COBBETT'S ACCOUNT OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION, AND ADVICE TO O'CONNELL.
Conerres REGISTER—Some persons think, that the law as it now
stands, will permit Mr. O'Connell to take and keep his seat; others are of a different opinion. But this is a matter of little importance, when compared with the performance of our, the English people's, and particularly the English Protestants', duty on this occasion ; and, in order duly to estimate that duty, it becomes necessary for us, first of all to inquire into the grounds
upon which Mr. O'Connell will, as is generally expected, be forbidden to take, or will be ejected from his seat in the House. This gentleman is duly qualified according to law ; he may be duly elected and returned. But before any Member can take his seat in the House, the law provides that he shall take an oath, by which oath he declares before God and man, that he believes that the Roman Catholic worship is idolatrous and damnable ; and this oath, which even we Protestants ought to look at seriously before we take it, Mr. O'Connell, who is a Catholic, will not take. And, my friends, let us now, acting like sensible and just men, examine candidly into this matter. The oath was, and is intended, to prevent Catholics from being Members of Parliament, and it extends to both Houses. This oath obliges Catholics to keep out of Parliament, or to become apostates; that is to say, hypocrites towards men, and blasphemers against God. What is, then, this Catholic faith and worship, what is this Catholic religion, which Members of Parliament are called upon to swear that they deem to be " idolatrous and damnable"? And is it such as ought to exclude its followers from all public trust? It is that very religion which Saint Austin brought into Kent twelve hundred years ago, and to which the people of this island were then converted: it is that very religion in which Englishmen lived and died for nine hundred years ; it is that very religion the followers of which formed the parishes, built the churches and cathedrals, founded and built and en- dowed the two Universities, and all their colleges, together with all the hospitals, alms-houses, and great public schools in the kingdom • it is that very same religion, the followers of which made the common law of this land, and framed all those safeguards for property and liberty which made this nation so great, so renowned, and then, alas ! so happy ; surpassing in security, ease, plenty, and hospitality, all the other nations of the world; it is, in short, the religion of William of Wickham, who founded and endowed one of the colleges at Oxford, and the famous college of Winchester, and not that of the rate Bishop North, who sold small beer out of his episcopal palace of Farnham. This is the religion of the Catholics; and, can we, though we have been brought up in the belief that ours is better, can we believe that this religion is "idolatrous and damnable," and that all our forefathers and mothers, the collection of whose remains have raised such mounds round our country churches, are gone into everlasting fire ? No ; we start back at the unnatural, the parricidal, the savage, the sacrilegious, the blasphemous idea! * * * Intelligence has arrived of Mr. O'Connell having beets duly elected and returned, and that, in consequence thereof, he has done what no Roman Catholic ever did before, that is, franked letters ! Whether that is to be all, whether all his doings are to terminate in the short-lived exercise of that insignificant and rather unpopular, not to say more, privilege, will now depend upon himself, and wholly upon himself. It is not just (and it never is so, in fact) that a man should acquire and preserve great popularity, unless he act up fully to his professions. Ile who means to succeed by the effects of enthusiasm, must not cease to keep that feeling alive ; he must not teach it to droop by drooping himself; he must not, by his example, give it a sober lesson of prudence and of caution ; he ought to reflect well and long before he, whether positively or by implication, makes promises that excite great expectations, but having done it, disappointment, icom whatever cause proceeding, exposes bins to great danger, and, if manifestly proceeding front his own want of resolution, produces his ruin for ever ; in the case of such a man, there must be no halting, no slackening, no hesitating, no "mode- ration ;" he must not stop at the glacis ; he must march up to the very ditch; he must prove that he has gone to the last niche of human possibility,
or he sinks for ever. * *
How is Mr. O'Connell to show his eagerness to be in St. Stephen's, if he remain in Dublin.until the fifteenth of the month ? It must require four or five days more to bring him to London ; and it is supposed that the Par- liament will then be ready to be prorogued. If he postpone until next year the taking of his seat, will that square with his professions at Clare ? Will that argue that resolution and promptitude, and that thirst for a conflict with his foes, which were to be inferred from his declaration? To make his deeds correspond with his words, he ought to have closed, at Clare, in the same tone that he began ; then to have started for Dublin, and entered it amidst the shouts of the people ; then to have started, without sleeping, for London ; and then, in the most public manner, to have entered the Parliament House, there to maintain his right and the rights of the people, or to be ejected by such force as no man can possibly resist. I trust that he still intends to pursue the latter part of this course; for, if he do not, he will have done more mischief to the Catholics than any pen or tongue can adequately express. The declining of the triumphant entry into Dublin must, I fear, be deemed a bad beginning—it looks like having taken fright at his success-- it looks like a hope to conciliate, when any one must see, that conciliation, without submission on his part, without an open abandonment of all his pro- fess ions and promises, is as impossible as the co-existence, in the same space, of darkness and of light. But, if he flinch here, in England! if he endeavour to conciliate here! if he turn pale upon merely finding himself in the same atmosphere with that "Wellington and that Peel," whom he has pledged himself to set at defiance, to attack, and almost to hurl from their seats ! Being now the advocate of reform, here will he find hundreds of thousands to support him openly in all his loyal and legal endeavours; but he must act openly, too; for if he go the back way into the house, as Burdett did out of the Tower, he will be turned out with as little ceremony and as little noise as a pennyless customer is ejected from a pot-house at midnight. If he place the smallest reliance on those men in Parliament, to whom lie and the Association have voted thanks, and especially it he listen to their advice, he is ruined for ever; and "the Member for Cirre" will become a by word for ages, a term of ridicule and of scorn. There is no danger, personal or pecuniary, in pursuing the straightforward and gallant course; but, if there were danger, and even great danger of both descriptions, it would be his bounden duty to encounter it. Nobody compelled him to become a candi- date for Clare ; no necessity urged him to it ; he was not even invited to take that step; it was his own voluntary act; he knew full well that the prosecution of his intention would expose both priests and people to a great
deal of injurious resentment ; he told them that he legally could, and that he . _ _
would, take the seat if they elected him to it; by the money of one part of the people and by the still greater sacrifices of another part, he has, at his own pressing solicitation, been enabled to take the seat ; and, therefore, he is bound to take it, and that, too, at the first possible moment, and in manner the most public and best calculated to render his ejection conducive to the good of the people, though to do this were manifestly at the risk of his life, instead of being, as it is, attended with not the smallest danger of any description.
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