THE PRESS.
RATIONAL SETTLEMENT OF THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS.
MORNING HERALD.—If the Duke of Wellington is able to settle the Catho- lic question at all, we trust it will be, as has been intimated, by the simple process of doing away with the objectionable parts of those oaths which all persons now taking office are called upon to subscribe to. To this we are inclined to think the sober part of the country, of all denominations, would feel no very strong objection. Indeed, there seems in the present state of society, and in the stronger and better guards with which time and experience have fortified the Protestant Church, no very strong reasons why any part of the community should be called upon to stigmatize as "damnable and idola- trous" abstract points of religious belief, and those points of belief referring to the religion of those who erected the splendid cathedrals which our own Church now occupies, and who were the authors of those illuminated missals and other proud monuments of the arts, both in sculpture and painting, which are the boast of past ages, as they are the ornaments of all. Mr. O'Gorman, and the other second-rate Catholic orators, seemed terribly alarmed lest emancipation should be granted upon the terms of our paying their priests. Such alarm is, we believe, perfectly groundless. At any rate we feel con- vinced, that even were Mr. O'Connell himself to turn round again, and re-adopt these his own now repudiated offspring, the last, that of saddling the Catholic priests upon the country, would never for a moment be heard of. If such were to be the case, the Presbyterians, the Anabaptists, the Muggletonians; the Methodists—in short, the Dissenters of all denominations, would have as well grounded a claim for State provisions for their respective priesthoods ; and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer must be appointed, with a new annual budget, to maintain the numerous sects into which the religious world choose to divide themselves. No; the State provides a form of religious worship for those who choose to conform to it. Those who choose to dissent from it are at liberty to do so. The Roman Catholics are dissenters like any other sect ; and they, and any others who choose to have a religion of their own, cannot in reason complain if they are compelled to maintain their system of dissent at their own cost. Whatever may be proposed to be done towards the relief of the Catholics, nothing must be done or thought of which shall in any way endanger the stability of the Established Church— which would be seriously endangered, if it were for a moment admitted that another priesthood besides its own should be saddled upon the State.
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