232 : The Dangers of England and Ireland. (Marcu, 
of the gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion, as established by 
law.” Those three are placed in one class, they are principles,” and 
unchangeable. ‘ 
The second clause refers to the rights and privileges of the clergy, 
things in their nature liable to legislative change, which the monarch 
is bound to preserve in such powers as do or shall appertain to them. No 
similar provision for contingency applies in the former clause ; which, as 
strongly as words and the texture of a solemn obligation can.make it 
binding, is unalterable. The oath was regularly taken and regularly 
observed, in its palpable sense, by the Brunswick succession. 
In 1778 the laws against popery began to be relaxed (18 George III. 
c. 60) as far as related to the apprehension of Jesuits, popish bishops and 
priests, and theinheritance of estates by papists. In 1791 the act (31 Geo. III. 
ce. 32.) took away the prosecution against Papists and Papist ecclesiastics, 
authorised Papist schools and chapels, and allowed Papists the profes- 
sion of thelaw. In 1817 the army and navy were opened tothem. But 
in Ireland, in 1793, by the weakness of the Irish government, and the 
liberalism of faction, had been given the first fatal privilege of voting for 
members of Parliament, by the popish peasantry—a guilty and factious 
measure, which plunged the whole of the lower orders into increased 
poverty, rendered them objects of every inflammation of treason, and, 
finally, prepared them for the insurrection of 1798. . 
The more daring attempt is now to be made, to give the furious, and 
ignorant, and disaffected agents of the Popish priesthood, seats in the 
legislature. The blow will be fatal to either the constitution or the peace 
of the empire. It will either break down Protestant liberty, or rouse a 
spirit of angry repulse, whose results cannot be contemplated without 
horror. There are in the empire two men, either of whom could avert 
the crisis. The Duke of Wellington could, by refusing to carry on the 
popish bill. extingyish the evil at a word. A gesture from him, would 
instantly bring back Mr. Peel’s opinions into their oldtrain, clear he 
Chancellor’s visual nerve, and make the whole tribe of the Goulburns, 
Dawsons, Herrieses, Sugdens, and other vermicular adherents to the good 
things of the Treasury, creep back the way they came. But this the © 
Duke of Wellington will not do. He has not adventured so far for — 
nothing. He must carry the Popish Bill, or must fly from office, and be — 
undone. 
- The King can do it. By one declaration—by one syllable, he can 
overthrow all designs against the constitution, and save the country from 
the most tremendous struggle that it has known since the days of Edge- 
hill, Marston Moor, and Naseby. By decision now, he may break up, 
even more than parliamentary hostility. Men are beginning to consider — 
for what ulterior purposes England is now to be startled from her quiet. 
They call the Popish question only a cloak—they scoff at the idea, that 
fear of the braggart harangues of Irish Popery can have required the 
sacrifice of the constitution. They see ministers themselves at length 
loftily protesting against all idea of intimidation. They see the militia 
staffs broken up, the yeomanry extinguished,—a military cabinet, and 
they ask in low tones, but with wondering faces, to what do all these 
things tend? Solemnly and, affectionately, and anxiously, they call upor 
the protection of their King. 
But if in England men look to desperate changes and as desperati 
effects upon the public mind, what must be the result in Ireland 
We dare not shape to ourselves the catastrophe that may be hurrie 
