626 Catholic Resolutions : 



those antiquities of the law which (as it seems to us) it must be the busi- 

 ness of modern common sense to qualify or get rid of. When we talk of 

 the law of " No time against the King," do we not know, while we utter 

 the very words, that, practically, there is no right that is not voided by 

 desuetude ; and that time, of itself, must be taken to conclude every ques- 

 tion, unless the world is to be kept in one state of interminable confusion ? 

 Our private rights, our titles, privileges, and even laws has not society 

 agreed to hold them unmaintainable, unless maintained within a stated 

 period ? Nay, does not enjoyment, apart fromany original title, give aright, 

 unless within a given time that enjoyment be resisted ? In law, do not 

 a hundred statutes stand upon our books, which merely from the time 

 which has elapsed since they were acted on no court, no government, 

 would dare to think, in practice, of enforcing ? But, even this is trifling. 

 Custom, and the example of private rights apart, is it not an absurdity 

 unheard of an absurdity which nothing but the refinement of this modern 

 age could ever have conceived to talk of " binding" twenty millions of 

 people by a proof of wax and parchment by a '' treaty," signed a cen- 

 tury and a half ago (and never even then fulfilled) of binding this 

 mass of people (of binding a- whole nation !) to do an act, by which the 

 very advisers who recommend the sacrifice, take care to tell them, their 

 lives and liberties will be most imminently endangered ! 



Truly, if this be " sincerity/' and "conscience," and " delicate honour," 

 and " scrupulous honesty/' without wishing to seem worse than our 

 neighbours, we must say give us, in the conduct of the affairs of this 

 country, a little, simple, downright, unscrupulous knavery ! There is 

 virtue, beyond doubt, in sheepskin ; but not quite virtue enough to do all 

 that is here required. It is the sense of power that rules men, although 

 the force outwardly does not appear : John Doe is chiefly respected be- 

 cause he is known to be backed by John Hangman. The executive force 

 to proceed upon a document like this here is the misfortune is 

 wanting ; we may issue a writ against an individual, or against a 

 hundred individuals; but we should hardly know how to go about 

 arresting all England! But the subject is too serious a one for 

 jest. We set aside the manifest inconvenience which would arise 

 from recognising such a principle, as that we might rake up any 

 forgotten bond, of two centuries or three centuries old, and make ex- 

 periments, forsooth, upon the construction that it might bear to arrive at 

 any perception of what was really meant by it being impossible., We set 

 aside all this objection ; and, on the plain, single, ground of expediency 

 Mr. Peel has said, as one of the first ministers of the Crown, and of this 

 country > that, " if it could be made apparent to him that any privileges 

 were guaranteed by the Treaty of Limerick, which were now withheld 

 from the Roman Catholics, it would materially alter his view of the 

 Catholic Question:" we ask "Does Mr, Peel mean to declare as a 

 minister of the Crown, that, because he might believe in a particular 

 construction of this treaty, or of any other treaty, a century and a half 

 old, that ever was signed ; he would be content to give his official sup- 

 port to an act, which, he himself declares, would be fatal to the Con-* 

 stitution, and to the security of this country ?" 



If Mr. Peel does mean to recognise a principle like this ; if he would 

 be bound by any document that ever existed, to take the course which 

 he describes, he is not in a state of mind, fit to be a minister of this or 

 any other country. And but for our hopes in the Duke of Wellington, 

 whose military habits of conscience, perhaps, would not carry him quite 

 so far, we should have no pledge for the security of the country at this 



