ANTAGONISM OF POPERY AND LIBERTY.

To the People of England:

            FELLOW COUNTRYMEN, —Experience, whose lessons are but slowly learned by mankind, may be said to have at length demonstrated one thing—the fact, namely, that a sincere belief in the doctrines of Catholicism is incompatible with civil liberty. It ought, indeed, to have been evident from the commencement, that servile submission to a priest is incapable of being reconciled to manly self respect. Nothing degrades the mind like superstition, and of all superstitions the worst is that which gives one man an unlimited and unquestioned sway over another—which supposes the keys of Heaven to be in the hands of the church—that confers on a miserable ecclesiastic often imbecile, helpless, and ignorant, the power to make or mar the happiness of Christendom.

            Of this you must have become convinced by the numerous debates which have taken place in parliament on the arrogant pretensions of the Pope. From beginning to end the papistical members have proved their incapacity to think for themselves by degenerating on all occasions into the unreasoning instruments of the Romish hierarchy. Their behaviour can scarcely fail to prove injurious to the cause of religious toleration. It may, with much share of reason, be urged against the admission of any fresh sectarians into the legislature that the Papists have so grossly abused their privileges, formerly conceded to them by the nation’s sense of justice, that it must always be deemed hazardous to repeat the experiment and admit others who may prove equally unworthy. This sort of reasoning, it is true, will not satisfy the enlarged and liberal mind, but it will probably, in many instances, warp the decision of those who might otherwise have acted liberally, and thus, to some extent at least, prejudice the cause of Christian charity.

            During the present week you have witnessed in the conduct of the Irish members an illustration of how little genuine wisdom can ever be expected from the believers in an infallible church. The Irish Papists have acted like galley slaves, inspired by the grossest and most vindictive feelings against their political benefactors. But for the Liberals now in office they might still have been agitating in their bogs for the recognition of their right to sit in parliament; for nothing whatever is to be inferred from the threats and menaces they employed during their exclusion, since these have been their habitual weapons whenever they thought they might use them to their own personal advantage.

            I am by no means a thick-and thin advocate of the ministerial measure, which I think in many parts defective. But the Popish members can scarcely pretend to quarrel with its inefficiency, or to complain that it is not sufficiently stringent. They denominate it a bill of pains and penalties, whereas, in truth, it is little more than a simple declaration of the state of the law as it is, and if passed tomorrow, could produce no injurious effect on the real interests of the Catholics in Great Britain. Meanwhile, one important good must arise from these prolonged discussions in the House of Commons. They will inevitably force Protestants in general to examine the political bearing of popery, and to inquire what would be the probable condition of Christendom should it ever again obtain the ascendancy. Civil liberty, you may be sure, there would be none, and as to religious liberty, the bare idea that such a thing could exist has never presented itself to the mind of a genuine Papist. Reason he condemns as heretical. According to his views man’s only duty is to succumb to the priest—to accept what he teaches for truth—to consider his decision as binding on the conscience—to abjure all knowledge, instruction, or enlightenment not proceeding from the church, and, to consider the laity in all things as bound to receive direction from the priesthood.

            Not long ago there were here among us several journalists who, surveying the events of the Continent, thought the revolutionary torrent would be cheaply stayed at the expense of a complete reaction in favour of popery and despotism. Their convictions have since undergone a very material change. Instead of repeating their cuckoo song about the dangers to be apprehended from democratic institutions, they now acquiesce in the usefulness of democracy, and earnestly deprecate the return of several continental governments to the maxims which prevailed with them before the great rising of 1848. It is felt that popery alone can thoroughly counteract the influence of civilisation, because where knowledge is inimical to its sway popery prohibits or corrupts it, and, indeed, has just decided in plain terms that education is incompatible with the pretensions of the church of Rome. By this, in the minds of all thinking persons, it must stand condemned, because if the mental discipline of the believer be compatible with the continuance of belief it may be regarded as an unanswerable argument against the validity of its foundation. If your faith be inconsistent with knowledge it must be based on fable and nourished by credulity. Knowledge of all sciences of history, politics, and morals, is perfectly reconcilable with truth, and may serve as a proper basis for that faith which believes nothing contradicted by sound reason, though it may rise far above it, and embrace conclusions to which logic could not conduct it. Religion, for this reason, is never adverse to the enlightening and development of the mind, which only becomes the more worthy of containing its truth in proportion to its vastness and elevation. The case is altogether different with superstition, which feeds on ignorance, on the weakness and timidity of the mind, on fears, errors, and intellectual obliquity.

            I am happy to perceive that the cause of Austria and Spain, in both which countries popery reigns triumphant, has been abandoned by some of the most strenuous partisans of absolutism. It is at length recognised that in those benighted countries, popery forms the basis of despotism, in favour of which there could be no reaction, were it not that the priest is there able to degrade the mind of the masses to the level of implicit faith and passive obedience.

            Nothing can be further from my mind than to become the advocate of persecution. Yet there is one form in which I think it is allowable—namely, to persecute error with knowledge, falsehood with truth, superstition with religion. Batter down the walls of popery, by pouring instruction into those minds on whose errors and weakness they rest. Give the people knowledge, train their minds to reason, accustom them to self-examination, and popery must ultimately succumb before the spirit which you will thus create. At present, you must be profoundly humiliated at the spectacle for some time presented to us by the House of Commons, where the Scullys, and the Reynoldses, the Grattans and the Moores, the Keoghs, the O’Connels, and the Surreys, retail, at the bidding of the priests and cardinals, the meanest verbiage and sophistry, degraded still further by the constant admixture of vindictive fiction and malignity. You should really concentrate your contempt, and pour it undiluted on the heads of these priestly emissaries. They legislators indeed! Why, they have not emancipated themselves from swaddling clothes, but move still in a sort of mental go-cart, pushed hither and thither by the ancient harlot of Babylon. If man can occupy in this universe one position more humiliating than all the rest, it is that of being a Papist, and yielding up the direction of his conscience to a mumbling old necromancer on the banks of the Tiber. Imagine men educated in the science of civilisation, and enabled to study in the originals the legacies bequeathed to us by the philosophers of Greece and Rome, deserting Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, to become the followers of beggarly priests, like Pio Nono and Cardinal Wiseman! But this mischief entirely traces its origin to the enfeebling of the mind by the study of what we call theology, a monstrous compound made up of assumptions, fallacies, and traditions. In its real nature no branch of study can be nobler, but when perverted, as it generally is by ecclesiastics, it degenerates into a mere instrument for the diffusion of mental darkness.

            I pity the government and the great Protestant section of the House of Commons that they should be condemned night after night, to be stunned by the vapid commonplaces of the shameless agents of the Vatican. Shade of Gulliver, didst thou ever witness anything more ludicrous in the councils or universities of Laputa! Did the doctors in that babbling commonwealth ever approach in illogical monstrosity Mr. Keogh or the member for Dublin? Did a priest out of doors move by wires fifty-nine puppets in the legislature? Was the first minister of the state compelled to postpone all the serious business of the country till the pretensions of some foreign impostor, claiming irresistible authority over the minds of all men, had been disposed of to the satisfaction of his slaves? For myself, I had rather be a “pagan suckled in a creid cutworn” than bow the knee to the contemptible charlatan whom Reynolds and Sculley imagine to be invested with infallibility.

            And, then, there is poor Lord Arundel and Surrey, who comes rolling in at the heels of these hollow Irish declaimers, and babbles he knows what to gratify his spiritual director! There is clearly no security in any stage of civilisation against the folly and weakness of the human race, unless where men are possessed by a strong and enlightened passion for liberty. It will then be sufficient for them to know that popery is incompatible with freedom, for they will reject it on that simple discovery. You cannot be politically independent if you are mentally a slave—cannot assert your rights against presumptuous and dishonest men, if you imagine them to be backed by spiritual agencies, of which you have been, and ought to stand in awe. In all ages the imposture of the church has been still more audacious than the impostures of absolutism. This power only pretends to be based on divine right, but the other usurps the place of divinity, denominates itself infallible, and on that account demands the unconditional surrender of reason. Better by far return to the condition of the primitive ages, and rid yourselves entirely of sacerdotal caste, than thus to subject your understanding to the guidance of a small body of impostors, who subsist in pomp and splendour through your ignorance and weakness.

            Protestantism, at all events, whatever imperfections it may have, allies itself readily with liberty, which is, indeed, necessary to its unchecked development. But popery is a toothless tradition, which has come down from blear eyed Eld to press like an incubus on the weak minds and timid consciences of old women, whether in breeches or petticoats. If you wish to see despotism established over all Christendom you may easily gratify your desires by adopting the impostures of popery—by silencing the voice of your understanding—by forfeiting the right of private judgment, and investing a few beggarly priests and ragged monks with the privilege of judging and deciding for you. Throughout Europe they are now eagerly on the watch, imagining that the time is come when they may once more enjoy universal dominion. A few conversions of puerile clergymen, whose minds are overlaid by the weight of copes and surplices, have betrayed them into this frantic opinion. But the process of conversion will cease when it is found that to adopt the doctrines of popery is to become a slave, and impress the mark of the beast upon one’s forehead.

GREVILLE BROOKE.