ledged head, these are our obligations on the score of Magna Charta!

Where, Sir, was your memory when you claimed our gratitude to the papal church for this great charter of our liberties;..or where did you suppose was mine? Had you forgotten that another Pope, in the plenitude of his power, absolved another King of England from his solemn engagement to observe that charter, pronouncing that, if the King should have sworn to observe it, he had sworn, previously, to maintain the rights of the crown; to those rights the charter was derogatory, and to that prior oath regard must first be paid; and, therefore, Pope Clement V. released Edward I. from all promises prejudicial to his ancient* prerogative. I have usually to thank you, Sir, when you send me to my books. These, I repeat it, are our obligations to the Romish religion on the score of Magna Charta! And, it is worth noting by the way, you have here the opinion of the Pope ex cathedra that the King's Coronation oath is paramount to all other engagements and considerations.

Voltaire, you say, has observed that during

*Collier, i. 499. Literæ, &c. t. ii. p. 379.

The authority referred to is Conventiones

the dark ages, there was less of barbarism and ignorance in the papal dominions than in any other European state. Less ignorance I should think, and less rudeness, but certainly not less ferocity. The papal states must have been much in the same condition as the other parts of Italy. Amid all the spoliations and sackages which Rome had endured, it still remained a great and splendid city; and as the whole. population had never been transplanted or destroyed by one of those dreadful acts of remorseless hostility, which were frequent in the ancient world, much of the manners and something of the knowledge also of better times was preserved there through ages of continuous degradation. ..I do not seek to detract from the utility of the papacy in those ages: far from it. The more beneficial the papal power can be shown to have been, the better would its history accord with my persuasion that all things, upon the great scale, have tended to the general good, and the developement of the great scheme of Providence: enough may be perceived to indicate this, dimly as we see, and limited as is our sight. But surely, Sir, the Popes were at one time as much the enemies of learning, as they were the patrons at another; and when we call to nind, what works of the ancients

have been obliterated by the monkish transcribers, and what the writings are which were transferred to the vellum in their stead, something must be set off against the debt which literature owes to the monastic institutions.

You speak of what the Popes did to preserve peace among princes, and to alleviate the general calamity of the times.* Was this the disposition, Sir, which Hildebrand and his successors manifested? Were their efforts directed to save men's lives, or to destroy? Did they bring peace into the world, or a sword? I think, Sir, if you call to mind the age of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and the wars of persecution from the confederation against the Albigenses to the last convulsions of their desperate and maddened descendants in the Cevennes, you will find that the Romish Church has instigated more wars than it ever succeeded in terminating, or even attempted to terminate. Those wars must be added to the account, which the Popes promoted merely from political views, to enlarge their territory, to aggrandize their nephews, or to form an establishment for their bastards, or to maintain their own disputed election to the chair of St. Peter. During the

* Page 97.

long schism the rival pontiffs used all their endeavours to keep their respective adherents at war, lest their own well-deserved deposition should be agreed on as one of the conditions of peace.

It is of the dark ages that you speak, and therefore, I do not pursue the argument into later times. But how is it, Sir, that you have ventured even to hint at the personal characters of the Popes in those ages? "That a few in the long list," you say, "were stained by vice, is not denied; or that others exhibited the workings of those passions which too often accompany the possession of power. But can it be said (you continue) that even in the times of the greatest darkness, the Roman pontiffs were not generally distinguished by superior virtue and superior acquirements? Collectively taken, let them be compared with their contemporary princes in every age, and most assuredly they will not suffer in the comparison."... Bad, Sir, as some of the contemporary princes were, the worst of them would be scandalized by such a comparison. The Popes, during some centuries, are for their personal vices only to be paralleled by the Roman Emperors; and the excess and

*Lenfant, Con. de Pise, i. 59.

† Page 96.

extravagance of their depravity is to be explained only by the same cause.

Sir, I have no pleasure in contemplating the dark side of human nature. With With your St. Norbert* I feel and know that it is good to believe in goodness. Even if my religion did not teach me on every occasion to form the most charitable judgement, inclination and habit would lead me always to look at things in their best and cheerfullest aspect; and I thank God, accounting it among my many blessings, that this youthful temper has continued with me into the yellow leaf. But it is sometimes necessary to read lectures upon the morbid anatomy of the human heart; and part of the infamy deservedly awarded to public and enormous offenders is, that they should thus be delivered over for moral dissection.

Some few years ago a certain party in this country used to insist that a government, in its transactions with other nations, should act without regard to the personal character

Tanto procul dubio quisque fidelis piusque animus, ad omnipotentis Dei amorem et gratiam promerendam, propius accedit, quanto bonum, quod de alio audit, facilius credit, idque sibi ab eodem Domino Deo conferri optat et sperat. Qui non credit, non imitatur; qui vero non imitatur, nunquam perveniet. Vita S. Norberti, Acta SS.