one word on the part which the clergy of the Anglican church have acted in
the late excitement. Catholics have been their principal theological
opponents, and we have carried on our controversies with them temperately,
and with every personal consideration. We have had no recourse to popular
arts to debase them; we have never attempted, even when the current of
public opinion has set against them, to turn it to advantage, by joining
in any outcry. They are not our members who yearly call for returns of
sinecures or episcopal incomes; they are not our people who form
antichurch-and-state associations; it is not our press which sends forth
caricatures of ecclesiastical dignitaries, or throws ridicule on clerical
avocations. With us the cause of truth and of faith has been held too
sacred to be advocated in any but honorable and religious modes. We have
avoided the tumult of public assemblies and farthing appeals to the
ignorance of the multitude. But no sooner has an opportunity been given
for awakening every lurking passion against us than it has been eagerly
seized by the ministers of the Establishment. The pulpit and the platform,
the church and the town hall, have been equally their field of labor; and
speeches have been made and untruths uttered, and calumnies repeated, and
flashing words of disdain and anger and hate and contempt, and of every
unpriestly and unchristian and unholy sentiment, have been spoken, that
could be said against those who almost alone have treated them with
respect. And little care was taken at what time or in what circumstances
these things were done. If the spark had fallen upon the inflammable
materials of a gunpowder-treason mob, and made it explode, or, what was
worse, had ignited it, what cared they? If blood had been inflamed and
arms uplifted, and the torch in their grasp, and flames had been
enkindled, what heeded they? If the persons of those whom consecration
makes holy, even according to their own belief, had been seized, like the
Austrian general, and ill-treated, and perhaps maimed, or worse, what
recked they? These very things were, one and all, pointed at as glorious
signs, should they take place, of high and noble Protestant feeling in the
land, as proofs of the prevalence of an unpersecuting, a free, inquiring,
a tolerant gospel creed!

"Thanks to you, brave and generous and noble-hearted people of England!
who would not be stirred up by those whose duty it is to teach you,