A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most feeble
noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation
of political power; whereas, there is no more distinction between
these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction
and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic,
and give him twenty stripes . . . I persecute; if I say, Everybody
in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and
honourable offices, but you, who are a Catholic . . . I do not
persecute! What barbarous nonsense is this! as if degradation was
not as great an evil as bodily pain or as severe poverty: as if I
could not be as great a tyrant by saying, You shall not enjoy--as by
saying, You shall suffer. The English, I believe, are as truly
religious as any nation in Europe; I know no greater blessing; but
it carries with it this evil in its train, that any villain who will
bawl out, "The Church is in danger!" may get a place and a good
pension; and that any administration who will do the same thing may
bring a set of men into power who, at a moment of stationary and
passive piety, would be hooted by the very boys in the streets. But
it is not all religion; it is, in great part, the narrow and
exclusive spirit which delights to keep the common blessings of sun
and air and freedom from other human beings. "Your religion has
always been degraded; you are in the dust, and I will take care you
never rise again. I should enjoy less the possession of an earthly
good by every additional person to whom it was extended." You may
not be aware of it yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you deny
their freedom to the Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah
your wife refuses to give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry
dumpling: she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a
certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours
want it:- a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest;