for of all calamities which could befall this kingdom, it would be the most fatal, they may perhaps think is already in sight, and certainly they could, by their presence in the legislature, accelerate it.

A monstrous combination has been formed against that church, which, for its perfect tolerance and the bless ings which it has produced, will be the admiration of future ages. The old orthodox dissenters, who differ from it only upon points of discipline, and whose hostility a century of peace seemed to have eradicated, till these recent agitators stirred up the smothered embers, have leagued with the socinians, whom they hate, and who despise them; with unbelievers of every description, from the scoffers and hot sensualists of the school of Fernay, to the cold, hard, and heavy metaphysicians of the north; and all these parties unite in promoting the claims of the catholics, who, looking upon them all as equally in the way of perdition, would, if they had the power, compel them all to come within St Peter's fold, or, in pure papistical charity, burn them out of its neighbourhood. Even the quakers, who expel from their own society every member that marries one of another sect, join in the senseless clamour for toleration and political power, (toleration, which they already possess, and power, which, from their notions respecting war, they could not use,) because they hope that it will shake the steeple-house. To these must be added the united methodists, and the united Calvinists, both formidable bodies, fearfully numerous and increasing with fearful rapidity; proud of their numbers, conscious of their strength, active and indefatigable, inflamed with the fiercest zeal, and directed with the coolest foresight; two Manchineals, which day by day striking their roots deeper, and sending forth wider branches, threaten

even now,

to overshadow the land, and darken it with their baleful shade. If, in addition to these confederated enemies, other cooperating circumstances be considered; the growth of indifference on one side, and of fanaticism on the other; the long torpor of the clergy themselves, from which they are now only beginning to awake; the ruinous policy, which makes birth or interest the guide to the dignities of the church, and is thus filling the bench of bishops with men, some of whom are unwilling, and others incapable of defending her; the outcry against tithes, kept up by ignorant or half-thinking men; the combinations and litigations arising from this cause; the temptation which the tithes offer to the first needy mi nister of a bold and decisive temper, who shall have no feelings of reverence and religion to restrain him; above all, that endemic moral malady, which makes the character of these times, when the spirit of Revolution seems to be going his rounds :—he who considers these things, and has a due sense of the benefits which we derive from our establishment, and the tremendous evils from which it preserves us, though he should not himself entirely accord with that church, or be in communion with it, ought strenuously to oppose every attempt at giving political power to its old, inveterate, and irreconcilable enemies.

The catholics, if admitted into parliament, will lose no means, which their share in the legislature may allow them, of injuring our church, and advantaging their own. Ours they would have an opportunity of injuring whenever its interests were discussed; for instance, if it should be proposed to sell the tithes, and fund the produce. Their own they have a direct prospect of serving, by accomplishing its establishment in Ireland. It may perhaps be contemptuously asked, how half a dozen, or half a score, Irish members

are to effect this? They who think this a satisfactory reply know little of the nature of popery, and can have reflected little upon the state of the British parliament. In addition to the power which property will always procure, there is one great borough interest, which in the next succession will revert to the catholics. If it were supposed important to the success of their object, that more members of their community should be returned, and money could purchase their return, which, in spite of all enactments against bribery, it will do (unless the whole form and system of representation be changed,) money would be raised for that purpose throughout every catholic kingdom in Europe; it would be begged as it is for the souls in Purgatory, and part of the re

gular commutation for sin would be converted into a tax for this great purpose. This too must not be forgotten; that a body of members, insignificant as they might be upon general questions, who could turn the scale when weighty ones make the beam tremble, would be able to make their own terms with an English minister, such as ministers are upon our miserable party-system.

Whether any means can preserve the church of England, is a question which may, perhaps, be regarded with more of fear than of hope; but it ought not to be doubted that the admission of the catholics to political power, which is what is meant by emancipation, would increase its danger, and might, too probably, accelerate its overthrow.

A LIST of such proceedings as had been instituted ex officio by the attorney-general against state libels, during the last ten years, was moved for by Lord Holland. "An act," he said, "altering the ancient law March 4. of the land, giving to the silent and spontaneous act of one man all the powers and consequences of a solemn proceeding of a grand jury, had been passed this parliament at the lag end of a session, and without any person to explain the nature of its provisions, or assign the reasons on which they were founded. When he recollected, that to justify that extraordinary innovation, to lay grounds for that unexpected attack on the liberty of the subject, to prove the necessity of arming the attorney-general with the power of holding to bail, and, in some cases, of imprisoning whomever he thought guilty of a libel, no papers were moved for, no enquiry instituted, no documents produced, nay, no statement whatever made, further than was to be found in the meagre, unsatisfactory, and unsubstantiated preamble of the bill; when he recollected this, he felt that his expectation of his motion being acceded to by the supporters of that bill, was rather a proof of his own simplicity, than a fair consequence to be drawn

of

from the former conduct of those noble persons. He complimented them on their consistency in refusing all information respecting the consequence a law, for the enactment of which they had assigned no reasons, and for the allegations in which they had adduced no evidence; but surely it was natural for their lordships, who, if they had reasons for adopting the law, must have adopted it for the purpose of preventing offences and securing the ends of public justice, to enquire whe ther those ends had been accomplished; to learn how often, and with what effect the provisions of the new law had been resorted to; to ascertain whether libels had increased or diminished since these new powers had been granted; and, above all, to discover whether the convictions obtain ed bore a greater proportion to the informations laid, than they did before the latter were armed with such un usual, and, hitherto, unconstitutional consequences. When he perceived a vigilance in the attorney-general, that in three years discovered near four times the number of heinous offences that his predecessors had detected in twice the time; when he looked at his rigour on one hand, and the soli tary instance of his mercy on the other, it would not be charity, it would

"

that was; the case of a man, one Gorman, who, being under prosecution for a libel, after an information had been filed against him, had the hardihood to publish it again. And yet this was the mighty abuse of that act; this, forsooth, was one of the ruinous stretches of power which threatened the government with subversion, and put the subjects of George the Third on a par with those of Buonaparte! He repeated that he knew nothing more mischievous in its tendency, than inoculating the public mind with groundless apprehensions of imaginary evils. His abhorrence of the licentiousness of the press was founded upon his love of liberty, which burned as strong in his breast as in that of the noble lord. But if there was one mode more efficacious than another to ruin the liberty of the country, it was by generating that groundless distrust in the great officers of justice, which such needless and vexatious jealousy was calculated to inspire."

Earl Stanhope, in supporting the motion, said, "There were two species of libels which ought carefully to be distinguished. Libels against individuals it was their duty to discourage, as they regarded the prosperity, and honour, and character of the country. Truth, in such cases, was no justification, and if such libels were suffered, society could not exist: But all pub lic questions ought to be open to the press; every subject connected with religion, philosophy, government, the administration of justice; any thing that could by possibility be supposed connected with the benefit of the nation, ought to be duly and freely discussed. This was his idea, and he thought, at the same time, that the licentiousness of the press was the greatest enemy which the liberty of the press had. I had an old friend," continued Lord Stanhope, "an amiable, worthy, able man, with whom I

was always differing; but still I did not like him the less, because I knew he spoke from conscience. We differed, among other things, about the press; I was a friend for its liberty, my friend argued for its restraint: I could not help, however, severely condemning some scandalous libels which were daily pouring forth at that time against Lord Bute and the then Princess of Wales; but my friend replied, 'Oh! never mind them only let them come to a proper height, and in time the evil will cure itself;' meaning thereby, that the li centiousness of the press would at last come to such a pitch, that its liberty must be checked in order to restrain it." Earl Stanhope's friend, it is to be feared, foreboded rightly; all history shews us that the loss of liberty is the consequence and punishment of the abuse of it.

:

The motion was supported also by Lords Erskine, Grosvenor, and Lansdowne. Lord Liverpool said, "that when the effect of the motion was to bring suspicion on the administration of justice, he must say, that the course for Lord Holland to have pursued would have been to select any prosecution of which he complained as oppres sive, and then to move for enquiry. To tell them that the prosecutions for the three last years exceeded in number the prosecutions of former years, was telling them nothing: it might proceed from different causes; even from too great lenity having been shewn before. Publications of all kinds had become more numerous, and libels also might be expected to multiply." Lord Holland closed the debate, replying chiefly to Lord Ellenborough, and making the best use of the advan tage which the irritated tone of Lord Ellenborough's speech had given him. The motion was rejected by 24 to 12. Lord Folkestone renewed it in the House of Coin- March 28. mons. "From 1801 to 1806," he said, "there had been four