1829.3 England and Europe. 483 



During the whole period of the late discussions on the Popish question, 

 the Protestant writers of England resisted it on one especial ground : 

 professing, and with the truest sincerity, their desire that every 

 man should be free to keep his belief as he liked ; and, deprecating all 

 restraints upon conscience, they yet insisted on the unquestionable fact, 

 that the constitution of England, the glorious constitution which had 

 given irresistible pledges of its excellence in the unequalled prosperity, 

 freedom, and Christian knowledge of the empire — was essentially Pro- 

 testant. They showed that the fullest toleration of the rights of private 

 opinion, did not imply the admission of the tolerated into the power of 

 doing evil to those by whom the toleration was given ; that the Roman 

 Catholic was, by the open tenets of his creed, under a bond to overthrow 

 the Protestant ; that the introduction of Roman Catholic influence into 

 the legislature, must instantly dethrone England, as protectress of Pro- 

 testantism throughout Europe ; that the pretext of reconciling popery by 

 submission to its menaces, was as absurd, as the hope of reducing its 

 antipathy to Protestantism by increasing its power of evil ; finally, 

 and most urgent of all, that by seating the superstition of blood 

 and idolatry in the temple beside the religion of the Gospel, we 

 attempted to make a worldly and impious contract of evil and good — 

 and offering a direct offence to religion, we broke our solemn national 

 covenant with that mighty Being in the hollow of whose hand we had 

 been sustained through long ages of triumph and matchless prosperity. 



At the period when the discussion had approached itsheight, some papers 

 were published, proving from the unanswerable facts of English history, 

 that from the day of the establishment of Protestantism in this country, 

 in the reign of Elizabeth, down to the close of the French war in 1815, 

 the connexion of Protestant principles in the government with national 

 success had been imiform, had been actually unbroken in a single 

 ihstance; and that the connexion of a popish tendency in the government 

 with national misfortune, had been so constant and palpable, that it less 

 looked like a result of human action, than an open and irresistible pro- 

 nmlgation of the wiU of Providence. 



We shall now see, whether even in the few years that have elapsed, 

 the same promulgation, the unanswerable promulgation by great 

 national facts of good and evil, has not been made. 



The year 1815 completed the overthrow of Napoleon and the deli- 

 verance of Europe from the yoke of France. England was the great 

 leader in this glorious achievement, and the close of the war placed her 

 incontestably at the head of Europe. Yet, humanly speaking, nothing could 

 1^ more extraordinary than this distinction. England, essentially a 

 naval power, had suddenly, and for the first time within a century, 

 become a great military power ; and had, from the beginning of this new 

 trial of her strength, been committed against the most practised and 

 resistless sovereign of Europe, whose strength was wholly military, 

 at once practised by continual experience, and flushed by continual 

 conquest. With an army not amounting to a fourth of that enemy's 

 fprce, she fought him out, and finally destroyed him with a complete- 

 ness of destruction unequalled in European war. With a territory not 

 equal to a fragment of the chief continental kingdoms, she virtually ruled 

 the Continent; and in the midst of domestic sacrifices and efforts that 

 would have pauperised all Europe besides, in the payment of enormous 

 sums of money to enable the struggling empires to defend themselves, 



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