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Dr. John Henry Newman's Reply to Mr. Gladstone's Pamphlet ...
Dr John Henry Newman's Reply to Mr Gladstone's Pamphlet Author:John Henry Newman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: § i. Introductory Remarks. The main question which Mr. Gladstone has started I consider to be this :—Can Catholics be trustworthy subjects of the State ? h... more »as v/not a foreign Power a hold over their consciences such, that it may at any time be used to the serious perplexity and injury of the civil fovernment under which they live ? Not that Mr. Gladstone con- nes himself to these questions, for he goes out of his way, I am sorry to say, to taunt us with our loss of mental and moral freedom, a vituperation which is not necessary for his purpose at all. He informs us too that we have " repudiated ancient history," and are rejecting " modern thought," and that our Church has been " refurbishing her rusty tools," and has been lately aggravating, and is likely still more to aggravate, our state of bondage. I think it unworthy of Mr. Gladstone's high character thus to have inveighed against us ; what intellectual manliness is left to us, according to him ? yet his circle of acquaintance is too wide, and his knowledge of his countrymen on the other hand too accurate, for him not to know that he is bringing a great amount of odium and bad feeling upon excellent men, whose only offence is their religion. The more intense is the prejudice with which we are regarded by whole classes of men, the less is there of generosity in his pouring upon us superfluous reproaches. The graver the charge, which is the direct occasion of his writing against us, the more careful should he be not to prejudice judge and jury to our disadvantage. No rhetoric is needed in England against an unfortunate Catholic at an)' time ; but so little is Mr. Gladstone conscious of his treatment of us that in one place of his Pamphlet, strange as it may seem, he makes it his boast that he has been careful to " ...« less