The persecution of Protestants in Spain has attracted great atten-
tion in this country ; and on Tuesday Lord Shaftesbury presided over a meeting in St. James's Hall, intending to express sympathy on behalf of the persecuted. Five members of Parliament were present, and one Bishop. In his opening speech, Lord Shaftesbury said they were bent on no proselytizing enterprise—no Protestant combination. They were not seeking to turn men from their faith, or to win them over to ours. They were simply met to assert on behalf of others those principles that had been found of such inesti- mable benefit to the people of this country—to assert that man was responsible for his religious opinions to God alone, and that no human being had a right to pry into that which passed in another's heart ; that no human being had a right to say whether or not another should have access to the Word of God ; and that it was the right and privilege of every man to read that Word for himself, and to do so at his own discretion and on his own- responsibility, sentiments heartily cheered. Sir Robert Peel, fresh from a tour in Spain, made some interesting statements.
When they came there to advocate the cause of the Protestant sufferers in the South of Spain, they had no wish to accuse any individual Minister of that
country. Marshal O'Donnell was the present Prime Minister of Spain, and a more truly disinterested and enlightened statesman had not for many a day ruled the destinies of that country. When he was there he could see every day the enormous progress which Spain was making in the hands of so able a Minister. Let it be understood that it was the fundamental laws of that country, not indi- viduals, which they attacked—laws which were atrocious and persecuting in their very nature. The 29th article of the penal code of Spain made dissent from the Romish Church a penal offence. A person professing Protestantism in Spain was looked on by the law not as a murderer, not as a thief, or an assassin, but as worse—as a heretic, who might be sentenced' to ten or twelve years' penal servi- tude, and when so sentenced was sure to perish in the galleys. A letter appeared in the Times of October 30, 1858, complaining that the Alcalde of Bilbao, at the bead of a number of officials, while the service of our Church was going on, stopped the service in the middle of the Litany, and required a promise that the offence of Protestant worship should never be repeated. In 1831, when the cholera was raging in the North of Spain, the assistant-surgeon of the ship under the command of Lord J. Hay died, a victim to his courage in Santander in attending the poor Spaniards; but having sacrificed his life the Spanish autho- rities refused him Christian interment, except below high-water mark. At Valencia, Carthagena, and Alicante, the Englishmen resident there had expressed a desire to have among them religious education, and had subscribed funds for that object, but according to the statement of the Spanish Minister to Lord John Russell they could only have such liberty as was "compatible with the law." In Lord Ilowden's report, dated September 22, 1851, it is stated:
"By the law of the land there is but one religion professed in Spain—the Roman Catholic—and no other form of worship is tolerated ; therefore until this law, which is declared also in the Constitution of the country, is changed or modi- fied, no facility for the establishment of Protestant places of worship can be given, for it is not a matter which depends on the private individuals in power, or on the aggregate degree of liberality pervading any Cabinet."
Again, the royal decree, dated Madrid,. November 17, 1852, says: "No fo- reigner shall be able to profess in Spain any other religion than the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion." And in the leiter of the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs to the British Minister, dated Madrid, May 24, 1853, in reference to the burial of the dead, it is declared that, "No church, chapel, or any other sign of a temple, or ,public or private worship, will be allowed to be built in the aforesaid cemetery.' Ile bad travelled all over that country, and could speak to the state of matters there. He was at Malaga a short time since, when the cholera broke out with great severity. Among those who died was an English member of Parliament, the late member for Leicester. They were not allowed to inter him during the day, and his body was taken from the hotel to the ceme- tery at night, no service of any kind being permitted ; and it was not till the following day that, without any procession, they were permitted to go to the grave and perform over it the last ntes of the Church. The native Protestants are accused of socialism and revolutionary politics. He had travelled with Mala- moros, one of the persecuted, and he read some extracts from his letters. He had seen Alhama and Malamoros in prison. Their cell be could pace in three steps, and it was without light or proper ventilation. Nothing ever reminded him more sensibly of Byron's description of the prisoner of Chilton. Never had he beheld a more pitiable sight. He had lain with four men on a plank in mid-ocean, the sole survivors of a terrible shipwreck, and he had seen these men one by one perish at his side, but it did not move him with woe. He had seen a battle- field after a defeat, and thought it horrible but still it was not woe. He had seen a prisoner expiate by his death his defiance of the law, and he had said it was horrible; but it did not affect him with woe. But he had seen prisoners in the dungeons of Italy and Grenada, and had felt "more than he could express, yet could not all conceal." Would to God that the sympathy expressed so universally in this coantry might alleviate or lighten if but one link of the chain or one iota of the burden that pressed down the unfortunate sufferers in the dungeon of Grenada. (Cheers.)
The meeting adopted a resolution, praying Queen Victoria to take such steps as she may deem most fitting for bringing under the notice of the Queen of Spain the strong feeling prevailing among a large number of her Majesty's subjects in consequence of the measures now actively ursued in Spain against those who profess principles held by her Majesty, in common with many millions of her Majesty's subjects.
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