Page images
PDF
EPUB

which his full and accurate knowledge of Anglo-Indian history has enabled him to illustrate most agreeably, he has essentially furthered the cause of good government in our Eastern Empire; and has especially set bright examples of zealous, devoted, and highminded public service before the eyes of those who have entered of late years, or are about to pursue, the honourable course which Mr. Tucker and Lord Metcalfe severally ran with so much usefulness and distinction. It may be, that with the natural partiality of a biographer, he has placed the memory of Mr. Tucker upon a somewhat higher pedestal than he really occupied in life. But that gentleman was a most efficient, honest, and highspirited public officer; and if Mr. Kaye has estimated his talents and judgment a little too favourably, he could not easily over-rate his other sterling qualities. Of Lord Metcalfe's services, character, and deserts we believe that he has drawn a perfectly faithful picture. If any doubt could be entertained, after reading the memoir, in regard to the justice of that eminent statesman's claim to the admiration and gratitude both of his fellow-countrymen, and (in the words of Mr. Macaulay's beautiful epitaph) of the nations which he ruled,' it will, we are satisfied, be entirely removed by the perusal of the papers and correspondence' which Mr. Kaye has more recently published. We may well desire-as we hope and believe will be the case that these memorials of Lord Metcalfe's deeds and virtues may survive as long, at least, as the great trust involved in our Indian and Colonial Empires shall be continued to England, in order that our children's children may learn from them how such a dominion ought to be maintained and improved, how the affections of subject peoples should be won and kept,-how the highest honour is to be gained by the earnest performance of duty, and how the fearful sufferings which were mysteriously ordered to bring to a close a life of so much use fulness and true glory, may be borne with a degree of gentle fortitude and resignation, never exceeded by martyr at the stake.

ART. VII. — Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Management and Government of the College of Maynooth. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. Dublin: 1855.

WE

E are not going to inflict on the public an article on threadbare questions connected with the Maynooth Grant. Suffice it to say that our opinion remains what it always has beenthat Great Britain is in the condition of a Protestant husband who has married a Roman Catholic wife. Having taken this irrevocable step, with his eyes open, it is vain for the husband to say that his conscience forbids him to encourage Popery, and that therefore, if his wife will be a Papist, she shall at least not be so at his expense. He must, if he is an earnest man, wish that his wife were of the same religion as himself, and he will be quite right to endeavour to convince her of her errors; but so long as she remains obstinate, he must treat her as what she is. She has a right to have arrangements made which may enable her to worship God according to her own conscientious views, however mistaken. And the husband must make up his mind to pay her share of the Roman Catholic priest's fees, however much he may dislike both the priest and his whole system. The case is much stronger when the common stock, on which the Protestant husband and Roman Catholic wife live, is made. up in part of the wife's own private fortune. It seems preposterous to say that a Protestant conscience is aggrieved by allowing a portion of the taxes raised from Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, to be applied to Roman Catholic purposes, in a part of the United Kingdom where there are millions of Roman Catholic tax-payers.

We grant, indeed, that a man's conclusions on this question must be a good deal modified by the view he takes of the degree of error to be found in the Roman Catholic system. If he regards it as a system purely diabolical, his liberality and regard for the rights of conscience will be sorely tried. We are not prepared to say that if a man has been mad enough to marry a Hindoo woman, who thinks it right to worship the idol of Juggernauth, he is therefore bound to assist her in making a pilgrimage to the sacred spot, to allow his family free access to heathen priests and fakirs, and to pay his share in maintaining all their abominations.

There are, of course, in the world atrocious forms of debased error, calling themselves religion, which teach men to worship the Devil instead of God, encourage gross immorality, and con

found all the distinctions of right and wrong. The system of the Thugs may be called a religion; but it is one, the votaries of which are rightly tolerated only till we can get the halter round their necks. And if any man classes Romanism with such religions as these, there is nothing left for him but to use all his influence to have it extirpated. It may be very difficult to draw the line which separates endurable from unendurable forms of error. If the opponents of the Maynooth Grant could make good their assertion, that Romish priests are engaged in one great conspiracy to confound men's notions of morality, and to upset all civil government, they would carry with them all good Protestants, and indeed all good citizens. But their opinion is not shared by the great majority of thinking men, however determined and zealous in their Protestantism. A thoughtful Protestant generally acknowledges that Roman Catholics are his brother Christians, however mistaken; that they worship the same Saviour with himself, and profess to make His divine teaching the guide of their lives. He will deplore that they should have added a baseless system of human mediators to the simple Gospel; and that wicked men amongst them should have often, with a show of public authority, taught rules of conduct which he believes to be quite irreconcilable with the pure precepts of Christ. But, mistaken or bad as he holds them to be, he still looks upon them as partakers of the same hopes with himself, and he believes that very many of his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen every year, through the teaching of their priests, mixed as it is with gross errors, still learn how to live and die steadfast in the love of Christ. Nor is it enough to show that Roman Catholic teaching, in some very important matters, is of dangerous moral tendency. There may be forms of Protestantism, inculcating theoretical views as to liberty and necessity, which, stated nakedly, we believe to be opposed to all sound notions of morality; yet in the persons holding these views Christian principle is powerful to counteract in practice the evil leaven which has been mingled with it. The only reason why a Protestant community need hesitate to treat Romanists as they treat all other Christians would be, if they were proved to occupy such a position in their allegiance to a foreign Power as would make it impossible for them to be good subjects and citizens. Yet even here a reasonable man would be disposed to test the degree of their offence not by their abstract doctrines stated logically, but by their practice. And it will require no argument to show that Roman Catholics are practically good and loyal subjects. Witness the brave soldiers of our Irish regiments, and the spotless honour of our Roman

To the true British loyalty

Catholic nobility and gentry. shown by high and low amongst them, the English people will never be induced to refuse the meed of praise by dislike of the Italian craft of Cullen, or the florid blustering of his Eminence of Westminster, or the noisy phrenzy of the Brass Band. We trust that the day of Inkermann will prove to be the last 5th of November on which the intemperate and obsolete service for the Gunpowder Treason will ever be heard stirring up angry feelings in our churches.

Quite irrespectively of the two massive folios which lie before us, the British public is, we believe, willing to allow that our Roman Catholic fellow countrymen are, in the main, soundhearted loyal citizens. Certainly, for ourselves, no Royal Commission was needed to establish this point; and we believe our opinion is shared by the great majority of serious and intelligent Protestants. Yet, for those who feel strongly on the opposite side from ourselves in this matter, we fear the Report of this Commission will not have much weight. It is indeed written in what appears to us to be a calm impartial spirit. The names of Lord Harrowby and Dr. Twiss were sufficient to secure this we see no symptom in it of a desire to whitewash the accused. The Commissioners have applied themselves conscientiously to the work which Lord Aberdeen wisely committed to them; and their Report certainly does not prove, as their enemies said could be proved, that the teaching of the Maynooth Professors spreads immorality and sedition. Now, of course, if a man is put on his trial, and you fail to prove anything against him, according to all maxims of fair dealing you must pronounce a verdict of not guilty. But we confess we are hopeless of obtaining such a verdict in this instance from the strong Anti-Maynooth party. The real usefulness of the document before us will be found not in its bearing on this subject, but in the general view it gives us of the intellectual training of the Roman Catholic priesthood of this age in Ireland, and indeed throughout Europe. In this respect men of all parties will probably allow that the document is valuable.

In reference to the other point-the charges we have spoken of-it is certain that these charges are not substantiated by the Report; but to this the strong opponents of the college only answer, that it would be strange if they were, considering some of the names which appear in the Commission, and seeing also that some portion at least of the published document was deliberately perused by the Pope before it was presented to the British public. Certainly, this story of the journey of the

proof-sheets to Rome, notwithstanding all the explanations which have been given of it, is sure, justly or unjustly, to destroy all authority with the public, which the Report might otherwise have possessed in its vindication of Roman Catholics. The common sense of common men will certainly decide that this proceeding argues an unparalleled height of impudence in the ecclesiastic who made so bad a return for the confidence reposed in him, and of folly in the Commissioner who trusted him. And we would take leave to remind the Roman Catholic body generally, that if ever their Protestant fellow countrymen are likely to be led to refuse them that kind consideration in addition to even-handed justice, which the great liberal party has for years striven to secure for them, it will be in consequence of such acts as this. The opinion is growing very strong in the country that they are too much inclined to give themselves over to a set of leaders who are both overbearing in their silly pretensions and unscrupulous in the course by which they seek to establish them. It is not going too far to say, that the Pastoral of 1850 did more injury to Cardinal Wiseman's co-religionists in the eyes of liberal Protestants than fifty years of unostentatious quietness will be able to remove. Whatever else this Report and its history proves, or fails to prove, it certainly shows that the training of a Romish ecclesiastic is not likely to fit a man for dealing effectually with the common sense and good feeling of the great mass of Englishmen. And we strongly advise the Roman Catholic body of the United Kingdom to seek henceforward for other than ecclesiastical leaders, if they wish to retain the respect of their Protestant fellow countrymen and secure the ungrudged enjoyment of those just privileges which have been conceded to them.

Judging from what has fallen under our own notice, we should say that the result of the Maynooth Commission has been, on the whole, unfavourable to Roman Catholics. This has probably arisen, not so much from anything the Report contains, as from this story of Archbishop Cullen's cool audacity in sending the proof-sheets to Rome, and from the childish folly of treating Parliament with disrespect by inserting, stealthily or otherwise, the forbidden titles in the Return of Bishops educated at the College.

Besides the conscientious alarm excited by the number and importance of some of the recent converts to Romanism, there are two causes which have of late strengthened the Anti-Maynooth ranks. The first is that now noted a growing disgust at a certain amount of tricky impudence in the conduct of Romish ecclesiastics; the second, a much more formidable cause, the

[ocr errors]

-

« PreviousContinue »