1828.] Duke of Newcastle's Letter to Lord Kenyon. the Catholic Association, and nearly a whole nation, are ripe for insurrection upon account of this very bugbear, who is therefore influentially a powerful Monarch, in whose behalf many thousand subjects are willing to rise? Moreover, the emancipation demand is constructive treason; for it implies a conspiracy against the dignity of the King's crown, &c. because it calls upon him to degrade himself, as sole head of the Church. Such is the light in which the question appears, viz. that it is a demand of recognition of the dominion of a foreign potentate within these realms : -that it can be called spiritual only is absurd, for there can be no spiritual, without including, directly or indirectly, temporal power also. The Pope presents the sole ground of Catholic disqualification, because acknowledgment of him erects a foreign dominion in the State; and the Protestant constitution of England is to be altered for a most absurd, unphilosophical pretension-temporal power, erected upon transubstantiation. For this and similar trash, the King of Great Britain is to admit a partner in his throne; or rather, as we cannot admit equality in the parties, to take papacy as a concubine. But the state of Ireland is a menace, and Tacitus says, "when extremities are feared, present dislikes are disregarded," (Ann. xii. 67.) Now every statesman knows that it is the superabundant population thrown upon the land which is Ireland's real misfortune, and that the rule of our ancestors under such circumstances was removal [See a State Paper quoted in your Review of Hodgson's Northumberland,] for there exists no alternative between maintenance by trade or emigration. The misfortunes of Ireland arise, I repeat, from an excessive population thrown upon the soil; and a man must be stark mad to suppose that such evils can be redressed by alteration of the constitution in favour of a foreign potentate. No case is made out of Catholic Emancipation being possibly attended with any other result than derangement of the constitution, for no purpose, as to the benefit of the people at large; but under Protestantism the people at large have derived enormous benefit. I need only mention one; the establishment of the Constitution 487 of 1688, which wise measure the Emancipation professes to overthrow. Such is the view of the subject adopted by the Duke of Newcastle, in his letter to Lord Kenyon, noticed in p. 264; and I defy any man in England to show that starving people can be relieved by any other way than by food. If the Catholics want to see the Irish better off, let them establish Manufactories or promote Emigration. Nothing else can cure want, because it never was cured by any other means than either finding a livelihood on the spot, or going where it was to be pro cured. Taking, therefore, the postulate that Catholic Emancipation cannot possibly relieve excessive population in an agricultural nation, I do not see why the constitution is to be dangerously tampered with for a mere bubble, and I am very sure that Plebeianism is and must be at the bottom of such evils, as the Duke deprecates in the passage hereafter quoted. But the public opinion is in favour of these evils. Did not the public opinion only two years ago, ruin hundreds of honest men by foolish speculations, which elevated rogues? And what is the public opinion but the aggregate of private opinions gathered from factious newspapers; and do not opinions require weighing as much as goods, because opinion cannot alter the nature of things, and the certain course of events. The Duke of Newcastle says, that after a steady front was no longer opposed to innovation upon the constitution, then began trality, and conciliation,-right and wrong, "An accursed system of liberalism, neuvirtue and vice, the friend and the enemy of his country, were to be confounded; distinctions were to be levelled; all was to bend to expediency; and principle must not stand in the way of policy. "Could any one mistake what would be the sure consequence of such a vile system? Assuredly, as it has happened, it would follow that the country would be gradually demoralized. What before seemed odious or immoral, no longer disgusted; all ancient bish; history as an old almanack; experience institutions began to be considered as rubwas to be cast away; all that is valuable to us was to be vilified, derided, and trampled upon; and finally, liberality enthroned itself in the chief seat, to influence and direct the counsels of the nation. The country now found itself without guides, although it had a government; the high offices were filled, it is true, but not by governors; the executive was in other hands; instead of resisting innovation they yielded to it-instead of leading public opinion, they bowed to its counterfeit; and thus quackery, deceit, and hollow pretensions gained so much strength, that their opposites were almost obliged to hide their diminished heads. Then followed the effects of this contemptible system. The depraved, the disaffected, and the self-opinionated, are always the most noisy and turbulent; they clamoured, they made themselves to be heard; finding their strength, and presuming upon their acquired consequence, they artfully contrived, through the Administration, in fact to rule the state."-pp. 8, 9. I wish not to depreciate the valuable right of Englishmen to discuss public questions, because I deem it protective of liberty, and preventive and corrective of abuse. But here neither liberty nor abuse of power has any concern with the matter: it being simply, I repeat, whether a foreign potentate shall or shall not have a recognized dominion_in_this_empire. Every thing political in England is estimated according to party; but there used to be general constitutional principles, in which all parties coincided. It is the dereliction of these general principles to which the Duke alludes; and if it be true that thirty years ago -Protestants would not even hear of any recognition of the papal authority in Great Britain (and it certainly is true), then has there recently been a compromise of principle, leading to what his Grace, and most of those persons who have the deepest stake in the welfare of the country, well know to be dangerous innovations. It used to be a wise though a homely adage, to look before we leaped;" but now we are to invert the adage. For my part, I hold that caution is an indispensable business principle, and that opinion, public or private, if it be regardless of possible consequences, is rashness. No wise man will lend money without security, and why is the state to risk the welfare of Protestants upon moonshine? Party writers are, however, continually persuading the public that they only can be in the right, but people who do not write may be full as well educated, and more accurate in their judgments. There is no doubt but that the majority of the quiet, respectable, and wealthy inhabitants of this [Dec. country are adverse to Catholic Emancipation, as being a most violent measure, which has a worse aspect through its deriving support from Mobbing, under false representations, and that certainly is the method to which liberalism resorts in support of theory, often of folly. F. D. T. In the last Monthly Magazine (a publication which has hitherto advocated the cause of Popery and Whiggism) there is a fierce editorial article against Catholic Emancipation; from which it may be presumed the editor has had sufficient reason, during his intercourse with Papists, to alter his opinions as to the policy of granting their demands. We quote the following, and give him credit for his candour. His sentiments appear to be in perfect accordance with our own. "With the Romish clergy themselves the whole principle of their government is the most unqualified tyranny. The pope is by the constitution of popery bound by no law whatever, except that of pushing the claims of his see to the utmost possible pitch. His will is the law. He has no assessor, no control, no code which he cannot abrogate at a word. His government is the most complete despotism ever known. He can impose whatever oath he pleases to-day -he can dissolve it to-morrow. Treaty with him is absurd; he can discover that it is not for the good of the church, at any time he chooses, and the treaty is ipso facto null and void. For the great standing canon of the Romish system is, that all obligations injurious to the interests of the Romish see are, by their very nature, extinguished. If the pope at this hour were to sanction the abjuration of papal allegiance by his Irish clergy, he might abrogate his concession in the next." ་་ The popish bishop swears to obey the commands of the pope in all things. (No matter whether these commands enjoin him to dethrone his king.)-To keep all the secrets communicated to him by the pope. (No matter whether they are treason to his king.)-To disclose all secrets to the pope, that he thinks may be injurious to his authority, temporal or spiritual. (No matter whether the preservation of those secrets be of vital importance to his king, or entrusted to himself under the most solemn obligations of secrecy-whether received under the oath of a privy-councillor, or gathered at the confessional.)-To defend the territorial rights of the pope. (No matter whether that pope be at open war with his king.)— To exert all his efforts, personal and public, to enlarge the powers of the popedom." 1828.] Mr. URBAN, St. Thomas's Church, Oxford.-Ancient Music. Dec. 8. HE annexed engraving represents St. Thomas's Church, Oxford (see, Plate 1.) as it appeared till about two years ago, when, in consequence of the vast and increasing population of that parish, and the very limited dimen, sions of the Church, it was altered, and considerably enlarged. The chancel arch, the most ancient and curious feature of the building, has been removed, the walls heightened and partly rebuilt, and the whole space, within a few feet of the altar, filled with pews, The embattled tower, with an octar gonal staircase turret at the north-east angle, has undergone no alteration; and a short aisle, on the north side of the body still retains its original chap racter on the outside. Besides a pis. cina in the chancel, the only object worthy of notice in the Church is the font, which is octagonal, and ornamented on the pedestal. The chancel arch now forms the principal entrance to the Church. It is ornamented with a single row of zig-zag, and is full ten feet and a half wide, and thirteen feet six inches high, This curious relic is as old as the latter end of the 12th century: a Nor man window on the north, and a lancet window on the south side of the chancel, are other relics of corre, sponding antiquity; the rest of the windows were altered at various periods; the one over the altar is large and elegant, and of the age of Edward II. Mr. URBAN, J. C. B. 489 the express authority of Aristophanes, Μη πριν γ' άκουσης χ ̓ άτεραν στασιν Εκ των κιθαρῳδίκων νόμων εἰργασμένην. * upon and down the writings of that There are several hints scattered acute and witty poet, who, though he so as to tickle the ears of an Athenian has contrived much of his versification audience, yet did not pay them so ill a compliment as to forget the gratification of their understandings, by preseating pictures without some refer ence to their respective archetypes. · four sounds, is founded in the nature of That the tetrachord, or system of things, as Mr. D. has demonstrated in the article Music' of the London Encyclopædia, we have an exemplary proof among the natives of the Society their instrumental and vocal music, Islands, who, as I observed, both in confiue themselves within that compass. They also furnish evidence equally facile, that harmony is connate with melody, for in singing their traditional airs, they usually accompany each other in major and minor thirds, and therefore it must be inferred that the ancient Greeks could not be ignois familiar to an untutored Indian; for rant of a piece of natural skill, which it must not be forgotten, that upon analysis or resolution, all harmony consists essentially of certain combinations of major and minor thirds, and that the world of counterpoint selves so much upon comparison of the which we are disposed to value our ancients, is indebted for its creation to the complicated artificial manner in which the subject has generally been treated and expounded. under my observation were in the The specimens of melody which fell Phrygian mode, that is, the hemitone falling between the first and second degrees of the tetrachord, equivalent to the natural scale of E; these, when perfectly intonated by the mellow Dec. 10. OME remarks on the nature of Ancient Music appeared in your last Supplement, p. 598, elicited by a translation which Mr. Danneley had given of a piece of Grecian melody, who then invited the attention of the admirers of antiquity to renew their investigations of a subject which had been thought to be already exhausted, When out of the literary world, and left to my own reflections, it had often engaged my attention to inquire how it came to pass that the choral odes should have been put into metres which are untuneable to an ear accus-composition of these odes was a business of tomed to delight chiefly and anapests, and could not account in iambics much greater difficulty than has hitherto for it otherwise than by supposing might seem, with a little abatement for been imagined, and that where the poet that the poetry was made to wait upon the music; for this opinion we have GENT. MAG. December, 1828. Hence it will be observed that the oduvauia, to have written ut diis placet, his performance was extremely elaborate. |