State of the English Catholics.—Their prudent Silence in the Days of Jacobitism.—The Church of England jealous of the Dissenters.—Riots in 1780.—Effects of the French Revolution.—The Re-establishment of the Monastic Orders in England.—Number of Nunneries and Catholic Seminaries.—The Poor easily converted.—Catholic Writers.—Dr Geddes. The situation of the Catholics in England is far more favourable at present than it has been at any period since the unfortunate expulsion of James II. There is an opinion prevalent among freethinkers and schismatics that intolerance is bad policy, and that religious principles hostile to an establishment will die away if they are 323not persecuted. These reasoners have forgotten that Christianity was rooted up in Japan, and that heresy was extirpated from Spain, by fire. The impolicy is in half measures.
So long as the Stuarts laid claim to the crown, the Catholics were jealously regarded as a party connected with them; and even the large class of Jacobites, as they were called, who adhered to the old family merely from a principle of loyalty, being obstinate heretics, looked suspiciously upon their Catholic coadjutors as men whose motives were different, though they were engaged in the same cause. These men would never have attempted to restore the Stuarts, if they had not believed that the Protestant church establishment would remain undisturbed, they believed this firmly—believed that a Catholic king would reign over a nation of schismatics, and make no attempt at converting them; so ignorant were they of the principles of Catholicism. But no sooner 324had the Pretender ceased to be formidable than the Catholics were forgotten, or considered only as a religious sect of less consequence in the state, and therefore less obnoxious than any other, because neither numerous nor noisy. In fact the persecuting laws, though never enforced, were still in existence; and the Catholics themselves, as they had not forgotten their bloody effects in former times, prudently persevered in silence.
Fortunately for them, as soon as they had ceased to be objects of suspicion, the Presbyterians became so. This body of dissenters had been uniformly attached to the Hanoverian succession; but when that house was firmly established, and all danger from the Stuarts over, the old feelings began to revive, both on the part of the Crown and of the Nonconformists. What they call the connection between civil and religious freedom, or, as their antagonists say, between schism and rebellion, made the court jealous of their numbers and of 325their principles. The clergy too, being no longer in danger from those whom they had dispossessed, began to fear those who would dispossess them; they laid aside their controversy with the Catholics, and directed their harangues and writings against greater schismatics than themselves. During such disputes our brethren had nothing to do but quietly look on, and rejoice that the kingdom of Beelzebub was divided against itself.
It is true, a violent insurrection broke out against them in the year 1780; but this was the work of the lowest rabble, led on by a madman. It did not originate in any previous feelings, for probably nine-tenths of the mob had never heard of popery till they rioted to suppress it, and it left no rankling behind: on the contrary, as the Catholics had been wantonly and cruelly attacked, a sentiment of compassion for them was excited in the more respectable part of the community.
The French Revolution materially assisted 326the true religion. The English clergy, trembling for their own benefices, welcomed the emigrant priests as brethren, and, forgetting all their former ravings about Antichrist, and Babylon, and the Scarlet Whore, lamented the downfall of religion in France. An outcry was raised against the more daring heretics at home, and the tide of popular fury let loose upon them. While this dread of atheism prevailed, the Catholic priests obtained access every where; and the university of Oxford even supplied them with books from its own press. These noble confessors did not let the happy opportunity pass by unimproved; they sowed the seeds abundantly, and saw the first fruits of the harvest. But the most important advantage which has ever been obtained for the true religion since its subversion, is the re-establishment of the monastic orders in this island, from whence they had so long been proscribed. This great object has been effected with admirable prudence. A few nuns 327who had escaped from the atheistical persecution in France were permitted to live together, according to their former mode of life. It would have been cruel to have separated them, and their establishment was connived at as trifling in itself, and which would die a natural death with its members. But the Catholic families, rejoicing in this manifest interposition of Providence, made use of the opportunity, and found no difficulty in introducing novices. Thus is good always educed from evil; the irruption of the barbarous nations led to their conversion; the overthrow of the Greek empire occasioned the revival of lett............