AN ADDRESS FROM THE BRITISH ROMAN CATHOLICS TO THEIR PROTESTANT FELLOW COUNTRYMEN. FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,-We present to you a Declaration, drawn up and signed by those Ecclesiastics who, in this country, are the expounders of our faith. We beg earnestly to call your attention to this document, which distinctly repudiates the obnoxious tenets imputed to us. The Irish Bishops have given a Declaration of Catholic Principles, similar in effect to this. We ask you, can you believe that we are joined in a perfidious league to deceive you? Are those amongst us who are linked with you by social habits and friendly intercourse; those, in whom you confidently trust in matters of high importance; and from whom you meet, in return, with integrity and fair dealing, to be considered honest on every other occasion, and capable of deep designing fraud and duplicity on this?

To our sense of the sacred obligation of an oath,() we daily sacrifice every object of ordinary ambition; is it in human nature that we can become perjured men in this solitary instance? We are accused of idolatry-we disclaim the imputation"); of not keeping faith with heretics-we disclaim the imputation"); of dividing the allegiance which is due to the King-we disclaim the imputation"); of acknowledging in the Pope a deposing power-we disclaim the imputation(); of believing that a priest can absolve from sin, at his mere will and pleasure-we disclaim the imputation). Each and all of these opinions we most solemnly and most unequivocally disclaim.

(e) See the Declaration of the Catholic Bishops in Great Britain, as above, sect. 7.

(d) Ibid. sect. 4. (9) Ibid. sect. 8.

(e) Ibid. sect. 11.
(4) Ibid. sect. 5.

(Ibid. sect. 8.

Our religion is called a persecuting religion. We reply, that the Catholic religion, and the policy of Catholic states, are unfairly confounded; and if the ministers of the Catholic religion have, at any time, co-operated with the civil government, in measures of persecution, they forgot the divine precepts of their Founder, in attempting to prevent the introduction of sects by violence and injustice; and we condemn the deed. Are we to suffer for their misconduct? In the unholy race of persecution, which has been run by various denominations of Christians at other times, in this or any other country, if members of the religion we profess were not exempt from blame, we deeply deplore their blind infatuation :-Why, then, are we to be punished for excesses in which we bore no part: which we as cordially condemn as you do; and for which your ancestors are not less liable to reproach than ours? If the professors of the Catholic faith were even peculiarly distinguished, in times long past, for their mistaken zeal (which we do not concede), the more deeply should we lament their errors; but let not the liberal Protestant, and the enlightened Catholic of the present day, allow themselves to be hurried, by prejudiced or interested men, into hatred of each other, and thus perpetuate dissension and religious bigotry, in the name of the God of charity and peace. We challenge calm inquiry into the practice of the present governments of Christendom, and we believe it will be found, on candid examination, that the principles of religious liberty are fully as well practised in Catholic, as in Protestant States.

We entreat you deeply to consider the effects of the example of the legislation of this country, on the various nations of the world. Above all, weigh well its consequences on the rising States of South America. We beg

of you to keep constantly in view, what power of argument the continuance of these laws of exclusion affords to every enemy of liberty, whether civil or religious, throughout the world.

We request you to put this question to your own minds-Is there another country in the world where, for conscience' sake, several of the most ancient Nobles of the land are deprived of their hereditary privileges? Where hundreds of Gentlemen, possessors of ancient and landed estates, are deprived of honours and rights, the usual attendants on birth and property? Where the industry of the merchant, and the talent of the lawyer, are checked in the midst of their respective careers? Where six or seven millions of the people are deprived of the benefit of equal chances under equal laws? And, as a proof of the direful but natural effects of such a system of law, we implore you to look at Ireland-that island of genius and fertility; behold her in all her nakedness and all her misery.

Our religion is said to be peculiarly proselyting. If to proselyte be to convince by the use of fair argument, then is ours a proselyting religion. As Englishmen, we claim the right of free discussion; and should be ashamed to call ourselves your fellow-subjects, could we forego this valuable privilege. But if to proselyte be to substitute force for argument, and to give premiums for apostacy and hypocrisy, such proselytism is a disgrace to any form of Christianity, and we solemnly abjure it. We entreat you to endeavour to divest your minds of pre-conceived impressions to our disadvantage, and calmly to examine the situation in which we stand. In a country boasting of peculiar liberality, we suffer severe privations because we differ from you in religious belief. The remaining

penalties neither few nor trivial-of a penal code of unparalleled severity, still press upon us: a Catholic Peer cannot sit and vote in the House of Peers, and is thus deprived of his most valuable birthright; a Catholic Commoner cannot sit and vote in the House of Commons; a Catholic Freeholder may be prevented from voting at elections for members; a Catholic cannot sit in the Privy Council, or be a Minister of the Crown; he cannot be a Judge, or hold any Crown office in any of the Spiritual, Equity, or Common Law Courts; he may practice at the Bar, but he cannot become a King's Counsel; he cannot hold any office in any of the Corporations; he cannot graduate at either of the two Universities, much less enjoy any of the numerous beneficial offices connected with them, although both of those seats of learning were founded by Catholics; he cannot marry either a Protestant or a Catholic, unless the ceremony is performed by a Protestant Clergyman; he cannot settle real or personal property for the use of his church, or of Catholic schools, or for any other purposes of the Catholic religion; he cannot vote at vestries, or present to a living in the church, though both of those rights seem to appertain to the enjoyment of property, and may actually be exercised by infidels.

Such are our principal grievances; but more than all we complain of the galling brand of disgrace which is the consequence of these disqualifications; which is more intolerable to honourable minds than the severest pressure of penal infliction, and necessarily implies guilt on our part, or injustice upon yours.

From early youth, to the last stage of existence, we are doomed to bear about us a painful feeling of inferiority, and of undeserved reproach. It is to us, no matter of

surprise, that tales, which malevolence invented in troubled times, which party zeal propagated, and which, in many instances, were sanctioned by the forms, though not by the reality of justice, should be perpetuated even to this hour; and that a general mass of prejudice should have been created, requiring centuries to remove. The infant is taught, with his first accents, to impugn our faith; his education matures his early impressions, and he remains, through life, the creature of prejudice. Persons possessed of the most honourable feelings, and incapable of sanctioning injustice or deceit, are thus drawn in to become our opponents. WE beseech all such attentively to investigate, before they finally condemn. We invite all to the cool consideration of our principles; because we know that they will bear the test of the closest enquiry. If there be persons who barter principle for place, trade in our degradation, and encourage prejudices which they despise, -if such there be, they are not more our enemies than yours; and be it our mutual task to unveil them, that religion, the child of heaven, may not be disfigured by human passions, nor infidelity find an ally in our want of charity to each other.

Bearing equally with you, our fellow-subjects, the burthens of the country, and upholding equally its institutions, and its glory, we claim to be admitted to a full participation in all the rights of British subjects. — Every principle or practice, hostile, in the remotest degree, to those institutions, we most explicitly disclaim. Year after year, we repeat the humiliating task of disavowal; still we suffer the penalties of guilt. We ask you, is this to endure for ever? Are we always to remain the victims of misplaced suspicion? The doors of the constitution are shut against us, as long as we continue true to the dictates