the Relief Bill of 1791 in the 28th and 29th volumes of "Hansard," he will find that in all the statements he has made concerning the Protestation he is more or less, and in the majority and more important of them, absolutely mistaken. He will find that Parliament was in no sense influenced, as he asserts, by the declaration contained in that paper concerning the infallibility of the Pope, but advisedly and avowedly gave relief in the Act to those-the great majority-who refused to take any oath limiting the spiritual power of the Pope, as well as to those who were willing to take an oath in the terms of the Protestation. He will find that at the instance of the Anglican Bishop of St. David's the passage which he quotes disavowing acknowledgment of the Pope's Infallibility was struck out of the oath proposed by the Bill as it came from the Commons; and that, in a word, no such oath was ever imposed by the English Parliament or taken by English Catholics. So far is it from being true that the English Bishops, clergy, and laity rejected the Pope's Infallibility in 1791 in order to get relief from Parliament, the truth is that they petitioned and otherwise moved Parliament in 1791 not to give them relief under any delusion as to their true doctrines; and all the English Vicars-Apostolic, in two Encyclical Letters, one dated October 21, 1789, and another January 19, 1791, condemned the oath which disavowed the doctrine of Infallibility, and urged their people to demand the rejection of any Bill imposing such an oath. Mr. Gladstone may, however, suppose that the question of Infallibility was insufficiently considered in 1791, and that Parliament then took a leap in the dark. If he will refer to "Hansard," he will find that the topic of Infallibility and that of the Pope's influence on civil allegiance were as much in the air of public debate then as they have been since he published his "Expostulation." Mr. Fox, in his downright way, goes straight to the point. He says:— "It was said by some that the Pope was infallible, by others that the Church and Council were infallible, but none had ever contended that that House was infallible; they might subject men to fines and penalties for being better than themselves, at all events, only for differing from them on the mode of worshipping the Deity" ("Hansard," vol. xxviii., c. 1363). It is to be observed that Mr. Fox was here dealing with the question as to whether the advantages of the Bill should be limited to the minority of protesting Catholic Dissenters, who still adhered to the Protestation, or extended to the majority of English Catholics, who repudiated the proceedings based upon that document, and refused to take the oath disavowing Papal Infallibility in its terms. It is unfortunate that we do not possess a full report of Mr. Burke's speech, but the sentence, which you will allow me to quote, describing a passage from it, is for every reason worthy of Mr. Gladstone's attention. Mr. Grattan said of Mr. Burke that he not merely "knew everything" and "saw everything," but that he "foresaw everything." Great as is my veneration for the genius of the greatest of my countrymen, I could not have imagined that in 1791 he would have stigmatized by anticipation the main argument of the "Expostulation." Mr. Burke, as "Hansard's" reporter says,- "Was likewise very successful in his irony upon the doctrine that much was to be feared from the Pope's power to release Papists from all allegiance to government, and every other scruple of conscience by his dispensing and absolving power" (Vol. xxviii. c. 1372). Mr. Pitt was Prime Minister in 1791, and not the least astounding of Mr. Gladstone's statements is that in which he asserts that the Protestation embodied "the belief which in 1788-9 the whole body of the Roman Catholics of England assured Mr. Pitt that they held." Mr. Pitt, on the contrary, openly stated, in his place in Parliament, that he was perfectly well aware that the Protestation only conveyed the sentiments of a party of the Catholics of England. He declared that he was averse to drawing a hard-and-fast line between the two descriptions of Roman Catholics, and argued that, if the Bill were to pass in its then shape, it would be necessary to repeal certain of the Penal laws, in order to do equal justice to all Catholics, whether they were Ultramontane or Protesting Dissenters. Here are his very words :- "It would be proper to repeal those statutes, if the present Bill or any measure of the kind passed, because in that case, if relief of the nature proposed by his honourable and learned friend who had made the motion was granted to one description of Roman Catholics, and the statutes to which he had alluded were suffered to remain unrepealed, it would have something like the effect of re-enacting them, as it would appear that the Legislature, apprised as they had been of their existence, thought that the other description of Roman Catholics merited to have such disgraceful statutes remain in force against them" (" Hansard," vol. xxviii., c. 1374.) The Bill, however, went to the House of Lords as a Bill to relieve Protesting Catholic Dissenters only, and with the objectionable oath attached to it, but apparently qualified by the addition of some words recognizing the Pope's Infallibility in spirituals. I have not been able to discover what those words were, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, though, as I gather from his speech, disposed to support the Bill, objected to the form of the oath, on the score that it did not sufficiently define the limit of Infallibility. His Grace said : "To the oath there was one obvious objection, that though it denied the Infallibility of the Pope except in matters of spiritual doctrine, it was certainly clear that whoever was admitted to be infallible in points of doctrine was admitted to be infallible in declaring what was doctrine, so that the restriction that was intended as to the influence of the Pope in temporal matters might be overcome if he himself chose to declare that such matters were not temporal, but spiritual." ("Hansard,” vol. xxix., c. 067.) Thus so far is it from being true that any deception was practised on Parliament, the very question of the object and limit of Infallibility was plainly brought before the House, much as it might be if Parliament were now legislating in the full light of the Vatican Council. By far the most remarkable speech in either House was that of the Bishop of St. David's, Dr. Horsley. To that high-minded prelate the Catholics of England are indebted for a frank, manly, and complete vindication of the grounds upon which they opposed the Bill, and for an argument against the oath disavowing Infallibility so convincing, that in committee the measure was enlarged so as to include all Catholics, the reference to Infallibility altogether omitted, and the Irish oath of the Act of 1773 substituted for that which had come up from the Commons. I have stated that the majority of the English Catholics protested against the anti-Infallibilist clause of the oath. Bishop Horsley refers to this as a notorious fact. He says: "Now, my Lords, it is, I believe, a well-known fact that a very great number-I believe I should be correct if I were to say a great majority-of the Roman Catholics scruple to the terms in which the oath is unfortunately drawn, and declare they cannot bring themselves to take it,”—and he fully justifies their doing so. He goes further, he wonders that Catholics can be found of such a spirit as to be willing to take the oath. "I believe," he says, "the gentlemen of the Catholic Committee who declare themselves ready to take the oath, will see some difficulty in particular parts of it when they consider the full import of certain terms." Happily Bishop Horsley's entire speech is given by "Hansard." Mr. Gladstone might have expected to have found some notice of such a speech and such a debate in Mr. Charles Butler's "Memoirs," to which he refers as a standard authority. Not a word of it. But, be it remembered, Mr. Charles Butler was secretary to the Catholic Committee to which Bishop Horsley so pointedly referred, and was the prime mover in their least creditable proceedings. The art of cooking Catholic history so as to suit the taste of the age is by no means an original invention of Lord Acton. It appertains to the gentlemen of that school in all generations. But the question remains,--Was the Protestation signed, as Mr. Gladstone asserts, by the four English Vicars-Apostolic and a great number of Catholics? and did it declare, "We acknowledge no infallibility of the Pope"? It was so signed, and it did so declare. It was a very great mistake, but it was instantly, amply, openly repented of and atoned for. The proceedings in Parliament suffice to show that the great majority of the English Catholics would not consent to purchase any civil liberty on such terms. The four Vicars-Apostolic, immediately after the Protestation was published, on October 21, 1789, solemnly condemned the oath proposed to be founded upon it (the oath of the Protesting Catholic Dissenters); in this condemnation the Bishops of Ireland and Scotland agreed: and it was promptly confirmed by the Holy See. So that, though there was a great mistake, there was no deception of Parliament, and no fraud upon the Crown. On January 19, 1791, the Vicars-Apostolic, in a letter to all the faithful of their respective districts, on the eve of the introduction of the Bill into Parliament, renewed their condemnation of the oath; called upon all good Catholics to petition Parliament not to pass any measure containing such an oath; and expressly repudiated the name "Protesting Catholic Dissenters," a name surely as offensive to Catholic ears as I suppose the name "Romanizing Protestant Ritualists" would be to members of the Church of England nowadays. It is mentioned by one of the speakers in the House of Lords that copies of the condemnation and objections to the Bill were generally circulated among members of both Houses. It is plain from their speeches that the great leaders on both sides of the House were fully informed as to the issues involved. Mr. Gladstone throughout argues as if the Protestation emanated from some adequate authority in the Catholic Church. He has overlooked Mr. Butler's statement that it was drawn up by Lord Stanhope, who (so Mr. Butler says) did not even consult any Catholic of his acquaintance as to its terms. It is in its form and verbiage an essentially Protestant document. In particular, the statement concerning Infallibility is brought in, as it were, inadvertently and gratuitously, and without direct reference to the charge to which the paragraph containing it purports to reply. My own belief is that those who signed the paper, on trust or at random, did not at the moment discern the difference between saying that they did not "acknowledge" Infallibility, and saying, what all Catholics did and could safely say before 1870, that it was not a defined "article of faith." But, as I have already stated, the error was promptly and manfully atoned for. Our Catholic politics are, I am afraid, often very stupid, but I think it cannot be denied that they are always fairly straightforward. I submit that, under the circumstances, it is rather an abuse of terms to treat such a paper as the Protestation as, "in the strictest sense, a representative and binding document " upon the Catholics of this country; and that it is something more than an abuse of terms to say that the Catholics of England "asked and obtained relief" in 1791 "on the express ground that they renounced and condemned the doctrine," or that the Protestation was, on the part of the entire body of which Archbishop Manning is now the head, a direct, literal, and unconditional rejection of the cardinal tenet" of Infallibility; or that Mr. Pitt ever received or believed, or in the least degree concerned himself about any assurance on the subject; or that the See of Rome or the Catholics of England ever abandoned the hope that the doctrine of Infallibility would one day be defined, or were wilfully silent as to their belief in it, and so guilty of "one of the blackest frauds recorded in history." I cannot close this letter without saying in all sincerity that I wish the task had not fallen to my hand of exposing Mr. Gladstone's sin in this matter. I have that sense of his immortal labours for the good of my country, vainly spent as they may seem for the present day to have been on an ingrate generation,-I have that true knowledge of the heroic zeal with which he gave all his genius, capacity, and influence to the service of Ireland in those years of his glory-that it has been a great pain to me to have to say what I have said. But I have also that confidence in his magnanimity and love of truth, that I feel sure he will thank me if I have succeeded, as I hope I have, in showing that he has in haste made a mistake which it can only be to his honour to correct, in uttering a charge of such a cruel character against the memory of men, who, though they erred for a moment through " a blunder of the sudden," did not hesitate, at the risk of public obloquy and continuous civil outlawry, to avow their unpopular principles,-so approving themselves both honest Englishmen and orthodox Catholics. We have now to quote the text in full of the Encyclical Letter of the Vicars-Apostolic in 1791. It will be observed that it refers to and confirms the censures uttered by a previous Encyclical issued in 1789. Its date and one of its paragraphs show that it was issued on the eve of the meeting of Parliament with every circumstance of publicity, so as to prevent the Government and Legislature from being misled by the supposition that the party who had got up the Protestation, and who were supporting the Bill for the Relief of Catholic Protesting Dissenters, in any sense represented the Episcopal body or the majority of the Catholics of England; and accordingly they propose that Parliament should be petitioned by all good Catholics in the opposite sense. ENCYCLICAL LETTER. CHARLES, BISHOP OF RAMA, AND JOHN, BISHOP OF CENTURIA, TO ALL THE FAITHFUL, CLERGY AND LAITY, OF THOSE RESPECTIVE WE think it necessary to lay before you the following articles and determinations. 1st. We are informed that the Catholic Committee have given in, or intends to give in, a bill, containing an oath, to be presented to Parliament, in order to be sanctioned by the legislature, and the oath to be tendered to the Catholics of this kingdom. 2ndly. The four Apostolical Vicars, by an Encyclical Letter dated October 21, 1789, condemned an oath, proposed at that time to be presented to Parliament, and which oath they also declared unlawful to be |