cannot be denied to the believer in the divinity of our
Savior. But let me ask you if you have forgotten what was the faith of
your ancestors, or if you are prepared to assert that the men who
procured your liberties are unfit to make your laws? Or do you forget
the tempests by which the Dissenting classes of the community were at a
former period agitated, or in what manner you fixed the rule of peace
over that wild scene of anarchy and commotion? If we attend to the
present condition and habits of these classes, do we not find their
controversies subsisting in full vigor? and can it be said that their
jarring sentiments and clashing interests are productive of any disorder
in the State; or that the Methodist himself, in all his noisy
familiarity with his Maker, is a dangerous or disloyal subject? Upon
what principle can it be argued that the application of a similar policy
would not conciliate the Catholics, and promote the general interests of
the empire? I can trace the continuance of their incapacities to nothing
else than a political combination; a combination that condemned the
Catholic religion, not as a heresy, but as a symptom of a civil
alienation. By this doctrine, the religion is not so much an evil in
itself as a perpetual token of political disaffection. In the spirit of
this liberal interpretation, you once decreed to take away their arms,
and on another occasion ordered all Papists to be removed from London.
In the whole subsequent course of administration, the religion has
continued to be esteemed the infallible symptom of a propensity to
rebel. Known or suspected Papists were once the objects of the severest
jealousy and the bitterest enactments. Some of these statutes have been
repealed, and the jealousy has since somewhat abated; but the same
suspicions, although in a less degree, pervade your councils. Your
imaginations are still infected with apprehensions of the proneness of
the Catholics to make cause with a foreign foe. A treaty has lately been
made with the King of the Two Sicilies. May I ask: Is his religion the
evidence of the warmth of his attachment to your alliance? Does it enter
into your calculation as one of the motives that must incline him to our
friendship, in preference to the friendship of the State professing his
own faith? A similar treaty has been recently entered into with the
Prince Regent of Portugal, professing the Roman Catholic religion; and
one million granted last year and