e over Protestantism, lies in
the devotional spirit which she is able to kindle and to sustain amongst
simple, docile, and confiding hearts. In mere prudence it ought to be
remembered, that to love, to trust, to adore, is a far more contagious
tendency amongst the poor, the wretched, and the despised, than to
question, investigate, and reflect.

How, then, did this movement begin? By _that_, perhaps, we may learn
something of its quality. Who was it that first roused this movement?
The greater half of the nation, viz., all the lower classes, cannot be
said to have shared in the passions of the occasion; but the educated
classes, either upon a sincere impulse, or in a spirit of excessive
imitation, have come forward with a perseverance, which (in a case of
perils confessedly so vague) is more like a moonstruck infatuation than
any other recorded in history. Until Parliament met on the 4th of
February, when a Roman Catholic member of the House of Commons first
attempted to give some specific account of the legal effects incident to
a substitution of bishops for vicars apostolic, no man has made the very
cloudiest sketch of the evils that were apprehended, or that _could_ be
apprehended, or that were in the remotest way possible. Sir Edward
Sugden, indeed, came forward with a most unsatisfactory effort to show
how Cardinal Wiseman might be punished, or might be restrained,
supposing that he had done wrong; but not at all to show that the
Cardinal _had_ done wrong, and far less to show that, if wrong could be
alleged, any evils would follow from it. Sir Edward most undoubtedly did
not satisfy himself, and so little did he satisfy anybody else, that
already his letter is forgotten; nor was it urged or relied upon by any
one of the great meetings which succeeded it. Too painful it would be to
think that Sir Edward had in this instance stepped forward
sycophantically, as so many prominent people undoubtedly did, to meet
and to aid a hue and cry of fanaticism simply because it had emanated
from a high quarter. But _what_ quarter? Again I ask, _who_ was it that
originated this fierce outbreak of bigotry? Much depends upon _that_. It
was Lord John Russell, it was the First Minister of the Crown, that
abused the power of his place for a purpose of desperate fanaticism;
yes, and for a purpose which his whole life had been dedicated to
opposing, to stigmatizing, to overthrowing. Right or wrong, he has to
begin life anew. Bigotry may