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ral accounts more convenient than public avowals , so that the apparent number of cotiverts is small ; and thirdly , because the present state of things supplies political motives for the adherence of the Irish to the Church of their fathers ; a reason , one would think , for removing those disabilities which make a point of honour of religious perseverance . Not so , however ,
concludes the Historian of the Reformation , who , after assigning the disabilities of the Catholics as one cause of the impossibility of obtaining a favourable hearing for the tenets of the oppressors , gravely sets to work , in a following page , to assure his readers that the present state of excitement is by all means to be preserved , and looked at as one in which healing will arise from the very troubling of the waters .
In a subsequent article of the same number , our Critic has ( like the Quarterly Reviewer ) found out that all the abuses in Ireland , except those of the Church , can be defended no longer ; nay , that their-sacrifice may serve as a convenient propitiation to preserve the main evil from the pruning-hook . Can we desire a stronger symptom of the decayed state of the fabric when the very tools and jobs by which , and , one would once have thought , for which , the retainers of the Protestant ascendency in Ireland were held and knit together , are coolly delivered over to reprobation and extinction > But the British Critic has discovered another new light ; he has found
out that exclusion is persecution , and that persecution is an evil . He is not , it is true , prepared to give it up yet ; but it is something to procure an admission that it is not absolutely pleasant to either the sufferers or the inflictors . So , when burning was in fashion , one might almost fancy , by the language held on the subject , that it was administered as a soothing medicine , dispensed by charity to troubled , wandering spirits ; and it was something when the world had advanced so far as to have it admitted , that burning was at best a very disagreeable thing , and when punishments were adopted which better accorded with the habits and tastes of mankind .
Let us listen to the subdued tone in which our modern exclusionist now tells his tale : " Great importance appears to have been attached to what was called the 'improved tone' of the last debate upon this question in the House of Lords . And the use made of such acknowledged improvement was not a little discouraging to those who were more especially complimented for having introduced it . Tli > e Emancipationists immediatel y asserted , that Protestants were about to yield ; that fear had changed their language in 1828 , and would
succeed , in 1829 , in effecting a similar change in their votes . The fact is , that one very decided improvement wa 3 manifested in that debate . The principal speakers , on the side of the majority , admitted that Emancipation was to be desired ; that it was an object to be kept constantly in sight , and to be purchased at any price short of actual danger to the constitution . By overlooking tins part of the question , a great advantage has been given to our
opponents , and that advantage has been skilfully improved . The advocates for Emancipation had persuaded themselves and others , that the object of the Protestant champions was perpetual exclusion ; that no good conduct on the part of the Roman Catholics , no moderation , no loyalty , no securities , would avail ; that the spirit of persecution was still alive , and that Protestants did not attempt to extirpate Roman Catholics " only because they knew that it was impossible .
" The late debate has shown that these assertions are incorrect . Hereafter , it will be idle to maintain that he who opposes an Immediate concession of the Roman Catholic clainis must therefore be an admirer of t ^ e penal laws . When the Ronian Catholic complains of the difficulties under which he labours , the TProteatant may re-echo the complaint , and show that the Ro-
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CatJt&lic Question . J 07
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1829, page 107, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2569/page/35/
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