Since 1830, the whigs, laboring, as Mr. Macaulay now confesses, under a delusion as to the ameliorated spirit of the Papacy, have gradually advanced the Romanists to great power and influence. They had introduced them to parliaments; had flattered them with ecclesiastical titles; and unavailingly tried to propitiate them with gifts. Finally, hoping to secure the Pope’s aid in the management of Ireland, they had advanced, step by step, to a point from which they could not recede, and at which they ventured to go further, and actually invite him to the daring encroachment, which to their horror and amazement, set all England in a blaze. At every step of this infamous and foolish compromise with Rome, true Churchmen had protested, and pleaded, and struggled in vain; but these true men were now confounded in the disgrace of an alarming apostacy, owing to a popular misapprehension, and it was easy to turn the whole fury of the fire upon them. Lord John, detected in the very act of inviting the Pope’s attempt, had the cunning to point at them, and lay it on the “Tractarians.” The trick succeeded: the Romanizers were gratified, for they wished well to any but the friends of a Church which they meant to abandon and destroy; the Evangelicals swelled the outcry, which brought popular gales to their own canvass; and the Ministry chuckled behind their fingers. The Romanists were triumphant, since they had the Ministry in their power; and the only real sufferers by all the tumult and indignation thus aroused, were the very class who alone had contested every inch of ground with Popery and the Whigs, from the “Emancipation” of 1829, to its sequel and direct consequence, the “Aggression,” twenty years afterwards!