Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

that the provisions of the Acts of the 35 Geo. III. cap. 102, and the 37Geo. III. cap. 143, should be extended, so as to empower justices of the peace to search for and destroy false measures as well as false weights, and to hear and determine and put in execution the law with regard to Weights and Measures, and to inflict or mitigate such penalties as shall be thought proper; and to have such other authorities as shall be necessary for compelling the use of Weights and Measures agreeable to the aforesaid standards."

Such are the proceedings upon which were founded the bill, which has lately been rejected. That the exertions of the first Committee should have been productive of so little advantage, has often been considered as matter of regret. But it is presumed, that the members of the Committee of 1814 will live to see the object of their labours fully accomplished, though not perhaps in the way they intended, the present generation being, no doubt, a good deal more enlightened on this subject than their ancestors were. The bill may be revised and improved;-if there be any thing superfluous, it can be retrenched; if any thing deficient, it can be supplied. But let us not lose all the advantages of a measure allowed to be necessary, because it is not free from trifling difficulties and inconveniences, or because it may happen to offend some popular prejudices, or to oppose some particular interests. There will always be found men ready to exclaim against every proposal of this nature. But British senators will consult for the public good, without losing sight of their own dignity; and will not suffer themselves to be diverted from their duty, by any resistance coming from persons incapable of grasping the whole question.

With respect to the merits of the work, which has given rise to these observations, we have little to add. The author has deemed it necessary to observe, by way of apology,

that it was drawn up and printed between the first and "second reading of the bill in the House of Lords, that is, "during the Easter recess." But notwithstanding this extraordinary dispatch, it is replete with new and valuable information, and every way such as we had reason to expect from the author of the CAMBIST, which has been noticed in a former number. Many of the calculations are entirely new; and, in other respects, the labour employed upon the work was not inconsiderable. For the present we take leave of Dr. Kelly, not without hope, that we shall soon have occasion to notice another edition of his METROLOGY, enriched with an account of any new laws that may

be made on this interesting subject. Earl Stanhope having taken up the matter, an opportunity, we should think, cannot long be wanting. On the 24th ultimo, that nobleman proposed in the House of Lords, and the proposition was readily and unanimously agreed to, that the Crown be addressed to appoint a Committee, consisting of members of parliament, lawyers, mathematicians, and practical merchants, for the purpose of agreeing upon some system calculated to establish a general uniformity of Weights and Measures. And his lordship gave it as his opinion, that, to obviate the unavoidable inconveniences that would attend the new system, it might be proper to allow the old and the new systems to go hand-in-hand-till such time as persons already possessed of weights or measures, should come to have new ones stamped.

ART. XIII.—An Historical Inquiry into the Ancient Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the Crown: commencing with the Period in which Great Britain formed a part of the Roman Empire. By JAMES BALDWIN BROWN, Esq. of the Inner Temple, Author of an Historical Account of the Laws enacted against the Catholics both in England and Ireland. Part I. 8vo. pp. 236.

Ar the present moment, the subject matter of this work possesses a more than usual degree of interest. Notice has already been given of a motion in the House of Commons, for the appointment of a select committee to examine the papers which have been laid before Parliament on the interference of the secular power, in states professing the Catholic religion, in the election of prelates, the appointment of the inferior clergy; and also those respecting the communications of both these orders with the see of Rome ;-points on which the history of nations shews the necessity of an interference, at once vigilant and active. On the propriety of modifying many of the laws now in force against our Catholic countrymen, and of removing some of the disabilities to which they are subjected, we shall at present say no more than that, had we been called upon to review the former publication of this author, we should not have been disposed to go all the lengths which he went, though we should cheerfully have joined our brother-critics in giving him credit

for the liberality of his motives, and the extraordinary degree of diligence with which he had prosecuted his enquiries. Indeed, we are rather inclined to suspect that, since the publication of that work, Mr. Brown must himself have seen the necessity of imposing some restrictions on that emancipation of the Catholics, as it is commonly termed, for which he was so zealous and able an advocate. For the veto of the crown, at least, he has strenuously contended; and it probably was in the vain hope of persuading the great body of the Catholics to assent to this proper restraint, that the work before us was undertaken. On this point, the respectable part of the Irish, and the great mass of the English Catholics are already convinced; but, on the other hand, the Catholic Board at Dublin, and the synod of Catholic bishops, who lately assembled at Kilkenny, are, if possible, more virulent than ever against it. On Good-Friday last, Dr. Murray, the coadjutor of Dr. Troy, titular Archbishop of Dublin, fulminated from the pulpit his anathema against Lord Fingal, and the other seceders, who supported the veto, in the following energetic terms, which we copy from his own letter to the editor of the Dublin Chronicle, the official ga zette of the party, of which he is one of the principal tools.

"To this bound and suffering victim," (meaning our Saviour upon the cross,) “I would now implore the attention of those misguided Catholics, who seem willing to impose new and disgraceful bands, not indeed on his sacred person, but on his mystical body, that is, his Church, which was ever more dear to him than even his personal liberty-more dear to him than even his life. Could we suppose that it would be more painful to him to submit his sacred hands to the ignominious cords, than to see his Church bound and fettered by restrictions, which would render it less capable of fulfilling the object for which it was formed-the object for which he poured out his most precious life? Oh! if the stroke must come, let it come from those who have so long sought the extinction of our religion; but, in the name of God, let no Catholic press forward to share in the inglorious work. Let no one among us be found to say of his Church, as the treacherous disciple said of its divine founder, What will you give me, and I will deliver (it) unto you ?”

This is pretty strong language; and, when we consider the when, the where, and the by whom it was pronounced, we think ourselves justified in saying it is language which could not have been used with impunity by any prelate of a sect merely tolerated in any other country in Europe. The resolutions of the synod of Kilkenny were equally strong; inasmuch as they declare that they, the Irish Catholic bishops, "6 never can or will accede to any arrangement, admitting

any interference whatever of the ministers of the crown, in the appointment of prelates to the Catholic church of Ire land; at the same time that they express their unwillingness to agree to the principle of domestic nomination." But this principle we must inform the most Reverend and Right Reverend prelates, (for so they are styled in the paper before us,) will never satisfy a Protestant government; and it does not satisfy any Catholic one now in existence; for we may safely defy them to shew us one, in which the veto of the crown has not always existed in principle. We should like to know by what act of parliament they are to be allowed, as a body, to assume to themselves the title of Roman Ca tholic bishops of Ireland, and in that character to petition parliament," stating fully and unequivocally their senti ments and determination, not to abide by what that parliament shall determine;" for such, in fact, is the real import of their resolutions. It is, we presume, by the same authority as that by which they are addressed, by their people as My Lords, and Your Grace. But we gladly return from this seditious faction, who, in reality, have any and every thing more at heart than the object to which they profess them selves to be attached, to that respectable body of seceders, whom they are pleased to brand as traitors to the common cause. These men, headed by Lords Fingal, Trimbleston, French, Sir Edward Bellow, and the most considerable of the Irish Catholics, have petitioned parliament for a repeal of the various disabilities to which they are now subjected, ander such restrictions as the wisdom of the legislature shall think fit to impose. On the propriety of granting their prayer, we say nothing, until we learn the safeguards for the established religion, by which it is to be accompanied; but this we must say, that, without some very strong ones, the proposed measure will never have our concurrence. It was with a view of showing the control exercised by the supreme secular power of the state, whilst this country remained in communion with the see of Rome, in the external concerns of the church, as distinguished from its decisions in matters of faith and doctrine with which that power can have no right to interfere, that the work before us was written.

[ocr errors][merged small]

657

Public Affairs.

THE French government had postponed, from month to month, the trial of the generous liberators of Lavalette, that it might allow time for the abatement of prejudice, and encrease the chance of their punishment being what it isslight beyond every conjecture which a sense of justice permitted any one to form. Much of this forbearance may fairly be attributed to the innate clemency of Louis the XVIIIth; but not a little of it is well known to have proceeded from a disposition to do homage to the moderation and humane sentiments of the English government-so well evinced in the commander-in-chief's general orders of the 10th ultimo. In those orders, Mr. Bruce is passed by unnoticed, as not being in the king's service: and the other two gentlemen are only reprimanded, not cashiered, as they very reasonably expected to be. Why does not Earl Grey hasten to town, and join Lord Holland in apologising for confidential friends, who had hazarded so much in trying to enable them to embarrass the government of both France and England? Lord Kinnaird, who was witness of their delinquency, did his best to obviate censure: Lord Grey should, in his turn, unbend a little, and endeavour to remove it. None of the forbearance shewn to the delinquents can be owing to the opinion formed in France either of their conduct, or of the grounds of their accusation; for their demeanour, no more indicative in them of conscious innocence, than a similar demeanour would be in culprits at the bar of the Old Bailey, had nothing conciliatory in it; and their offence has never been considered by any means as a trivial one.

The offence of which they have been found guilty, did not consist in a noble and perilous attempt to rescue a guiltless person from unrelenting persecution: but, in an unworthy scheme, from which they apprehended no danger, to enable a convicted traitor to a government which we were striving to prop, to elude the sentence of mild laws which NO.XIV.-VOL.II.-Aug. Rev.

2 X

« AnteriorContinuar »