a few lines below bursts forth afresh with "O nimium felices sua si bona norint." Any schoolboy will set him right.-Lastly, not to multiply instances at pages 61 and 62, he says: "For a time the voice of faction, and intrigue, and political corruption, may prevail, but we well know that the man in whom the majority of people in this free Protestant country place the greatest, nay, the only real confidence, is Peel. Peel is the statesman whose character, like Lord Liverpool's, has, by its uniform consistency, commanded the respect, and thereby insured the confidence, of his fellow-countrymen-to him, who is a true Pittite!!!!" &c. &c.

These passages are sufficient to show that the author is an ardent admirer of Mr. Pitt, and a censurer of Mr. Canning, in proportion as his principles differ from those of Mr. Pitt. Be it remembered, that the charge against Mr. Canning which we are now considering is, that he is a friend to Catholic Emancipation; or, as this writer expresses it, not "a devoted champion of the Protestant church." Let us now examine what claim Mr. Pitt had to that title, which, according to our author, next we suppose to being the Earl of Liverpool, ought to be one of the main ingredients in the character of an English Prime Minister. As one argument is worth a thousand florishes, so we hold is one fact worth a thousand arguments. We shall deal with facts, and shall also refer to our authority.

In the Annual Register for the year 1801, page 119, will be found as follows:

"Mr. Pitt determined to resign his office of first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; and gave out that his inability to propose his Catholic regulations, as a minister, was the sole cause of his resignation. A paper circulated in his name throughout Ireland; and which he did not, when called on in the House of Commons, disavow, contained this remarkable passage: The Catholic body will prudently consider their prospects as arising from the persons who now espouse their interests, and compare them with those which they could look to from any other quarter. They may, with confidence, rely on the zealous support of all those who retire, and of many who remain in office, when it can be given with a prospect of success; they may be assured that Mr. Pitt will do his utmost to establish their cause in the public favor, (though he could not concur in a hopeless attempt to force it now,) and prepare the way for their finally attaining their objects."

Comment would be here superfluous; and, moreover, we do not wish to bear hard on an adversary who is so perfectly at our mercy. The fact that Mr. Pitt, instead of being "a devoted champion of the Protestant church," according to the obvious

meaning which the author attaches to that phrase, was himself favorable to the Catholic Claims, and went out of office in 1801 on his failing to procure Catholic Emancipation, with which he had identified himself in order to procure the union with Ireland, is matter of history, and reduces our author to this dilemmaeither to retract all he has said in praise of Mr. Pitt; to retract the opinions that his was the master-mind; that he directed on old-fashioned English principles; that it was well at an eventful crisis that a Pitt was lord of the ascendant; that Mr. Peel is the man to whom this country looks to be Prime Minister, because he is a true Pittite, &c. &c.; or to retract the other opinion, "that opposition to the Catholic Claims ought to be a main ingre dient in the character of an English Prime Minister." Of these two alternatives he may, at his leisure, adopt whichever he thinks fit, and we freely give him his choice between them.

So much for the reasoning of the Protestant Tory on this branch of his subject, and so much for his consistency. For this latter virtue indeed, so indispensable in his eyes to the character of others, he seems to have a very generous contempt in his own proper person.

But setting Mr. Pitt aside for the present, we would ask on what ground it is asserted, that opposition to the Catholic Claims ought to be a main ingredient in the character of an English Prime Minister? Does the author produce this as a self-evident proposition? or does he only mean, that it must be true because he and his party think so? They oppose the Catholics, it is true, and think that the Prime Minister should be a devoted champion of the Protestant Establishment. We, on the contrary, are favorable to the claims of that religious sect; and are so far from thinking such a combination necessary, that we should regret to see it; besides being of opinion, that the venerable establishment in question does not require any champion at all.

The office of a champion is to assert rights or avenge injuries; but in this case we do not perceive any rights invaded or any injuries threatened, which may not, with perfect security, be confided for redress to the vigilance of the bishops, those uncompromising guardians of the church. We require, indeed, that the Protestant constitution should be upheld in all its vigor and pufity; but we maintain, that the admission of a few Catholics to a share of political power would, by strengthening and uniting the sinews of the state, promote and not obstruct that desirable object. These opinions we hold in common with a large portion, if not a majority, of the educated and enlightened classes of this great community; and yet we do not dogmatically declare, that a favorable disposition to the Catholic Claims ought to be a main ingreVOL. XXVIII. Pam. NO. LV.

D

dient in the character of an English Prime Minister; although, no doubt, we think it desirable that it should be so. This leading principle of the Protestant Tory is therefore, in fact, no principle at all; but an open and disputed point, incapable of proof, on which ten persons out of twenty think one way and ten the other, as is clearly shown by the late decision in the House of Commons. What are objections to Mr. Canning in the mind of the author are recommendations to us to lay down, therefore, as a self-evident proposition, what is in truth nothing more than mere matter of opinion, and on which, moreover, opinions are pretty equally balanced, is a fair specimen of the logical arrangement which pervades his work.

But he does not stop here. Not only is Mr. Canning unfit for the situation of Prime Minister, because by favoring the claims of the Catholics he has swerved from the principles of Mr. Pitt, who, it now turns out, did the same; not only is unworthy of public confidence, because he is not a devoted champion of the Protestant church, but even as an advocate of Emancipation is he blamed for the unbecoming, incompetent, and blundering manner in which he has conducted that cause.

How true is it, that by attempting to prove too much, we prove nothing. The zeal of this Tory has eaten him up. Whoever heard of a general, a disputant, an advocate, even a pugilist, any man, in short, contending for a prize, who complained of the blunders of his adversary, when by those very blunders he himself was the gainer? When victory is on their side, men are usually enough contented with the substance, to leave the shadow for others. Though all the most violent political opponents of Mr. Canning have united with his friends in according to him the well-deserved praise of talent, integrity, and consistency in advocating this question, none of that commendation so irresistibly strikes on our minds with the force of sincerity, as that which is conveyed by the unmeasured hostility of this writer. Crushed by the force of arguments which he does not attempt to answer, galled by satire from which he vainly endeavors to escape, he calls in his distress on every tutelary saint, both ancient and modern, to aid him in this disaster. From Dr. Philpotts and Sir John Copley he passes to the Athanasian Creed, the Visitation of the Sick, and the London University; and after a variety of conscientious interrogatories and constitutional appeals, concludes by uniting, in the same sentence, the glorious constitutional fabric of the church, the Israelites of old, and Nero fiddling at the burning of Rome: in the same page he assures us, that he now sets aside the question of the church, which in the next sentence but one he resumes, and continues with little intermission to the end of the chapter.

It is our wish to deal with this gentleman more tenderly than he is disposed to deal with Mr. Canning; but we do not hesitate to assure him, that to use his own figure, neither Achilles in petticoats, nor Mr. Canning in the gown of a doctor of divinity, or, we might add, any thing else in nature, could make half so ridiculous a figure as does the author of "The Grand Vizier Unmasked," from page 6 to page 13 of his pamphlet.

In the eighth page we were somewhat startled to find, that a statesman need not, after all, be a divine; but before we had recovered from our astonishment at this admission, having read to the end of the sentence, we perceived that the author had changed his mind again, and resolved that he must be one at all events; and, moreover, one of no ordinary attainments. "He should be able," says he, "to distinguish clearly between scripture truths and papal heresies." What, we would ask him, does he think has agitated the Christian world for so many centuries, and divided the Protestant and Catholic churches, except this very question? "What are scripture truths, and what are papal heresies?" It is the mainspring of the dispute between the two churches-it is the alpha and omega of those innumerable theological differences which all the learning of all the doctors has not yet decided; and yet this is the moderate degree of knowlege which, according to the Protestant Tory, a statesman who need be no divine should have at his fingers' ends !!!

But of all Mr. Canning's errors, his wit and ridicule appear to be the most unpardonable in the eyes of this writer. No wonder: none so much dislike jokes as those who cannot make them; and one perusal of the pamphlet before us is sufficiently convincing that the author was never very likely to be guilty of that offence, although he does, at page 46, deprecate his own pleasantry, which was the first intimation we received that he had intended to be pleasant before.

It is difficult to be serious in treating this class of his objections; the soreness occasioned to him by Mr. Canning's ridicule is so natural, and the cause of it so apparent, as to deserve nothing more than a smile. "A man, who employs raillery on serious subjects, cannot be a good churchman;" that is his position. As well might he have said, a dexterous archer cannot be a churchwarden. He may or he may not; and to our simple apprehension there is about as much connexion between the conclusion and the premises in one case as the other.

Raillery was the weapon used most formidably and most frequently by Massillon, and many other French divines, most conspicuous for their eloquence and their piety. Our own history affords instances of a similar kind; and what is a remarkable fact,

dient in the character of an English Prime Minister; although, no doubt, we think it desirable that it should be so. This leading principle of the Protestant Tory is therefore, in fact, no principle at all; but an open and disputed point, incapable of proof, on which ten persons out of twenty think one way and ten the other, as is clearly shown by the late decision in the House of Commons. What are objections to Mr. Canning in the mind of the author are recommendations to us: to lay down, therefore, as a self-evident proposition, what is in truth nothing more than mere matter of opinion, and on which, moreover, opinions are pretty equally balanced, is a fair specimen of the logical arrangement which pervades his work.

But he does not stop here. Not only is Mr. Canning unfit for the situation of Prime Minister, because by favoring the claims of the Catholics he has swerved from the principles of Mr. Pitt, who, it now turns out, did the same; not only is unworthy of public confidence, because he is not a devoted champion of the Protestant church, but even as an advocate of Emancipation is he blamed for the unbecoming, incompetent, and blundering manner in which he has conducted that cause.

How true is it, that by attempting to prove too much, we prove nothing. The zeal of this Tory has eaten him up. Whoever heard of a general, a disputant, an advocate, even a pugilist, any man, in short, contending for a prize, who complained of the blunders of his adversary, when by those very blunders he himself was the gainer? When victory is on their side, men are usually enough contented with the substance, to leave the shadow for others. Though all the most violent political opponents of Mr. Canning have united with his friends in according to him the well-deserved praise of talent, integrity, and consistency in advocating this question, none of that commendation so irresistibly strikes on our minds with the force of sincerity, as that which is conveyed by the unmeasured hostility of this writer. Crushed by the force of arguments which he does not attempt to answer, galled by satire from which he vainly endeavors to escape, he calls in his distress on every tutelary saint, both ancient and modern, to aid him in this disaster. From Dr. Philpotts and Sir John Copley he passes to the Athanasian Creed, the Visitation of the Sick, and the London University; and after a variety of conscientious interrogatories and constitutional appeals, concludes by uniting, in the same sentence, the glorious constitutional fabric of the church, the Israelites of old, and Nero fiddling at the burning of Rome: in the same page he assures us, that he now sets aside the question of the church, which in the next sentence but one he resumes, and continues with little intermission to the end of the chapter.