uld not of itself
have involved Brown in a violent quarrel with the Church. The
following passage was afterwards cited by the _Globe_ as defining its
position: "In offering a few remarks upon Dr. Wiseman's production, we
have no intention to discuss the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church,
but merely to look at the question in its secular aspect. As advocates
of the voluntary principle we give to every man full liberty to
worship as his conscience dictates, and without penalty, civil or
ecclesiastical, attaching to his exercise thereof. We would allow each
sect to give to its pastors what titles it sees fit, and to prescribe
the extent of spiritual duties; but we would have the State recognize
no ecclesiastical titles or boundaries whatever. The public may, from
courtesy, award what titles they please; but the statute-book should
recognize none. The voluntary principle is the great cure for such
dissensions as now agitate Great Britain."

The cause of conflict lay outside the bounds of that article. Cardinal
Wiseman's letter and Lord John Russell's reply had thrown England into
a ferment of religious excitement. "Lord John Russell," says Justin
McCarthy, "who had more than any man living been identified with the
principles of religious liberty, who had sat at the feet of Fox and
had for his closest friend the poet, Thomas Moore, came to be regarded
by the Roman Catholics as the bitterest enemy of their creed and their
rights of worship."

It is evident that this hatred of Russell was carried across the
Atlantic, and that Brown was regarded as his ally. In the Haldimand
election a hand-bill signed, "An Irish Roman Catholic" was circulated.
It assailed Brown fiercely for the support he had given to Russell,
and for the general course of the _Globe_ in regard to Catholic
questions. Russell was described as attempting "to twine again around
the writhing limbs of ten millions of Catholics the chains that our
own O'Connell rescued us from in 1829." A vote for George Brown would
help to rivet these spiritual chains round the souls of Irishmen, and
to crush the religion for which Ireland had wept oceans of blood;
those who voted for Brown would be prostrating themselves like
cowardly slaves or beasts of burden before the avowed enemies of their
country, their religion and their God. "You will think of the gibbets,
the triangles, the lime-pits, the tortures, the hangings of the past.
You will reflect on the struggles of the pr