that Ireland ought not to be reckoned alone; yet they proclaim that the principle of a church establishment depends on the truth of its doctrines, and not on the numbers of its followers. They are ready to join with those who blame the democracy of the United States for encouraging the tyranny of the majority over the minority; yet they insist on the wickedness of assisting any persuasion except that of the majority, and bind Roman Catholics with oaths not to subvert the Protestant Established Church. They denounce a Roman Catholic who complains of contributing to the support of a church in the doctrines of which he does not believe; but propose to them to contribute to the support of the Roman Catholic Church, and they say that however expedient it may be in a temporal point of view, it is wicked to support a soul-killing religion.

"Eheu

Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam! A Roman Catholic member of parliament naturally says, "I believe my religion to be true, and your religion to be false; I cannot therefore understand why you are to make me swear that I will not subvert the Protestant establishment, while at the same time you protest against being parties to any measure for the support of the Roman Catholic clergy. You have one rule for the Protestant and another rule for the Catholic part of the legislature." It is in our opinion logically impossible to find any resting-place between the two following extremes. Either it is the duty of a member of the legislature to use all human means for the propagation of his own religious belief-to slay, burn, fine, confiscate property, banish, take children from their parents, proscribe the clergy, and prohibit the

public worship of all heterodox sects; or a member of the legislature, as such, has no cognizance of the truth of creeds; and he may in that capacity, without violence to his conscience, extend the favour of the state to the clergy of all persuasions.

The conscientious scruples of which we hear so much when a state provision for the Irish Roman Catholic clergy is in question, seem singularly capricious and uncertain, for they are never aroused by other causes which seem equally well calculated to excite them. Nothing is said of the wickedness of an Episcopalian Protestant government maintaining a Presbyterian church in Scotland, and also in Ireland; of the wickedness of a Protestant government maintaining a Roman Catholic church in Lower Canada and Malta; of the wickedness of a Christian government countenancing and protecting Mahometan and Pagan worship in Hindostan and Ceylon. On these subjects the consciences of our Protestant majority are as dull and callous as they are tender and sensitive on the question of assisting in the maintenance of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy. But the religious canon of civil government, if good for one difference of creed, is good for all; and if it is violated once, it may as well be altogether abrogated. If rulers may sacrifice their religious duties to the temporal interests of their subjects in one case, they may as well make the sacrifice consistently, and determine in all cases, when acting as civil rulers, to consider only the temporal, and not the eternal welfare of the community.

While the civil ruler ought to abstain from intermeddling in ecclesiastical matters, he ought nevertheless not to be blind to the difference of moral and tem

H

poral results produced by different forms of religious faith. When indeed any religion sanctions or encourages acts which are manifestly mischievous in this life, (as, for instance, human sacrifices,) it is not only the right, but the duty of the state to interfere; in other words, the state should prohibit all pernicious acts, whether recommended by the name of religion or not. For the same reason that the civil magistrate ought to strike those who offend in the name of God, he ought likewise to be aware of the various moral effects of the several religious persuasions in the community; and with this view it is desirable to consider what foundation there may be for the assertions often made as to the connexion of Catholicism with turbulence and laziness, and of Protestantism with tranquillity and industry. That the disposition to outrage in Ireland springs from causes wholly independent of religion has been shown in a former part of this volume; and it is evident that, in general, Catholicism cannot be said to lead to crime and disturbance, as the tranquil and contented state of the peasantry in many Catholic countries amply proves. The other part of this question, viz., the tendency of Protestantism to promote commercial activity, is well discussed in the following remarks extracted from a recent pamphlet:

"There exists, apart from all intolerant or party feelings on the question, a cause, and we believe a primary one, of the retrograde position, as compared with England and Scotland, in which we find Ireland at the present day, in the circumstance of the Roman Catholic religion being the faith of its people. Let us not be misunderstood; our business does not lie in polemics, and far be it from us to presume to decide which mode of worship may be most acceptable to the great Author of our being. We wish to speak only of the tendency

which, judging from facts that are before us, this church has to retard the secular prosperity of nations.

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Probably there is no country in which the effects of the Catholic and reformed religions, upon the temporal career of communities, may be more fairly tested than in Switzerland. Of twenty-two cantons, ten are in the majority of the population Catholic, eight Protestant, and the remaining four are mixed in nearly equal proportions of Protestants and Catholics. Those cantons in which the Catholic faith prevails are wholly pastoral in their pursuits, possessing no commerce or manufacturing industry beyond the rude products of domestic labour. Of the mixed cantons, three (Appenzell, St. Gall, and Aargau) are engaged in the manufacture of cotton; and it is a remarkable feature in the industry of these, that the Catholic portion of their population is wholly addicted to agricultural, and the Protestant section to commercial pursuits. All the eight Protestant cantons are more or less engaged in manufactures. Nor must we omit to add, which every traveller in Switzerland will have seen, that in the education of the people, and the cleanliness of the towns, the commodiousness of the inns, and the quality of the roads, the Protestant cantons possess a great superiority over their Catholic neighbours; whilst such is the difference in the value of land, that an estate in Friburg, a Catholic canton, possessing a richer soil than that of Berne, from which it is divided only by a rivulet, is worth one-third less than the same extent of property in the latter Protestant district.

"Such are the circumstances, as we find them, in comparing one portion of the Swiss territory with another. The facts are still more striking if we view them in relation to the states immediately around them.

"Switzerland being an inland district, far removed from the sea, is compelled to resort to Havre, Genoa, or Frankfort, for the supply of the raw materials of her industry, which are transported by land three, four, or five hundred miles through Catholic states, for the purpose of fabrication, and the goods are afterwards reconveyed to the same ports for exportation to America or the Levant; where, notwithstanding this heavy

expense of transit, and although Switzerland possesses no mineral advantages, they sustain a prosperous competition with their more favoured but less industrious neighbours and rivals.

"If we refer to France, we shall find that a large depôt of manufacturing industry has been formed upon the extreme inland frontier of her territory on the Rhine, where her best cottons are fabricated and printed, and conveyed to the metropolis about three hundred miles off, for sale. Alsace, the Protestant district we allude to, contains no local advantages, no iron, or coals; it is upwards of four hundred miles distant from the port through which the raw materials of its manufactures are obtained, and from whence they are conveyed entirely by land, passing through Paris, to which city the goods are destined to be again returned. Thus are these commodities transported overland more than seven hundred miles, for no assignable reason, except that they may be subjected to the labour of Protestant hands *.

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Germany gives us additional facts to the same purport. If we divide this empire into north and south, we shall find the former, containing Prussia, Saxony, &c., to be chiefly Protestants, and to comprise nearly all the manufacturing and commercial interest of the country; whilst the latter are principally Catholic, and almost wholly addicted to agriculture. Education, likewise, follows the same law here as in Switzerland; for whilst the Catholics amount to about twenty millions, and possess but five universities, the Protestants support thirteen, with only a population of fourteen millions †.

• The author has omitted to mention, that the large bodies of Protestants driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (said to have amounted to 600,000) belonged chiefly to the manufacturing classes; and they introduced different kinds of manufactures in England, Holland, Brandenburgh, and Switzerland. See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 616-620. "The people whom Louis thus violently forced out of his kingdom (says Macpherson) were generally throughout all France the best merchants, manufacturers, and artificers of that kingdom."

✦ The Prussian, as well as the Scotch system of popular education, was likewise originally the offspring of the Reformation.