TO account for the marvellous growth of Roman Catholic influence in this country it is necessary to go back to the Emancipation Act of 1829. By that Act all disabilities against those of the Roman Catholic faith in regard to holding office were removed. Every office in the State was thrown open to Papists except the Throne and the Woolsack. Protestants of such calibre as Dr. Andrew Thomson of St. George’s, Edinburgh, and Dr. Chalmers, and Dr. Macdonald, Ferintosh, were in favour of emancipation. These lights of the Church of Scotland are not to be disparaged for, in piety and learning, they are worthy of the greatest admiration especially Dr. Andrew Thomson for his eloquence and zeal. One work of his on Foreign Missions is one of the most moving one could read on that subject, describing the trophies of divine grace among the cannibals in the South Sea Islands. But the subsequent course of events proved that these two Doctors were mistaken, and vindicated the fears of Rev. John Kennedy, Redcastle, that the passing of that Act might lead to Britain’s downfall. Exactly one century after, we have a naval salute to the Man of Sin in the King’s Regulations for 1929. This was done secretly without consulting the law officers of the Crown or Parliament. It was not disclosed till five years later it appeared in the Roman Catholic Universe, to the chagrin of the Nation and Empire. The Emancipation Bill was introduced as a measure to conciliate the Irish. It was urged that they would love our Constitution if they got their liberty restored. To-day they have divorced part of Ireland from the British Commonwealth of Nations, and yet they are not satisfied, nor do they love our Constitution. The activities of the I.R.A. are sufficient evidence of this. That far-seeing nobleman, Lord High Chancellor Eldon, said, in reference to the Bill of Emancipation, “Rather than consent to an alteration of laws which I hold to be fundamental, and which I think to be essential to the support of the Throne, the safety of the Church, the good of the Aristocracy, and the preservation of the Constitution of the country, in King, Lords, and Commons, I would rather hear that I was not to exist tomorrow morning, than awake to the reflection, that I had consented to an act which had stamped me as a violator of my solemn oath, a traitor to my Church, and a traitor to the Constitution.” (cheers.)—Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, xxi. 639-640. April 10, 1829.
Facts of the present day bear witness to the truth of the Lord Chancellor’s words, with the Protestant Constitution violated in so many ways, by communion with the Papal See, forbidden by the Act of Settlement, by diplomatic representation, by visits of royal persons and statesmen to the Vatican, by the naval salute to the Pope and his Nuncios, by the change of the Coronation Oath, by the appointment of an apostolic delegate, by the endowment of Popish schools.
The great College at Maynooth was endowed to pacify Ireland, and the Irish Protestant Church was disestablished and disendowed. Now our garrisons have been removed from Southern Ireland, and the same is demanded for the North. It is to be hoped this will not be granted, as it will mean the enslavement of the Protestant Counties. It was a scandal that the British Government ever endowed Maynooth College, for the education of priests, as the following lines show:—
“Whate’er is false, deceitful, foul;
Whate’er antagonist to truth;
The bigot’s heart, the tyrant’s scowl,—
Thou art their native soil, Maynooth.
And shall we still the nuisance nurse?
Still feed a death diffusing pest?
No! rise, exterminate the curse;
The gangrene starve on Ireland’s breast.”
Yet this College was endowed with £369,040 of British money for the teaching of Liguori’s and Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theology.
The appointment of an R.C. Master of the Rolls is also a retrograde step, as this official is in charge of valuable State documents, such as those recently recovered from the Vatican archives, which prove the guilt of plotters against the life of Queen Elizabeth. While we hold no brief for Elizabeth, she was certainly hated by “His Holiness” in Rome and by Philip II. of Spain, as witnessed by the infamous Armada. Now that we, the bulwark of world Protestantism, are in danger once again of invasion, it is well to record the deliverance vouchsafed by the Most High on that occasion. There were 8,000 sailors in 150 huge ships conveying an army of 20,000 soldiers, and 2,000 of the first gentlemen of Spain. An army of 35,000 at Dunkirk was ready to join them. England had only 30 ships of a smaller size. The admiral and vice-admiral died before anchor was weighed. The enemy, greatly exhausted by a storm, were attacked with success by the English fleet.
Another great storm overtook them on the way home and shattered them to pieces, multitudes being drowned. Thumb-screws for the torture of Protestants were on board, and were on view in the Tower of London long after. The Spanish Inquisition was notorious. Its officers were provided by the Dominican order of monks. The monks at Fort Augustus are of the Benedictine Order, doubtless not any better than the Dominicans. The “Holy Office” of the Inquisition was used to stamp out heresy, another word for Protestantism. It did its work fairly thoroughly in Spain by means of pulleys and racks, pendulums, and auto da fés or bonfires. In 1810 it was abolished in Goa, a Portuguese possession in India, by the interference of Britain. In 1820 the Cortes abolished it in Spain. In 1821 it was abolished in Lisbon. It existed as late as 1854 in the Papal dominions at Rome. An inscription in English was found in one of the cellars, “Can this be the Christian Faith?” evidently the work of an English prisoner.
Before the Emancipation Act Papists took the position of suppliants begging for favour. They do not beg nowadays; they demand concessions and threaten force as in the case of N. Ireland at present, for which innocent people are slaughtered by bombs in the great cities of England. The Sovereign used to have priority in toasts at public dinners. Now the Pope has it as being superior to His Majesty the King. To show the arrogance of Papal pretensions in regard to temporal rulers let us remember that the Pope’s legate kicked the Crown of England from the head of King John, who on his knees with his hands between those of the legate, declared that he gave to “His Holiness” and his successors the kingdom of England, and that he would pay 700 marks for England, and 300 for the kingdom of Ireland yearly,” Hume’s History, Vol. i. p. 71. The disloyalty of Romanists is proved by history. In 1605 a diabolical plot was formed under Garnet the Jesuit to blow up the King, Lords, and Commons. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were placed beneath the House of Lords.
The Emancipation Act should be repealed so that subjects of the Papal See could not sit in Parliament. The grants of public money to Popish schools should be withdrawn. Jesuits should be expelled in self defence as they were expelled from other countries on account of their intrigues. Nunneries ought to be abolished. Prisons, workhouses and asylums can be inspected, but not convents. More than public inspection is needed to clear the plague from these islands. Mr. Drummond on Mar. 30, 1851, in a speech in the House of Commons on the “Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” denounced the conventual system as immoral. The Papist members demanded a withdrawal, but far from doing so he published his speech with documentary evidence. In the Highlands there are nunneries at Oban and Fort William, while there is a monastery at Fort Augustus. These are strongholds of the soldiers of the Pope. In 1854 Britain was spending £187,000 per annum on Popish schools in Ireland. Now she is spending thousands on their schools in Scotland.—D. J. Macaskill.
We are tempted to sin by Satan, encouraged to sin by the example and custom of the world, but inclined to sin by our own flesh.—Thomas Manton.