Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Thus we find that the Pope is to hold a perpetual bag of mitres in
his hand, out of which every aspirant for the honours of Rome and the
lucre of England is to have his dole. Every head among us that aches
for honours may now know where to look for them. Professorships and
parishes need no longer keep the new school lingering on the edge
of Popery; their _consciences_ (!) may be relieved without injuring
their pockets; they may allow themselves to "speak out;" and after
half-a-dozen years of the most stubborn denials of Popery--of paltry
protests and beggarly equivocation--of defending their orthodoxy in the
press, and betraying their apostacy in the pulpit--they will be enabled
to turn their backs on Protestantism, probably with a very useful
addition to their resources, and start up from Curates and Canons into
"My Lords." England would give very comfortable room for a speculation
of this kind. Sixpence a piece from twenty millions of people would be
better than all the Professorships of both Universities; and a seat in
the House of Lords (which would be inevitably demanded, and which would
be unhesitatingly conceded by Whig flexibility) would place the obscure
and the avaricious very much at their ease.
To a Roman financier the prospect might have other charms. The present
budget of the Popedom is supposed to be within a couple of millions
sterling, and even that paid in a manner by no means creditable to
Italian punctuality. As for the old tributes from Naples, Spain, and
France, we may fairly return them as _nil_, those powers having more
use for money than they possess bullion, and none of them being secure
of army, populace, or parliament. A twelvemonth, in these times, may
see the monarchs of the three succeeding to the vacant apartments of
the Orleans dynasty at Claremont.
But what an incomparable windfall would England be to the Papal
pauperism of these times! A bishop in every county gathering the alms
of the faithful! or, if one bishop were not enough, might not the
"sovereign pontiff," as the little Welsh Bishop reverently names Pio
Nono, make fifty? He has graciously reserved to himself the right of
"increasing and multiplying them" to the extent of all exigencies. We
might soon have a bishop in every city, or a bishop in every village.
We might have those holy locusts coming on the wing from every corner
of the Continent; those cormorants of Rome fishing in our waters, until
they carried off their prey to disgorge it into the capacious maw of
Rome!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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