18 JANUARY 1851, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

IT would seem probable that the meridian of Durham is again to be the line by which the public will find the little planet of a mea- sure on Papal aggression which the Premier and the other ob- servers in the chief Political Observatory are supposed to have re- cently discovered. The Bishop seems again to be a pointer in the tail of the Government constellation. Through a letter to his Arch- tleaconof Lindisfarne, he shows what looks like a fresh glimmer of -those Northern lights which lately gleamed over his horizon, evoked by the Premier himself. The Romish aggressors, who now raise an outcry in fear of " vindictive measures," are quite under a misappre- hension,—" as if," indeed, " there were any intention to reenact the penal laws!" A Roman Catholic plea against any violation of the -rightsof conscience is indeed strange, says the Bishop—"Quis tulerit Gracchos de sedition querentes P" But he believes that they have nothing to fear. Somewhat in the confidential style in which the Royal Speech is prenmbrated by official journals, he indicates that "it may be necessary to provide some restrictions upon the introduction and circulation of Papal bulls in this island, and to prohibit the assumption of episcop.aI titles conferred by Rome and deriving the name from any place in this country " ; while "it may also be desirable to forbid the existence of monastic institutions strictly so called," and to put forth Jesuits from " among Scotch and English Protestants." Whether after such categorical explanations the English Protestants will at once pass to the other orders of the day, "satisfied with the solicitude of the Ministry," remains to be seen ; .and what. the Catholic body and their allies will do in re- ference to such propositions is even more problematical—despite the loyalty of the premier Duke and the two sagacious Lords be- tween whom he stands, and mange the courteous and flattering acknowledgments of the Northern Bishop and the Court party for whom he speaks.

The attitude of the Pope in Ireland is specially erect and undannted in front of the Irish Protestantism, while con- ciliating, and.. perhaps wisely yielding, to the Catholic Liberalism which appears to exist there in greater and more respectable force than hasticaii-lisiumed. Amidst the roar of Protestant anger at Roman propagandism, he severs the joint Catholic see of Cloyne and Ross,- erects a new bishopric, and by "a bull" consecrates Dr. Keane, .parish-priest of Middleton, "Bishop of Ross." On the other hand, it is reported that the prohibition against the Queen's Colleges issued by the Thurles Synod is to be left inoperative for want of the Pontiffs sovereign fiat. If one were more assured of the truth of this report, one might further speculate how far the Irish concession by the Roman Pontiff could be made to -purchase an equivalent English concession by the Protestant Pre- mier,--who is said to be sorely pressed by very free traders in religion in his Cabinet.

The Metropolitan meeting to revive Convocation was but a lan- guid effort of a party in the English Church, who long to revive a defunct and marrowless skeleton, that could not effect a single living act in the direction they would move it, even if it were re- articulated and placed in gaunt reality before them.