have developed at some length in another article, we are satisfied that the charge is assuming real importance as an instrument for the promotion of the conspiracy against Catholic liberty, which we have exposed in that article. When under this conviction, we had determined to discontinue our silence, we were greatly rejoiced to discover that the very able writer whose pamphlet is the second in the list at the head of this article, had come to a similar determination, and we propose to avail ourselves very largely of his assistance. The fundamental principle of the British Constitution in Church and State, is the free exercise of the elective franchise. This principle, founded in and pervading the canon and common law, regulated the great nurseries of liberty-the ecclesiastical and civil corporations. It was established in the constitution of all the monastic institutions of the kingdom. The annals of episcopal election, and particularly to the see of Canterbury, present some of the most remarkable examples of the exercise of "Quarterly Review," No. cxv. p. 240.j the right of election which are on record; and although this right remains only in the name of the congé d'élire in the Anglican establishment, yet the principle is preserved in its pristine vigour in the canons of the Catholic church. This principle has been happily restored in the regulation of the great civil corporations in England and Scotland, and its free admission into those of Ireland would remove one of her most signal causes for dissatisfaction. But it is in the construction of parliament that the constitution has in all ages most carefully guarded this sacred deposit of free and unfettered right of choice. We shall not pause to enquire whether, in the days of its greatest purity, any qualification was required in the elector beyond the possession of his faculties-in the elected, beyond the choice of his fellowsubjects. Certain it is that that choice was never fettered or restrained in any age, with one solitary exception, to persons holding any particular opinions in religion or politics. Nor was this in theory only; for to take one of the earliest examples, we know that the patrons and friends who attended Wiclif during his trial were lords of parliament; and when the legislature attempted to restrain the progress of his opinions, after he had died in quiet possession of his rectory, no attempt was made to exclude the holders of those opinions from admission to the legislature. Then came the Reformation, with all its various changes and restrictions-its pains and penalties-its exclusions alike of Dissenters and Catholics; yet the reigns of Henry, and Edward, and Mary, and Elizabeth, and James I, are alike silent as to any attempt to exclude from parliament either the Catholic or the Dissenter, even though the mere fact of holding their opinions was penal for the same Marquis of Winchester-whether Protestant with Edward, or pretended Catholic and active promoter of the punishment of Protestants under Mary, or again Protestant under Elizabeth—remained throughout his career a member of the legislature; and during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I -notwithstanding the rigour of the laws which protected the establishment-notwithstanding the horror excited by the Gunpowder plot-the Catholics remained entitled to their seats in parliament, and the number of Catholics and Puritans who exercised that right was notoriously very great. Under the reign of Charles I, the constitution was overthrown by the influence of the Dissenters in the legislature. Then came the Restoration, and mark the result: although the loyalty of the Catholics was rewarded only with additional penalties on their religion, yet was there no attempt to exclude from parliament either the persecuted Catholic, or the lately triumphant but now prostrate Dissenter. The vigour of constitutional principle prevailed, and the Catholic VOL. II.-NO. IV. 2 P |