sant toil which it is his destiny to suffer, but the wear and tear of the feelings, and of the faculties which he must needs undergo, the despondency, the faintness of heart which at the approach of the slightest ailment must come upon him, the sense of insecurity by which he must perpetually be haunted, the apprehension, the consuming solicitude that must beset him, lest by the gradual decay of his faculties, or the sudden loss of health, he may be deprived of the means of earning his livelihood, and those who are inestimably dearer to him than himself, may be reduced to destitution. Look, I say, at these two men, of whom I have presented to you no exaggerated delineation, and then do you-you, who are yourselves the inheritors of large possessions--you, who are born to affluence-you, who have never known a care of to-morrow-do you who live at home at ease," and know so little of dangers and the storms of adversity-do you, I say, declare whether it be just, whether it be fair, whether it be humane, that upon both these men, and in the same proportion, the same impost should be inflicted. Shall we levy the same contribution on a man with £10,000 a-year, and upon officers in the army and navy, poor clergymen who endeavour to educate their children as the children of gentlemen should be brought up, widows with miserable jointures, tradesmen, artisans, small retailers who eke out a subsistence from the petty business to which, for sixteen or seventeen hours out of the four-and-twenty, they are devoted? Is it right to tax them as you do the great patricians of the land, and to force them to discover upon oath what perhaps it most deeply concerns their just and legitimate pride that they should conceal? What can be more fearful, more humiliating, than to make a confession of adversity-to let a set of heartless functionaries into the secrets of calamity, and to lay misfortune bare? The commissioners are empowered to examine upon oath, and to repudiate the testimony which a man gives in his own favour. To what immoral results must this practice lead? It has been suggested, that under our existing system, oaths must frequently be administered, and that there is a good deal of swearing in the Excise. True; but is it judicious to extend through every ramification of society the spirit of the Excise, and to get up a struggle between the interests and the conscience of every man who is to be charged with this baneful impost? The people of England are moral, but they have cause to pray, that into temptation they may not be led. This tax is an immoral one; and, as I have heard in this house, when the rights and franchises of my countrymen were in question, a vehement denunciation against "villanous perjury," I trust that to the Irish hustings your abhorrence of perjury will not be confined; that to its perpetration you will not supply incentives; that as you are not, I hope, Pharisees in religion, you will not prove remorseless Publicans in finance; and that you will not send forth a band of tax-gatherers through the kingdom, and arm them with the Gospel, that they may put the conscience of every honest man to the question; while to every prevaricator, every shuffler, every equivocator, every perjurer, an impunity, proportioned to his utter des titution of all principle, is scandalously secured. I am not in speaking

thus, guilty of any the least exaggeration of the evils of the income tax, for I find a warrant for every word that I have uttered in the reiterated statements contained in hundreds of petitions which in 1816 were piled upon the table of the House of Commons, and of these statements no contradiction was ever yet attempted. The evils of the income tax are so monstrous, that it is almost impossible to heighten them-they set hyperbole at defiance. But, at all events, of no exaggeration could any man in inveighing against the evils of the income tax be possibly guilty comparable to the exaggeration into which the right honourable baronet allowed himself to be betrayed, when he indulged in a description so eloquent, but so highly coloured, of the disasters of his country.-Remarkable as his speech was for a surplus of ability, it was not more conspicuous for talent than for the very exaggerated terms in which he permitted himself to describe the difficulties and dangers of England. If, Sir, at the close of that speech, some one who had lived in sequestration from the world, and for the last five or six years had not heard of the events which have passed within that period, had chanced to have entered this house, he would, I think, have been tempted to exclaim – appalled by the right honourable baronet's magnificent peroration"Good God, what has happened! Is England brought to the verge of ruin? Has one greater than Napoleon-of whom Napoleon was but the precursor-appeared? Is the world in arms against England?— Have her fleets been sunk in the ocean, and, with Wellington at their nead, have those legions that were once deemed invincible, at last giver way?" What would be his surprise at hearing that the repose of Europe was undisturbed, that her Majesty had declared that she continued to receive assurances of the most friendly dispositions from all princes and states, that all the great powers had signed a common treaty for the preservation of the dominions of the Porte, and for the maintenance of peace; and that not very long ago another right honourable barouet, the Secretary for the Home Department, had taken upon himself to state, as evidence of the influence of a Conservative government in promoting peace, that the French minister had agreed to reduce the navy of France, and that wherever our eyes were turned prospects of cloudless felicity were disclosed. What! when a purpose is to be gained, shall one minister announce that, under Tory auspices, the peace of Europe is secure; and when money is to be got, is another minister, or rather the master of the ministers, to talk of the cannon, whose sound has not yet reached our ears, and to strike terror into the heart of the country with vague and appalling intimations! Contrast the speech of the right honourable baronet on the income tax with that which he delivered on the corn laws. The distresses of the country were then, forsooth, transitory and evanescent-they arose from bad narvests, and the temporary difficulties of America; and in the resources of England, in her energy and elastic power, his confidence was unabated. I concur with him, and thank God that we are not come to such a pass, that the right honourable baronet is justified in insisting upon the adoption of an impost, which hitherto (except in the midst of the most

disastrous warfare) no minister of England, except himself, has had the boldness to propose-which is fraught with such multiarious mischiefs. that the instant her great adversary had been subdued, England declared that she would no longer bear it—which, in its working, is admitted by its advocates to be most cruelly unjust-which establishes an inquisition almost as abominable as a religious one-which multiplies oaths-makes as familiar as mere household words that awful attestation by which, as we speak the truth, we call on God to help us—converts the Gospel into a mere implement of finance-prostitutes to purposes the most vilifying that sacred book, which it is your boast that beyond all Christian nations you hold in reverence-which awards a premium to falsehood, and inflicts a penalty on truth-from which honesty cannot escape, and by which fraud cannot be caught, and which, of all the imposts which it is possible for a perverse ingenuity to devise, is the most prejudicial to the interests, offensive to the feelings, abhorrent to the religious sentiments, and revolting to the moral sense of the English people.

FACTORY BILL.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE EDUCATION CLAUSE

MAY 18, 1843.

THE Roman Catholic population of this country is already so considerable, the Irish immigration into the factory districts is so great, that being a member of that Church, to which there exists in this country a tendency to revert, I think myself not unauthorised to take part in a discussion, with which the merits of the Factory Bill are so intimately connected. I frankly acknowledge, that considering the difficulties with which the government have to contend in reference to all questions relating to the Roman Catholic religion, a concession by no means unimportant has been made to us. It is not rendered imperative on Catholic children to read and to learn the authorised version of the Scriptures, as we entertain the opinion that the sacred writings ought not to be used as a school book, that the rudiments of literature ought not to be taught through its intervention, that an irreverent familiarity with holy writ may lead to its degradation; that the perusal of the Bible, unaccompanied with that interpretation which our Church has from the earliest foundation of Christianity, as we conceive, put upon passages which are either obscure or doubtful, is not judicious, and that the unqualified exercise of the right of private judgment must conduce to error; as we hold besides, that facts are recorded in the history of an exceedingly carnal people, which it can answer no useful purpose to bring within the cognizance of childhood, and from which modesty should instinctively turn away-these, I say, being our sentiments upon a question of much controversy, though differing from our view, you have been sufficiently Just to make allowance for what you consider to be our mistake in this regard; and notwithstanding that in this country there prevails a very opposite opinion, although it has been made a point of Protestant honour, that without distinction of age, of sex, or circumstance, the sacred writings shall every where, and by every body, be indiscriminately perused, you have taken our conscientious difficulties into account, and have not insisted that against the will of Roman Catholic parents, their children shall be subjected to the compulsory acquisition of elementary knowledge through the medium of holy writ. That concession having been made, I own, that bearing in mind the incalculable importance of applying a remedy to the evils which result from the ignorance which is submitted to prevail in the factory districts, I felt that the measure proposed by her Majesty's government ought not to be resisted on any light and trivial ground, that it ought not to be made the subject of a mere political or sectarian struggle, and that a perverse ingenuity in devising arguments against it ought not to be indulged. I asked myself whether there was any real practical evil to be apprehended by those who are not in communion with the establishment, and I was anxious, if possible, that my own judgment should yield an acquiescence to the reasons which were urged in favour of the scheme propounded in its ameliorated form,

by the right honourable baronet. It is matter to me of unaffected regret, that after giving the plan the best consideration in my power, Γ have not been able to arrive at a conclusion favourable to the measure; for while I am aware that the professors of my religion are exempt from the necessity of receiving instruction, in the sacred writings, in a form to which they object, I feel, in the first place, that an unnecessary and therefore illegitimate predominance was given to the church, and that it was my duty to look to the government plan, not merely with reference to the manner in which my own individual religion was affected, but to the general usefulness of the scheme, to its compatibility with the principles of religious liberty, the maintenance of which is as important as the diffusion of knowledge. Not only is the board constituted in such a way as to deprive Dissenters, although a majority of the rate-payers, of their just share of influence, but the master of the school, by whom the Scriptures are to be taught, must be, ex necessitate, a member of the church. Now, if it be right that Catholics should be exempted from the necessity of reading the Scriptures at all, it is just that Dissenters should be exempted from instruction through the medium of an episcopal delegate, in the Scriptures, of which the exposition is confided to him. The right honourable baronet took a distinction between expounding and interpreting, but it is of a character so subtile that no ordinary casuist could have struck upon it. Not only is an ascendancy given to the church against which a not unnatural pride on the part of Dissenters revolts, but opportunities of proselytism, the more dangerous because the better disguised, are afforded. The more accomplished, the more skilful, the more zealous the churchman is, the more likely he will be to avail himself of the facilities with which he will be obviously supplied. Would the right honourable baronet permit an aroit, persuasive Catholic to teach the Scriptures to a child in whose orthodoxy he felt a concern? I very much doubt it. He should, therefore, excuse Dissenters for objecting to the influence with which men will be endowed in public schools, whose dogmas are almost as much at variance with those of Dissenters as the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Putting all considerations of the progress which has been made by the dogmas of men who, to the honour of Dr. Pusey, are designated by a reference to his name, there is so signal a difference between the opinions of Dissenters and those of genuine churchmen upon the doctrine of succession, and the power of the priesthood founded on the Scriptures, that if there were nothing else, it would afford a reason for objection. The Bishop of Exeter, who is not, I believe, as yet attached to the Oxonian school of Theology, has, in his charge, claimed prerogatives and powers as great as any to which the most absolute prelate of the ancient church could put in his title. If even to the assumptions of that conspicuous Pontiff a Dissenter might reasonably object, the spread of Puseyism must awaken an a fortiori fear. It is notorious that although the external aspect of the church remains superficiali the same, it has undergone a great internal change. Men of distinguished talent, of exemplary lives, of great learning and piety. havo from motives the best and purest, made an eloquent announcement of