with Protestant advisers, than a Protestant king with a Popish ministry. There was nothing in the various relief bills so much objected to as the admission of Roman Catholics into parliament. If Roman Catholics were introduced into the legislature, what was to prevent them from subverting the Church of Ireland? It was not too much to calculate upon half the hundred Irish representatives being Catholics. Neither was Ireland only to be looked to: in this country there were many noble, wealthy, and ancient families of that persuasion; and something also might be done even in Scotland. Popular writers were advocating the cause of the Catholics, because they thought it would subvert the Establishment.

Mr. Wilmot Horton would not say that the mere passing this bill would have the effect of putting an end to the miseries of Ireland, or that it would at once remove the mass of crime and dissension which has been the growth of ages, but it would go far towards the commencement of reformation; and that they must apply a remedy to the physical evils of Ireland, before they could hope to improve the moral condition of its people. Members who declaimed about securities were not sincere in their demand for them. The great value of the measure was, that it was free from securities; for there was no prospect of any minister being able to devise such securities as would prove satisfactory to those who demanded them.Sir Henry Parnell denied that the Catholics would be enabled to send fifty members to the House of Commons. Every honourable gentleman opposed to this bill had ventured to declare a speculative opinion, that as soon as it was passed, the power of the Catholic clergy would be directed to the aggrandisement of the Catholic religion, and raising it to ascendancy on the ruins of the Protestant church. As a representative of part of the people of Ireland, he would place every confidence in the Catholic clergy as to their future conduct, especially as it related to the due observance of the laws, and the preservation of the tranquillity of the country. The measure of emancipation would take from the Catholic clergy one of the main supports of their power they would find great difficulty to maintain the Catholic religion to the extent it now existed in that country. They would find themselves in a new situation, when they had to contend before a people not inflamed by long-endured grievances that theirs was the religion of reason and the Gospel, and superior to the Protestant doctrines.-Lord Tullamore entered into a review of the political life of Mr. Peel, to prove his constant opposition to the measures he now supported. As to the speculative alarm with respect to Ireland, there had been stronger grounds for enter

taining that alarm prior to the conversion of that gentleman. It was a fixed principle with the Papal See to be satisfied with nothing short of universality and uniformity of religion; and Ireland had always been the chosen spot from whence the court of Rome had attempted again and again to invade the liberties of England. Lord Burleigh had said, prophetically, that England and the English Constitution could never be destroyed but by her own parliament.-Mr. R. Grant had listened last night with considerable interest to the speech of the honourable member for Newark. That honourable member argued the question on the supposition that Catholics should not be, under any circumstance, admitted without limitation into that house. He would contend that the ratio of Catholic representatives could not exceed that of Protestant-their respective interests in the state being considered; and he would not like to see the Catholic ratio of members of Parliament smaller. At present the question was-how the discontent was to be allayed-how the plague was to be stayed in Ireland. Do this by removing grievances that had long oppressed the people of Ireland, and then the honourable member (Mr. Sadler) might submit his other remedies. No alarm needs be entertained of giving additional political power to the Catholics; for if the will to do injury to the Protestant Establishments existed, the power already existed, and the measure to check that power. In supporting it, he should act in accordance with the prayer of the Protestant petitions, "to diminish and not to increase the political power of the Catholics." Granting the Catholics all they had so long sought for, and what every law of religion and nature entitled them to, was not subverting but perfectingthe Constitution. With respect to the oath against.transubstantiation he took it, not as a matter of form; it expressed his fixed and deliberate opinions. Still he never took it without wounded feeling. The honourable member for Newark said that the Constitution required a religious qualification-that is, that all who partook of it should be Christians. But how could that religious qualification be insisted upon; for the oath required from the members of that house did not determine whether the individual who took it were or were not Christian-only that he was not a Roman Catholic. Divine Providence, in joining together those countries by natural and indissoluble ties, admonished them to live together as one and the same people, in the bonds of peace and mutual good-will. This important measure would effect this great object. Let us raise our hearts to the Dispenser of all Good, and, with that elevation of soul, let us proceed in that great work

which we have begun, and which, sooner or later, will find its own way to the final consummation so devoutly to be wished by all good men.-Mr. Trant said that, notwithstanding the eloquent speech just delivered, he felt convinced that the establishment of the Popish religion would be one of the consequences of the measure. He would oppose it, because it tended to destroy that Constitution for which their forefathers had fought and bled. Under this bill, a Jesuit might be Prime Minister of England. He would give every opposition to the measure.-Mr. H. Twiss said it was assumed, by the opponents of the measure, that it went to confer political power upon the Catholics; but it was eligibility to office, and to seats, and not the possession of them, that was conferred by this measure. Under the present bill a Catholic councillor would approach the king in a responsible and public character; but under the existing state of the law, the Popish intriguer might go to the closet of the sovereign in a private and irresponsible character, which was far more dangerous. It was said that the king might chance to be Popish; but this was impossible, for the coronation oath would bind the conscience of the king. On what foundation did the exclusion of Catholics rest? On the statements of Titus Oates. He was the great reformer. Hope had now been kindled too high to be extinguished. Much had been said about securities. The securities he looked to rested on the grateful feelings of those who now required justice. Lord Mountcharles would ask those who characterized the people of Ireland as priest-ridden, what would be their own feelings if they themselves were so designated? Would not the country, from one end to the other, exhibit agitation, if upon such a plea an intention was evinced to deprive it of its privileges? Had not his Majesty's ministers acted as they had done, year after year might still have been spent in distress and feuds. What the genius of Canning, and what the powers of Pitt and Fox, had in vain been exerted to effect, was now happily about to be achieved by the right honourable Secretary for the Home Department. Let him disregard the ebullitions of disappointment, however violent, and stedfastly looking forward to the good of his country, rest satisfied that he would ultimately attain the applause of his own conscience, and the gratitude of every friend to his country. Lord Palmerston, upon a view of the condition of Ireland, was prepared to support the bill. He esteemed as much as any person the conduct of those great men who effected the Revolution of 1688; and he thought it was but a very ill compliment to their memory to say that their steps were followed by excluding any of our fellow-subjects from the

blessings of the Constitution in consequence of their religious opinions. King William came not with Protestantism in one hand and the axe of intolerance in the other. It was said that in the case of a tottering, weak ministry, the Roman Catholics might, by their co-operation and assistance, obtain a mastery. Such a supposition was absurd. The moment a ministry so misconducted itself it would be deserted and crushed by its own baseness. If the question was whether there should be Catholics or not, he would say decidedly, No. But the Roman Catholics were there; and the only question was, what was to be done with them? Whether a new attempt should be made to exterminate them, or whether by kindness they should be converted into friends. He hoped to see the latter course adopted. If the Catholics were dangerous, they had gone already too far in concession, but they could not recede; and if they were not dangerous, they had not gone far enough. Those persons who swayed the passions of five or six millions of Catholics, possessed political power: he called upon the House to strip these men of this dangerous power, and to convert them into supports of the empire. If he wished to convert an unprejudiced Protestant to his opinions on the question, he would take him to the south of Ireland and let him see the open discontent of the peasantry, and the better concealed but rankling jealousy of the gentry; and if that did not convert him he would take him to the north, and then let him see how noble and generous natures might be corrupted and perverted by the possession of an unnatural and monstrous ascendancy over the great majority of their countrymen. These truths afforded a melancholy proof of the evils produced by exclusion. The member for Newark had said, Mulet absentees. I reply, Make Ireland habitable, and the absentees would return. Educate the poor! No; if they wished to maintain the disabilities, they should keep the poor in ignorance. Introduce the poor laws! Why, the Irish were charged with being improvident; the population was considered superabundant. How then would the poor laws serve them? Gentlemen talked very coolly of a civil war; but that barbarism which required civil war would not be sanctioned by the people of England. If the nation was glutted with peace, and like a smothered fire was ready to burst forth in flame; England would recoil with loathing at the prospect of shedding fraternal blood. Whilst they were debating about securities, dangers were increasing; the groaning of the earth warned its inhabitants of approaching convulsion, and the signs of the times excited alarm.

Lord Milton said, the House had been told over and over again of the Protestant

Constitution of 1688; but the laws which were now sought to be repealed were not passed in 1688, but in 1678, and had no relation whatever to the principles of the Revolution.

The Attorney General (Sir Charles Wetherell) said, he was called upon, as the Attorney-General of a Protestant government, to deliver his sentiments on the question. The pain which he suffered from that labour was even surpassed by the pain which he experienced only seven days before the meeting of parliament, on learning that the question, which was usually called Catholic Emancipation, was to be the subject of recommendation to parliament by his majesty's ministers. He never, in the course of all his life, experienced so much pain as when he was told that that large proportion of the house, who conceived themselves to be led by the talents, the experience, and the learning of the right hon. the Secretary for Home Affairs, were, on the first day of the meeting of parliament, to be utterly disbanded, left without a leader, cast forth and abandoned. He did not know whether he was not presuming in addressing the house in the situation in whieh he was now standing, or whether he ought not to speak as the member for Plympton. He was still the King's Attorney-General, and the King's Attorney-General he would remain. He had declined to draw the bill now on the table of the house, because, looking to the oath which he had taken as Attorney-General, he thought he should, by drawing that bill, be abjuring his duty, and be drawing the death-warrant of the Protestant Church. He would maintain, that all those restrictions against the admission of Catholics into parliament or places of power, which existed before the Revolution, were re-established, renewed, and reconfirmed, and enforced by fresh additions, by the Bill of Rights and the statute of King William. The noble member for Yorkshire had called upon the first law authority in that house to controvert, if he could, the positions which he had taken up. He (the Attorney-General) was the first law authority in that House, though perhaps a very fugitive and precarious one, yet certainly he was at present the first law authority in that House. He therefore would accept the noble lord's challenge, and declare that the noble lord's proposition was denied by the undoubted evidence of facts and the testimony of history. Long before the landing of King William in this country, a negotiation was entered into with the Prince and Princess of Orange, having for its object to ascertain "whether they would consent to repeal the penal laws then in force, by which the Catholics were shut out of parliament." He held in his hands a copyof the answer of those eminent persons, which declared that the writers never would consent to repeal the laws

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which excluded Roman Catholics from seats in both houses of parliament, and from all public employments, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, or those other laws which confirmed the Protestant religion, and secured it against all other attempts of Roman Catholics." In answer, then, to the challenge of the noble member for Yorkshire, he would put forth that document. He appealed to facts, and the testimony of undoubted history, to prove that the exclusion of Catholics was a principle before the Revolution, at the Revolution, and after the Revolution, insisted on as part of the constitutional settlement. No circumstances under which he had ever before addressed the house pressed on his feelings with half the severity of those which now induced him to trespass on their attention. When he was asked to frame the bill, he naturally exclaimed-" What! the King's Attorney-General prepare a bill which the Lord Chancellor has declared would subvert the Protestant Church of England!" When his attention was called to this bill, he felt it his duty to look over both the oath taken by the Lord Chancellor, and that taken by the Attorney-General; and it was his judgment, right or wrong, that he was called upon to draw a bill subversive of the Protestant Church, which his majesty was bound by his coronation oath to support. He refused, and would refuse a hundred times over, to put one line to paper of what constitutes the atrocious bill now before the House. He would rather remain as he was, the humble member for Plympton, than be guilty of such apostacy-such contradiction-such unexplainable conversion-such miserable, contemptible apostacy. It was with pain he differed from his right hon. friend. Then he said, Only make the concession I require, and you will have, bye-and-by, the sympathy of foreign countries. What were the sympathies of foreign powers? What was French sympathy when the contest took place between England and her American colonies? What was the sympathy of France when the battle of the Boyne was fought? In 1715, the Pretender advanced; what was French sympathy then? In 1745, he again advanced, and French sympathy was again enlisted in his cause. Since that time, and recently, the same sympathy was afforded to this country by the Jacobin government of France. Amid our dissensions and agitations, may foreign sympathies never interfere. All bills for Catholic emancipation began by asserting that it was desirable to knit together all classes of his majesty's subjects. This universal concord-this amalgamation and mixture of religions, formed part of the schemes of Mr. Grattan, of Lord Plunkett, and of the member for Westminster; but instead of concord, nineteen out of twenty in the country were against the measure.

His

majesty's speech advised that the whole state of Ireland should be considered. Had that been done? He should now take the liberty of proceeding to a consideration of the bill itself. He might put it to honourable members whether they understood the bill. The bill contained an oath which Catholics were to take, instead of the oaths of abjuration and supremacy. These two oaths had excluded them. But there was no provision in the bill which confined this oath to Catholics. A person who was not a Catholic might, by taking it, enjoy the privileges of a Catholic. The oath ought to have stated, "I am a Catholic, and swear so and so.' But the bill did not require any such declaration. There were other things in the bill which deserved notice. A Catholic might be prime minister, his ecclesias tical patronage, however, was to be vested in commissions. And who was to appoint the commissioners? Why, a Protestant Lord Chancellor, But was this sufficient security? Lord Shaftesbury was a Protestant Chancellor, and so was Lord Jeffries. And who would the commissioners select? Would they select Protestants who would not apostatize? When this bill was dissected, it destroyed itself; it admitted the danger, and yet provided no security. for Protestants. He would not have condescended to stultify himself by the composition of such a bill. The Church of Ireland was protected by a flimsy sort of security in this bill. None of the dignitaries of the Romish church were to be permitted, eo nomine, to hold English titles, as nominees of the pope; but these titles might be held by virtue of a 501. bank note, for this was all the penalty inflicted. The Catholic rent would be more than sufficient to paythe duties imposed by this tariff. As to the point that this was not a religious question, he thought there was more in it of religion than politics; and viewing it in that light, he would say to the people of England what had been said to the people of the sister kingdom by a noble marquis, "Go on and defend your rights and religion legally and constitutionally; but go on and defend them; do not apostatize to yourselves, and you will secure your religion, your rights, and privileges untouched." With such feelings he would give the measure before the house every opposition in his power.

Mr. Peel observed, that about threefourths of the speech just delivered ostensibly on the principle of the bill, this defence of the sacred cause of the Protestant Constitution, had rested on personal considerations, and personal imputations. What was the cause of this alleged dereliction of principle-of consistency? A sense of duty, which would relinquish all to accomplish measures which were considered indispensable for the safety of the country. Though the last to declare his sentiments, yet the foremost in casting

aspersions was the honourable gentleman who had just addressed the house; and it was with no little surprise he heard a person in his situation disclosing matters which could have been communicated to him only in official confidence. The time was not yet arrived when he (Mr. Peel) should be at liberty to state all the diffi culties with which his noble friend at the head of the government had had to struggle with repect to the measures which had been introduced, or when justice could be fairly done to him and to those who acted with him. But the time would arrive when this would be done, and when he could satisfactorily explain why only a seven-day's notice had been given of the measures which had been recommended in the speech from the Throne. He would tell the honourable gentleman when it was he had determined to commit his fortune with that of his noble friend on this important question. It was a moment when the difficulties of the question seemed to increase-on the day when the highest authorities in the church declared that they could not give their support to the proposed measure. From that hour, happen what might, he was determined not to abandon his post, but to give to his noble friend all the support he could, as a public man, and to share with him, as a minister, all the responsibility. His duty, as a minister of the crown, did not permit him to disclose what was passing in the cabinet to any man till the mind of the cabinet was made up, and the first man to whom he had made the communication was the honourable gentleman. He felt called on to do this from his confidence in him as his friend, and from respect to his official station. He told him of the whole of the measures intended to be proposed; and for a man, who had this evening expressed such horror at what he now seemed to consider so atrocious a proceeding, he (Mr. Peel) had never seen any one who kept such complete control over his countenance as the right honourable gentleman did on that occasion. When a measure for the suppression of the association was introduced, the honourable gentleman gave it his support, though he was well aware that the intended measures were not intended to be confined to that act. Was it fair to give such a support to a measure which was passed on the implied condition that it was to be followed by another? The honourable gentleman who last spoke stated, that there was one part of the question to which he would not advert: and what was that? Why, the state of Ireland. That was the very trifling and unimportant point of the case on which he would not touch. Why, the honourable gentleman must know as well as any man one circumstance connected with that pointthat the common law of the land was not found sufficient to put down the Catholic