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
But England contains other men than those smirking scandals to
manhood. The nation burst out into a flame of indignation wherever
man met man: in whatever occupation, in whatever rank of life, under
whatever form of politics, in all hues of religious opinion, there
was but one language. "Was ever insolence like this? Is a foreign
friar to carve out the empire? Is a worshipper of stocks and stones
to teach us religion? Is a persecutor to mutilate our laws? Is a
despot to scandalise our liberties? Is the dependent of France, of
Austria, or Spain, or any power that will suffer him to hang upon
it, to be the actual divider of England among his dependents? Is a
demand of power and possession, that would not be endured in any
Popish country of the earth, to be quietly submitted to in the chief
of Protestant kingdoms? And is this most insolent of all aggressions
to be inflicted by the meanest of all sovereigns on the most powerful
of all nations, and that nation the one which has most triumphantly
abjured Popery?--England--whose fathers drove it headlong from the
land, and cashiered a dynasty for daring to attempt its return; whose
Constitution loathes its tyranny, whose honour abhors its artifice,
whose literature exposes its deceptions, and whose religion brands its
apostacy!"
That this description of the national feeling is not exaggerated,
must be evident from the tone of the numberless speeches made at the
parochial and provincial meetings, immediately on the publication of
the atrocious Bull. The clergy of London and Westminster, as first
insulted, took the lead; and their language expressed the natural
feelings of offence and scorn excited by this intolerable presumption.
The sentiment was unanimous.
Of course Rome is at her old work, and every trick is tried to smooth
down the universal disdain. A Dr Ullathorne, who has taken time by
the forelock, and _bemitred_ himself without delay, wishes to tell
the world that the Bull is a very harmless bull indeed; that the
Vicars-Apostolic only wished for a change of name; and that the
appointment of dioceses is merely what the Wesleyans and Sectaries
effect, in marking out their preaching districts year by year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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