Trttrts to 41) ellitur.
LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S LETTER.
London, 12th November 1850.
Sm—I have diligently studied Lord John Russell's letter to the Bishop of Durham, as given in your paper of last Saturday, and will, with your, per- mission, enter into a few remarks to which it seems to me naturally to give rise.
And first of all, as I have the misfortune to be running counter to popular opinion, though, I am well pleased to see, by no means so counter to the views expressed in your own editorial articles, I may be allowed to make some attempt to propitiate some little favour to the hazardous attempt of saying one word on behalf of the Pope, by professing, if any one under such circumstances will believe me, that I am neither a Romanist nor a Ro- manizer, and write simply in the name of common fairness, and of that very principle of religious liberty which is so successfully invoked on the other side. I should be as well pleased as the most zealous inscriber of "No Popery" on our walls and pavements to see my Lord Cardinal of West- minster a pastor without a flock ; and I have little more sympathy than yourself or Lord John with the ceremonial which it has been my destiny to witness very recently in certain London churches. I only ask, as I have be- fore asked in your columns, for a clear field and no favour, for Pope or Turk, Methodist or Anabaptist, Exeter or Gorham. Most other persuasions are freely allowed this right; and unless some special case can be made out, I cannot see why an exception should be made to the prejudice of those of our fellow-citizens who profess the Roman Catholic religion. Lord John Russell's letter divides itself into two parts; which, if I rightly understand the noble Lord's rhetoric, are respectively inspired by the muses of "alarm" and "indignation." The production of the latter—to wit, the four last clauses—I humbly take leave to call claptrap ; and from some w- sages of your own remarks, I infer that you are yourself not of a very di- ent opinion. One ought not to impute motives ; on the other hand, it is impossible to rate Lord John's capacity so low as to suppose that he is in- capable of seeing through his own sophistry : either his intellectual or his moral character is at stake, and I leave the noble Lord to make his election will whether of the two he wi! be content to sacrifice. For my own part, I am inclined to regard it with yourself, as "a bidding for support." Lord John knows where the Englishman's weak point is • he has lived too long in the world not to know that our national love of fair play deserts us when Popery or Puseyism is in the case ; and- he has not scrupled to lend himself to a popular outcry when it may conduce to gain an addition of votes, either among the Livery of London or the Commons of England. Like one of "the immortal martyrs of the Reformation," Lord John has, in Sing Harry's phrase, "taken the sow by the right ear" : he has awakened the Protestant lion in the hearts of his own constituents in the Common Council ; he has called forth the professional sympathies of Sion College ; he has sent forth his own praise from Downing Street to Durham, and probably helped thereby to procure a longer existence for not the strongest ox Administrations. And when all this was to be had for the asking, perhaps it is too squeamish in us who look on these matters from our colleges or our country-houses, to ex- pest that a Prime Minister should scruple to lay hands on the same, even at the cost of a good deal of talk which does not at all help his argument, and of a good deal of ungenerous and unjust abuse of an unpopular party. The Ultra-Tractarian clergy, or by whatever name they may be denomi- nated, have received a rebuke, far from unmerited, from a legitimate au- thority—from the mouth of their Bishop speaking ex cathedra. But the temperate admonition of the authorized judge is strongly contrasted with the ad eaptandum declamation of the self-constituted partisan. Lord John Rus- sell may say what he pleases to the Bishop of Durham ; but the Prime Mi- nister, addressing, as he practically is, the people of England, is hardly con- sulting the dignity of the chief adviser of the Crown when he proclaims war openly against any class of men without bringing sonic definite charge of contravening the law. Lord John must know well enough that his "alarm" and " indignation " have no sort of logical connexion : I at least cannot see why the present proceeding of Pius the Nmth calls for an extra measure of abuse against a list of practices of which some, rightly or wrongly, are ordered or allowed in the Prayer-book, some I believe to exist only in Lord John's imagination, of which all are misrepresented and misapplied, and all in any case are nihil ad rem. But popular prejudice jumbles all together; said it was to popular prejudice only that Lord John wanted to appeal. And now for the " alarm" division of the letter; in which his Lordship does introduce something which takes a shape so nearly approaching to ar- gument as that of a dogmatic statement on a disputedpoint. Putting old prejudices and traditions aside, and not allowing a plain question of the nine- teenth century to be clouded over by visions of Guy Fawkes or Bloody Mary, (or if this be impossible, at least allowing the embowellings of one sister to count against the holocausts of the other,) the first common-sense as- pect of the matter is, that the new form of the Anglo-Roman hierarchy is simply one of those arrangements for its own better government which every religious body in the country, with a single exception, of which my Lord is not ignorant, is at full liberty to make. The prima fa- cie view to an unprejudiced observer is, that it is exactly analogous to " the division of Scotland into dioceses by the Episcopal Church, or the arrangement of districts in England by the Wesleyan. Conference." As far as temporal matters are concerned, a Scottish and a Romish Bishop have just the same status : the Bishop of Edinburgh is a person as little re- cognized by the law as the Cardinal of Westminster ; both have the toleration which the law happily extends to all persuasions, and nothing more ; both are nearly alike unpopular in their respective countries : one would ex- pect that the voluntary hierarchies of which they are members should have equal power of arranging themselves according to their own notions of what is expedient for their own wellbeing. And I humbly conceive that a similar liberty should be granted to any of our fellow-citizens who might prefer the communion of the Patriarch or of the Sultan of Constantinople, or to any yet more eccentric religionists who might rear again the fallen shrines of Zeus or Woden. Were the spiritual sovereignty of the Bishop of London threatened by a Chief Mufti of Finsbury, or an Arch-Flamen of the Tower Hamlets, I should see in it a strong excitement for renewed exertions to con- vert the unfortunate misbelievers, but none to call up a popular 'outcry or to bare the sword of persecution. And the like I hold to be the case with the present invader : if the episcopacy of Dr. Blomfield could be signalized by the peaceful recantation of a Cardinal of Westminster in the church to which he seems to lay claim, some future Godwin might record the scene in letters of gold ; but he could only hurry with shame over the page in which he would be called on to recount his expulsion by mob violence or perverted legislation. But Lord John apparently makes a distinction between the case of the Ro- man Church and any other religious body, much as was done by the most nar- rowminded opponents of that triumph of justice and liberality for whichhe fairly enough claims the honours of a promoter. The sentence beginning " There is an assumption of power," would have fallen appropriately from the lips of Lord Eldon ; it would be accepted as mere honest prejudice in the mouth of Sir Robert Inglis or Colonel Sibthorp ; but what shall we say to it in the mouth of one who arrogates to himself the title of " Liberal " ? A con- fusion, one would almost think not undesigned, runs through the whole pa- ragraph. What does Lord John mean by the " Queen's supremacy" ? and does he suppose it to be merely confined to the body known as the Church of England, or to be extended over all religious persuasions ? Of course the supremacy of the law extends over all,—that is, the peculiar tenets or dis- cipline of any sect are not admitted as justification for any act contrary to the statutes of the realm ; but by the Queen's supremacy we generally under- stand something more special and personal, an actual governing power, ad- mitted, in whatever measure or degree, by the Established Church, and that alone. Does Lard John mean simply that the proceeding is illegal ? That is a question for the Judges, whether it be so ; and if so it be, for Parliament, whether such a state of the law be good. If he means this, he has enveloped himself in a strange phraseology : if not, does he mean that this act of the Pope interferes with the internal supremacy of the Crown over the Esta- blished Church ? or does he mean to assert a similar supremacy over all re- ligious bodies ? The former alternative is absurd ; for the latter, our Dissent- ing brethren would hardly thank him. I can see nothing in the Pope's bull claiming any "supremacy over the realm of England " : there is no claim of temporal power, which alone can be the legitimate meaning of such a phrase. "A claim to sole and undivided sway" of course there is—there could not be otherwise ; that is, the bull as- sumes that the spiritual government of all baptized persons rests rightly the Roman hierarchy alone. But this is the fundamental doctrine of the Ito- Man Catholic religion : does Lord John mean, or does he not mean, that this doctrine is to be put out of the pale of our present universal toleration ? Are we to understand that to believe the Roman Catholic Church is the only sure road to salvation, and that the Pope is its divinely-appointed head, is a doctrine which for the future is to be held illegal ? I can find nothing worse in the bull; and little sympathy as I have for any such tenet, surely I may be allowed to hope that an assent to it is not to be made into a ground of persecution. "The rights of our Bishops and Clergy," for which Lord John now feels such an unusual tenderness, are twofold,—a right totertain temporal dignities and emoluments, together with any jurisdiction enforced by the State; and a purely spiritual claim to obedience as divinely-commissioned pastors. The former clearly is not touched : Lambeth is not alienated ; and when my Lord Cardinal is no more, the disposition of his worldly goods must still come be- fore the emissaries of his Anglican brother. Of the other Lord John is an odd champion; but I cannot see that it is more at stake than before : the purely spiritual ,jurisdiction of Dr. Blomfield is exercised over such persons within a certain limit as choose to recognize in him the true pastor of souls; that of Dr. Wiseman is exercised over those who entertain a similar opinion of him; any one may pass over ad libitum from one to the other ; each is esteemed by himself and his adherents to be the one real pastor, and the other to be a schismatic : such was the case in the days of N. Melipotamus and C. J. Lon- ' don respectively, and I cannot see that it is at all altered by one of the arch- oombatants assuming a more reasonable and expressive title. We are told that the present arrangement "ignores" the English Church : doubtless it , does; but so did the old ; so must the existence in England of the Roman 1 Church in any form. We are again brought back to the question, is that
articular body to be excluded from the general toleration ? If it is, let us ow at once.
"The spiritual independence of the nation" is another of his Lordship's claptrap phrases. As, however, the nation does not exist as one aggregate in any spiritual capacity, it has no meaning. The "spiritual independence" of the Established Church is secured by statutes, canons, oaths, and maledic- tions without end ; that of other bodies may be surely left to themselves to take care of; or does Lord John seek to be the particular Henry the Eighth of the Anglo-Roman communion ? I need hardly remind you of Bishop Iffilathorne's letter showing that the new arrangement actually renders it less dependent on the Pope than it was before. In conclusion, I may point out two or three fallacies, which, besides mere fanaticism, have tended to impede a fair consideration of the subject. Much confusion is produced by the fact that the Roman Catholic is the only com- munion which recognizes an authority external to the kingdom : this is the respect in which an act of the Pope appears to differ from an analogous act of the Wesleyan Conference or the Scottish Episcopal Synod. Yet, unless we proclaim the tenet of the Pope's spiritual supremacy to be out of the pale of toleration, we cannot consistently object to the particular forms in which it is exercised. Again, the Roman Catholic being the only other Episcopal com- munion in England, it is necessarily brought into a more direct antagonism with the Established Church. A Bishop, whether he take his title from West- minster or Melipotamus, is a more palpable and plausible rival, and there- fore a more irksome intruder in the fold of another Bishop, than any con- ceivable President or Moderator. Yet it is rather hard to convert an im- portant article of agreement into a further ground of hatred. Again, people attach to the name of Bishop certain ideas altogether alien to its intrinsic meaning : when they talk of the Queen's prerogative, as "the fountain of honour," being invaded, and parallel an Archbishop of Westminster with a (Pope-created) Duke of Smithfield, if they mean anything but wilful misre- preeentation, they jumble up the temporal accidents of a bishopric,— peerage, palace, 45001. per annum—with its intrinsic spiritual functions.. Possi- bly Cardinal Wiseman has no greater objection to such good things than other dignified ecclesiastics ; but his master has not taken upon him to•convey any claim to anything of the kind. As a member of the Church of England, I regret the proceeding, because I think it may give some little increased efficiency to another communion. But it is an efficiency derived from a perfectly legitimate piece of internal reform, and only calls for fresh exertions on our own part. Bat any re- vival of " Papal domination," in the temper of England for the last three centuries, is, as my Lord John truly says, in no degree to be apprehended. When a Roman Archbishop is enthroned in Canterbury, I shall look for ray hypothetical Arch-Flamen to be enthroned in Stonehenge.
But still more deeply do I regret the malevolent and unchristian feelings and expressions which the whole business has called forth on both sides, and which are a scandal to the faith which both profess to hold in common. But of this the main responsibility must rest with those who could hardly have failed to foresee the storm which they would infallibly provoke. Finally, I commend my Lord John to Mr- Disraeli, to extract an explana- tion of all this bluster about a possible infringement of the constitution in England after such long connivance at open breaches of the law in Ireland. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, "E. A. F.
Previous page
