atters, as we have seen, brought on a ministerial crisis, the
bill was stopped, and after the crisis was over the measure came to
life again with changes making it still more futile for its ends. The
Peelites while, like Mr. Bright, 'despising and loathing' the language
of the Vatican and the Flaminian Gate, had all of them without concert
taken this outburst of prejudice and passion at its right value, and all
resolved to resist legislation. How, they asked, could you tolerate the
Roman catholic religion, if you would not tolerate its tenet of the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the pope; and what sort of toleration of
such a tenet would that be, which forbade the pope to name ecclesiastics
to exercise the spiritual authority exercised in any other voluntary
episcopal church, Scottish, colonial, or another? Why was it more of a
usurpation for the pope to make a new Archbishop of Westminster, than to
administer London by the old form of vicars apostolic? Was not the
action of the pope, after all, a secondary consideration, and the frenzy
really and in essence an explosion of popular wrath against the
Puseyites? What was to be thought of a prime minister who, at such risk
to the public peace, tried to turn the ferment to account for the sake
of strengthening his tottering government? To all this there was no
rational reply; and even the editor of a powerful newspaper that every
morning blew up the coals, admitted to Greville that 'he thought the
whole thing humbug and a pack of nonsense!'[261]

GREAT SPEECH AGAINST THE BILL

The debate on the second reading was marked by a little brutality and
much sanctimony. Mr. Gladstone (March 25, 1851) spoke to a House
practically almost solid against him. Yet his superb resources as an
orator, his transparent depth of conviction, the unmistakeable proofs
that his whole heart was in the matter, mastered his audience and made
the best of them in their hearts ashamed. He talked of Boniface VIII.
and Honorius IX.; he pursued a long and close historical demonstration
of the earnest desire of the lay catholics of this country for diocesan
bishops as against vicars apostolic; he moved among bulls and rescripts,
briefs and pastorals and canon law, with as much ease as if he had been
arguing about taxes and tariffs. Through it all the House watched and
listened in enchantment, as to a magnificent tragedian playing a noble
part in a foreign tongue. They did not apprehend ever