European country, as the chief bond of civil polity and dissidents from it were more or less rigorously repressed. As a matter of fact, it is to a great English magistrate that we owe the ruling which placed an almost insuperable difficulty in the way of the tribe of informers. At the trial of the Rev. James Webb on the 25th of June, 1768, at Westminster, at the suit of a notorious common informer named Payne, Lord Mansfield told the jury that the defendant could not be condemned "unless there were sufficient proof of his ordination". Such proofs, of course, were not forth-coming. Lord Mansfield, as Charles Butler relates in his above-mentioned "Historical Memoirs", discountenanced the prosecution of Catholic priests and took care that the accused should have every advantage that the form of proceedings, or the letter or spirit of the law, could allow. And at that period the same temper animated English judges generally.
As the second half of the eighteenth century wore on, English Catholics ceased to be regarded by the Government as politically dangerous. A certain number of them had taken part in the rising of 1715, and in the far more serious rising of 1745, and had in some instances been executed for their pains. But in 1766 the Old Pretender died, and the Young Pretender, upon whom his claim devolved, had ceased to excite either dread or enthusiasm. Men no longer took him seriously, and English Catholics in time—it was no very long time—acquiesced in the Revolution of 1688. Nay, they did something more than acquiesce. In 1778 an address was presented to George III, bearing the signatures of the Duke of Norfolk and nine other peers, and of one hundred and sixty-three commoners, on behalf of the Catholic body. It represents to the sovereign their "true attachment to the civil constitution of the country, which having been perpetuated through all changes of religious opinions and establishments, has been at length perfected by that Revolution which has placed your Majesty's illustrious house on the throne of these Kingdoms, and inseparably united your title to the crown with the law and liberties of your people". In this year, 1778, the first Catholic Relief Act was passed. It repealed the worst portions of the Statute of 1699 above mentioned, and set forth a new oath of allegiance which a Catholic could take without denying his religion. Though a very modest measure of relief, it was extremely distasteful to some bigoted Protestants, among whom it is distressing to find the name of John Wesley. But in truth Wesley—it is not a rare case—was no less ignorant and narrow-minded than zealous and devout, as is sufficiently evident from his "Letter concerning the Principles of Roman Catholics". In this document, besides other equally foolish assertions, he alleges that they hold an oath not binding if administered by heretics, and that they believe in the remission of future sins through the Sacrament of Penance. The conclusion he draws is that no government "ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion". There can be no doubt that the diatribes of Wesley and his followers largely swelled the agitation for the repeal of the Act of 1778, which was conducted by the Protestant Association, and which issued in the Lord George Gordon Riots.
It would be an error to impute the prevalence of a milder spirit towards Catholics at this period to sympathy with their religion. It arose rather from the relaxation of dogmatic belief, the latitudinarianism, the indifferentism which is a notable sign of those times, and which infected Catholics as well as Protestants throughout Europe. In England it was manifested, among other ways, in the apostasy of nine Catholic peers, while many other Catholic laymen, of position and influence, assumed a quite un-Catholic attitude towards the episcopate and towards the Government. They desired, legitimately enough, further deliverance from the penal laws; and to compass this end they had recourse to means not at all legitimate. In May, 1783, five of these constituted themselves "a Committee appointed to manage the further affairs of Catholics in this kingdom", to use their own words. "It was in some respects", writes Canon Flanagan (History of the Church in England, II, 393), "a useful institution, working zealously for the supposed interests of the Catholic body. Its zeal, unfortunately, was not according to knowledge. It sought to win emancipation by making to Protestants every concession that it believed it could in conscience, but it forgot meantime that minute theological knowledge would be necessary for so delicate a task; or rather it forgot that it was unintentionally perhaps, but not the less certainly, usurping the place of the bishops and of the Holy See. It was now in treaty with the government for fresh measures of relief. It complained that the Catholics were not allowed their own `mode of worship'; were punished severely for educating their children `in their own religious principles', whether at home or abroad; could not practice any of the professions of the law, or serve in the Army or Navy, or vote in the elections, or hold a seat in either Rouse; and it prayed William Pitt, who was now prime minister, to aid them in their intended application for redress". Pitt was favorably inclined towards the committee, whose proceedings, however, were soon marked by great unwisdom. Protestant Nonconformists were at that time striving to obtain a complete toleration, and held out the right hand of fellowship to Catholics. The Catholic committees were well pleased by the proposed alliance, and in a bill which they drafted for the House of Commons, they inserted a clause providing that the relief to be given by it was to be available to those only who subscribed their names, in a Court of Justice, in the following form: "I, A.B., do hereby declare myself to be a Protesting Catholic Dissenter." The four vicars Apostolic, in an encyclical letter, condemned this and other vagaries of the Catholic Committee, and declared that none of the faithful clergy or laity under their care ought to take any oath or subscribe to any instrument wherein the interests of religion are concerned without the previous approbation of their respective bishops. The Holy See approved this letter. In the Relief Act which was passed in 1791 the foolish phrase "Protesting Catholic Dissenters" was struck out, and the oath proposed by the Catholic Committee was utterly discarded, the inoffensive Irish oath of 1778, with slight variations, being substituted for it. Catholics taking this oath were relieved from the penalties of the Statutes of Recusancy and from the obligation of taking the oath of supremacy prescribed by the Statute of William and Mary. Various disabilities were removed, and toleration was extended to Catholic schools and worship. Shortly after this Act was passed the Catholic Committee turned itself into the Cisalpine Club and continued under that name, for thirty years, to trouble more or less the vicars Apostolic.
There can be little doubt that the passing of the Relief Act was facilitated by the outbreak of the Revolution in France. Another result, at first extremely prejudicial to the Catholic Church in England, of that great upheaval was the closing of the seminaries on the Continent, which had furnished to that country a supply of priests. Douai was seized by the French Revolutionary Government in 1793. The English Benedictine houses in France also disappeared. The closing of the English Catholic colleges in France was, however, to some extent compensated by the influx of clergy from that country. No less than eight thousand of these confessors of the Christian Faith sought the hospitality of Protestant England, and it was ungrudgingly given. The King's House at Winchester sheltered a thousand of them, and for several years a considerable sum was voted for their relief by Parliament and was largely supple-
