THE CATHOLIC QUESTION
We did intend to abstain from bestowing any farther notice on the Catholic Question, until circumstances would permit us to advert to it in taking a review of the leading features of the present session of Parliament, but we feel it to be our duty to abandon this intention. The gigantic importance of the subject demands, that in discussing it, we should keep it apart from all other topics. The question is the leading one of the moment, and we apprehend that it will long be the leading one. The conduct which the Opposition prints have adopted, and the course which the Catholics threaten to pursue, lead us to believe, that, for some time to come, the deeds of Catholicism will occupy a prominent station in political discussion.
We will, in the first place, as in duty bound, strip the question of the misrepresentations and falsehoods in which party-spirit has been pleased to invest it, and place it before us in all the nakedness of truth.
The Roman Catholics of these realms lie under certain disabilities, which, when they were imposed, and long afterwards, were most just and necessary. This is not merely the opinion of Tories and high- churchmen; it is an opinion which, during the present session of Parliament, has been expressed by Lord Holland and other leading Whigs, and it has been coincided in by some of the better portion of the Catholics. Of course, it cuts up the doctrine of abstract right by the roots. In the judgment, not only of the Tories, but of the genuine Whigs—not only of the opponents of the Catholics, but of the greater part of their advocates—not only of Protestants, but of certain of the Catholics themselves—the disabilities ought not to be removed on the ground of abstract right. In the opinion of all these, the disabilities were originally most justly and wisely imposed.
The Catholic Question therefore is simply this:—Have those public dangers which called for, and sanctioned, the disabilities, passed away without having been replaced by others equally formidable;—are the Catholics so far changed, that they can be safely admitted into Parliament and the Ministry? This, and this alone, is the question. The British nation, the two Houses of Parliament, and the Executive, constitute the only tribunal that can decide it.
It must be clear to all men to whom the blessing of common sense is not denied, that this tribunal could not decide rationally and constitutionally upon removing the disabilities, without first receiving satisfactory evidence that the causes for them no longer existed. It must be equally clear to all such men, that the Catholics could only have a right to hope for the removal of the disabilities through the tendering of such evidence. It must be alike clear to all such men, that in all matters of difference between the State and the Catholics, the latter, and not the former, should make the sacrifice; or, at any rate, sacrifice in the one, should be followed by equal sacrifice in the other. Nothing can be more indisputable than that, if the Catholics cannot prove that they are reformed, cannot show their qualification, and will not conform their conduct and religion to the laws and constitution, they ought still to be subject to the disabilities.
Passing by justice and reason, and looking at fact alone,—the British nation, Parliament, and the Executive, deny, that the Catholics have any abstract right to the removal of the disabilities. They insist upon qualification. Were the question debated in the House of Commons on the ground of abstract right only, the Catholics would have scarcely any advocates. If the Catholics, therefore, really wish for the removal of the disabilities, there is but one path that will lead them to success;—they must tender to the only tribunal that can relieve them the proper evidence; they must clear their character, and display their qualification.
We assume this to be perfectly indisputable, and we shall therefore use it as our test in reviewing the conduct of the Catholics in their late application to Parliament.
The hostility of the Catholics towards the established religion and Protestantism generally, has been one of the chief reasons for continuing the
