DEFEAT AND DOWNFALL OF THE VATICAN.

Fellow Countrymen, —In the history of the struggle between the Pope’s agents on the one hand, and the British parliament on the other, nothing appears to me more remarkable than the weak and credulous part played by those who style themselves philosophers. Little do these speculative gentlemen seem to know of the real character of Romanism. While they are babbling of civil and religious liberty the Brummagem Wolsey and his associates are moving earth and hell to get possession of sufficient funds wherewith to forge the instruments of persecution and oppression. Sometimes they haunt the death-beds of aged and tottering misers, and by fierce and relentless threats of damnation extort from them, for the use of the Propagand, their hard-earned riches; sometimes they encompass with their arts, their sophistry, their glozing, and their falsehoods a young woman whose intellect has been degraded and enfeebled by the application of Popish discipline; but the motive is invariably the same: the advancement of Romish despotism over the minds and consciences of mankind, the multiplication of conventual prisons and brothels, and the exaltation of the sacerdotal caste through the corruption and debasement of the laity.

You will have seen by the accounts transmitted from Rome that the Vatican begins at length to suspect the existence of a volcanic crater beneath it. Even its habitual friends now confess that the Popish church is upheld in the capital of Italy only by the French and Austrian bayonets. That wretched old man, Pio Nono, who began his career as a reformer, and will end it as a despised and humiliated dotard, looks with unutterable dismay at the tempest arising in Great Britain, the skirts of which may reach the seven hills, and scatter irremediable destruction among his black and tonsured legions who spread themselves like locusts over Europe—devouring, defacing, and defecting whatever they alight on.

To think of countenancing vermin like these is not philosophy, but imbecility. As far as regarded them, the Sophists of the eighteenth century were right. No plague that ever affected mankind is to be compared, for destructiveness and duration, to the plague of priestcraft, which leaves the seeds of dissolution in the mind, which weakens where it cannot kill, which infects and poisons without being perceived, and which transmits from generation to generation the pernicious and noisome virus. In the case of Mathurin Carre you have beheld an example of the cold-blooded cupidity of priests. In the case of Miss Augustus Talbot you have seen this vile feeling, connecting itself with audacious and systematic lying. You must feel, therefore, that while these sacerdotal reptiles are permitted to crawl about in English society, diffusing their moral venom into the minds of weak, ignorant, and superstitious women, neither your wives nor your daughters, your religion nor your morals, your freedom nor your property, can be said to be safe.

It would not, of course, be becoming, in an age of enlarged and liberal philosophy, to counsel legal persecution; but, without resorting to this, society has it in its power to counteract very much of the mischief perpetrated in families by priests. To begin. These should be sedulously excluded from Protestant society—not as ministers of religion, but as systematic seducers of the young and inexperienced. It should be part of every child’s education to look upon them as inculcators of falsehood—as glozing hypocrites—as corruptors of the scriptures, and as the implacable enemies of liberty. The history of Europe is filled to overflowing with instances of their rapacity, fraud, cruelty, and relentless bigotry. No crime has ever been deemed too atrocious to be perpetrated in the service of the church. They have poisoned the sacramental wine. They have committed assassination. They have seduced wives into the betrayal of their husbands, children into the betrayal of their husbands, children into the betrayal of their parents, and parents into the desertion and ruin of their children. They have been apologists of theft—of fraudulent bankruptcies—of torture, duelling, assassination, and whatever else is most hateful and execrable in human guilt.

Let those among you who doubt this read the “Provincial Letters of Pascal,” a man of most religious and blameless life—a man full of truth and sincerity—a man full of truth and sincerity—a man who may be said to have fallen a martyr to his love of goodness. In that work he unmasks, with incomparable wit, boldness, and learning, the infamous doctrines of the Jesuits, who then, as now, were aiming at the total subjugation of the mind of Christendom to the Pope, at the extinction of civil freedom, and at a boundless monopoly of wealth and power for themselves. Read, also, the letter of Jean Jacques Rousseau to Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, and Voltaire’s “Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations,” Michelet’s “Priests, Women and Families,” and Lasteyrie’s “History of the Confessional.” From these pass on to events which have just taken place before your eyes—the trial of the priest Gothland, in France; and the achievements of the priests Holdstock, Doyle, and Hendren in this country.

But why point to particular transactions? The history of Romanism has been from the beginning the history of imposture, vice, and corruption. An unmarried clergy must inevitably be a libertine clergy; and monastic orders, merging the spirit of the individual in the corporation, must, with equal certainty, be reckless and unscrupulous in the attainment of riches and power. I would not be understood to maintain that there have not been among the Roman Catholic clergy and monks many men of pious character and exemplary lives. God forbid I should be so unjust; but all history will bear testimony to the fact that such men form the exception, not the rule; that they have been virtuous in spite of Romanism, and not in consequence of its influence; and that the majority have been what I describe them—selfish, sensual, grasping, slaves to falsehood and uncleanness, converting the church into a means of aggrandisement, waging incessant war against the intellect of the laity, haters of freedom, backbiters, slanderers, —in one word, unmitigated scourges of society, which should reject and cast them out as incorrigible enemies.

But your parliament has for once done its duty by passing a measure to restrain papal aggression. The Grahams and the Gladstones, the Howards, and the Palmers, may sophisticate and declaim as they please about the inefficiency of the measure, supposing anything of the kind to be required. You will believe the Vatican to be a better judge of the force and tendency of the bill, and by the terror which it inspired at Rome you may perceive that it is regarded there as anything but inefficacious. On the contrary, it is felt to be a death-blow to the hopes of Romanism in England. It is in vain that mountains of bank notes flow into the treasury of imposture in Golden square—that the new converts exhaust their fortunes in the cause of the superstition they have adopted—that the hereditary and traditional Papists are roused into a spasmodic generosity by the example of these proselytes—parliament has set its ban on the new apostles of popery; the press has brought to bear its still more formidable power against the foundations of the Vatican, and the entire structure is fast tottering towards its fall. In Rome itself the papacy would not endure a day, but for the overwhelming force of foreigners maintained there to keep down the people. Protestantism has a spontaneous propaganda in Italy, because it is felt that all hopes of the republic depend on the reformed religion; for the mind cannot freely exert or develop itself in politics unless it be first emancipated from the baneful influence of the sacerdotal order.

Catholicism and liberty are things incompatible, and this conviction is so fast gaining ground in Italy that all men are there preparing to pass through the portals of Protestantism into the republic, and this, be it remarked, is the greatest glory of the reformed religion; that it emancipates men’s souls and bodies at the same time—that it sets up truth as the standard of a man’s life—that it denounces priestcraft—while it inculcates piety—and that it is impossible men should adopt it without making some progress towards national prosperity and happiness.

I repeat, then, that all who love liberty must inevitably look upon Romish priests as their worst enemies—enemies to their public importance and to their domestic peace—enemies to be guarded against by education and by laws—enemies never to be despised; but men to be suspected when weak, and attacked when strong. The shoals of them recently imported from Rome should be regarded and treated as the priests of Isis were in the ancient republic, that is to say, as systematic corrupters of youth, and foes to morals and genuine religion. The virtues they teach deserve nothing but contempt and scorn, consisting in abstinence from beef on Fridays, in eating herrings during Lent, in substituting eggs for mutton, and abjuring plumb pudding on certain days! These are the mighty means by which they profess to regenerate mankind! These are the steps by which they say we are to ascend to heaven! But while they accomplish the apotheosis of stock-fish; while they encompass salt cod with glory; while they are more vehement than Brahmins in denouncing the flesh of bulls and cows, they are slily thrusting their hands into the pockets of their dupes, and extracting, now ten and now eighty thousand pounds!

These are the meek apostles of poverty—these are the humble teachers of self-denial, and abstinence, and retirement from the world, these are the laudators of raw carrots, of sackcloth shirts, and frosty matins in winter! They are the lineal descendants of the scribes and pharisees, who opposed the truth in the first age of Christianity, who devour widows’ houses, and, in recompense, make long prayers. Their downfall, thank God! is approaching. Europe is awakening from the trance of the middle ages, and the revolutionary spirit, if it accomplish no other good, will obtain the blessings of posterity for this; that it must strike down the papal government, and along with it that filthy system of superstition by which so large a portion of Christendom has been degraded for fifteen centuries.

Meanwhile, watch carefully over your children; keep them out of the reach of priests, and of those credulous philosophers who would play into the hands of these priests. True philosophy is wisdom and the greatest wisdom of which you can obtain possession is that of keeping wide as the poles from superstition and priestcraft. Religion is the reverse of everything taught by the Romanists. Religion forms the basis of human liberty—develops and enlarges human intelligence—ennobles the human character—reveals to man his true destiny—fits him for self-government—teaches the doctrine of equality—denounces the pomps and vanities of the world—levels all distinctions, and, by inspiring the holy feeling of brotherhood, humanises and softens society. The Romish superstition is the reverse of this—encouraging despotism—upholding social inequalities—consecrating privilege—and debasing and enervating the mind by inculcating the servile idolatry of priests. You will and must rejoice that this odious superstition has received a mortal wound—that the whole Continent is awakening, and that the advent of truth will herald in the advent of liberty. Be diligent, therefore, in the diffusion of education. Teach your children, that they may avoid the snares of priestcraft, which only desires to make an impression on the mind that it may enrich itself, and riot in boundless luxury, as it did in former years.

GREVILLE BROOKE.