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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 1

Appendix B

Appendix B.

I have contented myself with a minimum of citation from the documents of the period before Emancipation. Their full effect can only be gathered by such as are acquainted with, or will take the trouble to refer largely to the originals. It is worth while, however, to cite the following passage from Bishop Doyle, as it may convey, through the indignation it expresses, an idea of the amplitude of the assurances which had been (as I believe, most honestly and sincerely) given.

"There is no justice, my Lord, in thus condemning us. Such conduct on the part of our opponents creates in our bosoms a sense of wrong being done to us; it exhausts our patience, it provokes our indignation, and prevents us from reiterating our efforts to obtain a more impartial hearing. We are tempted, in such cases as these, to attribute unfair motives to those who differ from us, as we cannot conceive page 70 how men gifted with intelligence can fail to discover truths so plainly demonstrated as,

"That our faith or our allegiance is not regulated by any such doctrines as those imputed to us;

"That our duties to the Government of our country are not influenced nor affected by any Bulls or practices of Popes;

"That these duties are to be learned by us, as by every other class of His Majesty's subjects, from the Gospel, from the reason given to us by God, from that love of country which nature has implanted in our hearts, and from those constitutional maxims, which are as well understood, and as highly appreciated, by Catholics of the present day, as by their ancestors, who founded them with Alfred, or secured them at Runnymede."—Doyle's 'Essay on the Catholic Claims,' London, 1826, p. 38.

The same general tone, as in 1826, was maintained in the answers of the witnesses from Maynooth College before the Commission of 1855. See, for example, pp. 132, 161-4, 272-3, 275,361, 370-5,381-2,394-6, 405. The Commission reported (p. 64), "We see no reason to believe that there has been any disloyalty in the teaching of the College, or any disposition to impair the obligations of an unreserved allegiance to your Majesty.'