Krishna, in his precepts, that a man's own religion, though contrary to, is better than, the faith of another, let it be ever so well followed. "It is good to die in one's own faith, for another's faith beareth fear."-Geeta, pp. 48, 49. On this we had proposed to have avoided offering even a single observation, but it is impossible to refrain from inquiring, why, supposing that the time of Krishna must necessarily be fictitious, his person and history may not also have been a mere invention? Why prove that he must have existed in India contemporaneously with the Christians, who must, consequently, have been aware of the imposition, and against whom it could not, therefore, have been used in argument? And why should the invention of the antidote be delayed for upwards of six hundred years after the introduction of Christianity, the growth of which it is assumed to have been so well calculated to check? To reply to these questions might, however, lead to a discussion on points which it is not our wish to provoke, and we therefore refrain from entering into their consideration. TO INIS FROM THE SPANISH.' I. WHAT shall I compare thee to? II. What shall I compare thee to? I grant thou hast stolen-heaven knows how!— To diadem thy beauteous brow: But thou art not of them-for they Shine on our earth (sometimes) a day! III. What shall I compare thee to ? I have it! yes! alas how true! Thou art that radiance on the sea That beautiful-how murderously— Smiles and shines, while snares and death 1 From Friendship's Offering.' LETTER FROM A GERMAN PROTESTANT TO THE BISHOP OF CHESTER ON HIS LATE SPEECH IN THE HOUSE of lords.' Take heed, for heaven's sake take heed, lest at once SHAKSPEARE'S HENRY VIII. STRANGERS to the conflict which religion has excited in so enlightened a country as Great Britain, we would not have addressed the following humble remonstrance to your Lordship, had it not been evident that the result of the discussion on the Catholic claims, so far from being a subject of grief to the Catholics of Ireland, is rather, with the exception of a short interval of irritation, a subject of triumph and of joy, if the Catholics are really the bigots which you, and those on the same side of the question, maintain them to be. Such, at least, is the impression which the discussion in the House of Lords has produced on the small number of fanatics of that religion amongst us; and if it be true that doctrines, repugnant to humanity and good sense, may injure a religious profession in public opinion, as much as the most horrid crimes, our grief will not allow us to conceal that, in like manner as St. Bartholomew's day is constantly held up to Catholics, the fanatical speeches in favour of intolerance, pronounced by many of our English brethren, may now be held up to us. We cannot seriously believe, we dare not even suspect, that it was the real intention of your Lordship to vilify the Protestant religion, to exhibit it in the most odious aspect, to dishonour it, by pretending that from the moment it was deprived of its riches, and of the monopoly granted to it by Government, that moment it would totter to its base. No, my Lord, such was not your intention; and we doubt not, when you have dispassionately reflected on the ill consequences of your language to your religious brethren; when you consider that, inadvertently, no doubt, you have put into the hands of the Catholics the same arms with which we so victoriously fought them in the sixteenth century; and that your speech is, word for word, the same with the doctrines so successfully refuted by us at the commencement of the Reformation: if you should deign to reflect on the incalculable evil of such doctrines professed by the Apostles of our belief, on the disgust and horror they inspired, and on the false light they throw on the Reformation, we doubt not that your Lordship, setting an example of apostolic humility, will hasten to cure, by a solemn recantation, the deep wounds inflicted 1 Speech on the Catholic Question, delivered on the 17th of May, 1825. by your language on our cause. We have, in vain, endeavoured to distinguish in your speech between the statesman and the divine. With what joy would we not have seized on every opportunity of attributing to the troubled foresight of the one, what was directly opposed to the evangelical charity of the other! But all our efforts to apply this corrective to the disastrous night of the 17th of May have been in vain; and we dare not attempt, before the tribunal of present and future times, a task which is evidently beyond human power. A few considerations will convince you of the truth of this. That part of Europe, which my Lord Colchester confusedly calls the Continent, consists of various countries,-of France, Austria, Prussia, the Low Countries, Switzerland, &c., each having a different form of government. This distinction, which is no great novelty to us, becomes, however, of great importance, when my Lord Colchester speaks in such language as the following::-"You have been asked," said his Lordship, "to look at the Continent, but the summary manner which is there employed in instituting a process against any one, renders this comparison inapplicable to England. In countries where the sovereigns are despotic, any danger which presents itself is easily repressed, and the supreme power thus defeats the projects of disloyalty." 2 Amidst so many strange theories, religious and political, collected that night, this assertion might probably have passed unnoticed; it embraces two distinct points: a fact, and a deduction from that fact. It belongs to posterity and his fellow-citizens to judge a Peer of England, whose opinion, in other words, amounts to this :-" You are placed, my Lords, in the alternative of choosing either liberty without toleration, or toleration without liberty." It is not for us to inquire which horn of so odious a dilemma will please the enlightened portion of the British public; but it is our part to maintain that the base of this gothic edifice is entirely imaginary; that it is very erroneous to say, that in all the countries of the Continent where the two religions are equally tolerated, a process may be instituted against any one in a summary manner; and that it is still more erroneous to confound all the governments of the Continent under one form, as there is not the smallest pretext for terming the governments of the Low Countries and Switzerland despotic. If his Lordship would previously devote himself to the study of a few foreign languages, to enable him to judge more correctly respecting systems of government and countries, we would invite him to make a tour on the said Continent; but if he will not take this trouble, we should be very loath to give such advice, lest, on his return to England, he bring back notions similar to those he collected in Italy, and afterwards unfolded in one of those learned speeches which astonished all Europe. We should also fear lest the same weakness of memory, Vide Courier,' May 18. that attributed to Bossuet a funeral oration which is the glory of Massillon, two men completely opposed in genius and character, would injure that clearness which is so necessary in the classification of facts, and that, on his return home, his Lordship would confound all that passed in different countries, under the general name of "the Continent." Having, therefore, no hope of converting my Lord Colchester to the belief, that there are different forms of government on the Continent, we shall here quietly content ourselves with certifying that, as respects ourselves, at least, the fact is well known. We shall go yet further, and assure your Lordship that it is equally certain England is not the only country which has had to maintain religious struggles, both furious and bloody, in less enlightened ages; and that it is only in the speeches of the friends of intolerance in England, that, to our surprise, we have found such a distinction employed as an argument, having till now been constantly taught that no country has been agitated by religious wars so long and fatal as those of Germany. When all submitted, almost without a struggle, to Henry VIII., Charles V. was fighting and dragging captive the princes of the Reformation; we had imagined, in short, that the thirty years' war was, in its kind, a period of unparalleled calamity. These historical truths being once established, it is evident that if arguments taken from the past should influence a statesman in a more enlightened age, and justify the intolerant and jealous rigour of his opinions, it is rather in Germany and the Low Countries than in England, that sentiments so repugnant to humanity may be accounted for by that political necessity which Milton, in the mouth of his Satan, calls the Tyrant's plea. In fact, my Lord, the very origin of the greatness of the houses of Hohenzollern and Orange is owing to the Reformation, as the preponderance of the imperial court arose from the devotedness of the Catholics. Yet, if a minister or statesman, in either of these countries, should emit an intolerant sentiment, or call the Catholics papists, or the Reformed heretics, he would not only be excluded from the counsels of his sovereign, but overwhelmed with contempt by all enlightened persons of his creed; and if by chance there existed so mad a law as to render it indispensable on every public servant to declare, in his oath of fidelity, his belief in the Eucharist, the worship of saints and images, or in similar dogmas,-and any statesman should seriously wish to re-establish or defend such relics of barbarism, he would be thought mad, and looked upon in the same light as a physician who refused to bleed his patient, lest the mass of his blood should be for ever after diminished, because formerly such was believed to be the According to Lord Colchester, it was Bossuet who pronounced the fu neral oration of Louis XIV. Vide The Courier, May 18. But there is no end to his blunders; vide his Opinions on Italy.' Oriental Herald, Vol. 8. F effect of bleeding. There is not a village in Germany, where such a man would be allowed to exercise his profession. From these considerations, we feel it impossible, to our great regret, to ascribe to the statesman a language which we are very unwilling to attribute to the minister of the altar. But such a deluge of church petitions,-those deans, archdeacons, and canons, who, unsupported, came up to the House of Peers, as suppliants in favour of intolerance, all this, unfortunately, leaves no doubt on our minds as to the motive of such scandals to Christianity. We know, my Lord, what the priests did in Egypt and in antient Rome; we know that, misled by the same intolerance, they have been seen lighting the fires of the Inquisition; we, unfortunately, know also the history of Calvin, and of Henry VIII. in his religious capacity; but we had hoped the time was past when similar outrages could be perpetrated in the face of civilized Europe; we had hoped, my Lord, that the mere force of the ridicule to which a man is exposed who shows himself so zealous for the good of his country in a cause which is evidently that of his purse-the indelible ridicule attached to those pretended pleaders for the public good, vulgarly termed pro domo sud, would have had the effect of stopping the torrent. It is notorious, that if French or Austrian clergymen had ventured in the present times, to present petitions to their governments, in order to deprive dissenters of the political privileges belonging to them as citizens, the voice of public indignation would have done justice to the impudence of the demand. It is with feelings of profound regret, therefore, that we have witnessed the Reformation commit a scandal which Catholicism would no longer venture to perpetuate; and we beseech your Lordship to reflect on the consequences of so great a misfortune, persuaded that, whatever may be your attachment to your country, it cannot, as a clergyman, render you indifferent to the peril and the defamation to which you have voluntarily exposed, by your language, that Reformation of which you ought to be one of the firmest supports. In examining your fatal speech, we shall pass lightly over the diction and the arrangement. Doubtless, we regret that your Lordship's memory should have been loaded with poetical extracts so ill selected; and our regret is the greater as, in your illustrious country, its great orators have particularly distinguished themselves by the elegance of their quotations; witness the speeches of its Burkes, its Pitts, its Foxes, its Sheridans, and its Cannings, which are not only adorned with recollections of the classic authors, but also with their finest passages. In examining the quotations scattered in your Lordship's speech, we think it would not have been surprising if your learned colleagues, impatient at such a selection, had exclaimed, in the words of Queen Catharine O, good my Lord, no Latin! |