546 Ch. 41. 1801 THE MAYNOOTH QUESTION. themselves entitled to complain that they had not been apprized of a project of such importance as a scheme for the settlement of the Catholic question. Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor, reproached the Lord Lieutenant and the Secretary in bitter terms for withholding from him the intentions of the Government. Clare, having been deep in the counsels of the Union, might well feel slighted, at being kept in ignorance of a matter so intimately connected with that great transaction. But there was a reason for this reserve. The Chancellor of Ireland was the most uncompromising, and by far the ablest and most influential among the opponents of the Catholic claims. He was not a man to be conciliated, corrupted, or silenced; he was deeply committed against any further concession to the Catholics; his conduct on the Maynooth Bill, in 1799, was not forgotten. The object of that Bill was to provide for the education in Ireland of students intended for the Catholic priesthood; and it formed part of the measure for the endowment of the Romish clergy, a branch of the great scheme of conciliation by which the Government sought to effect the substantial union of the two kingdoms. The Maynooth Bill had passed the Irish House of Commons as a Government Bill; but when it went up to the Lords, the Chancellor broke out into an invective against the Catholic priesthood, denounced the policy of supporting institutions for the education of the priests, and would not suffer the Bill to go into Committee. It LORD CLARE'S OPPOSITION. is probable, therefore, that Lord Clare would have made use of any information which might have been imparted to him as to the views of the Cabinet on the Catholic question, to raise a Protestant alarm in Ireland, and ensure the defeat of the whole policy. Another person, who felt himself aggrieved by the reserve of the Government, was Lord Auckland. This busy, mischievous politician, presuming partly on Pitt's friendship, and partly on an overweening conceit of his own importance, thought proper to write a long letter to Pitt, reproaching him as if he had been guilty of treacherous dissimulation, condemning the supposed measures, and intimating very plainly his expectation, that, in consequence of his disapproval, they would be abandoned. Pitt immediately answered this ebullition of impertinence and vanity with half a dozen caustic lines, which put a summary end to the correspondence. The removal of the Test was not proposed, nor, as it would seem, even incidentally discussed, at the subsequent meetings of the Cabinet. At a Cabinet, on the ninth of October, probably the next meeting of the Ministers after the memorable Cabinet of the thirteenth of September, Pitt gave Lord Liverpool to understand that he was against the measure. Shortly before the opening of Par So Lord Liverpool told General Harcourt on the first of March following. Lady HARCOURT'S MS. Diary. The old lord complained that his colleagues had been accustomed to pay little attention to him. 547 Ch. 41. 1801 548 1801 LOUGHBOROUGH'S ADVICE TO THE KING. k Ch. 41. liament, the King asked the Chancellor whether anything was in contemplation? and Loughborough replied, nothing but a Tithe Bill, which he was himself preparing, and a scheme for pensioning the Catholic and Dissenting clergy. About the same time Loughborough drew up an elaborate paper, in which all the arguments against the Catholic claims were summed up with great ability, but not containing a word either for or against the one objection, which the King considered insuperable his Coronation Oath. This paper appears to have been laid before his Majesty on the thirteenth of December. On the twentieth of January, the Archbishop of Canterbury, instigated probably by his brother-in-law, Lord Auckland, obtained an audience of the King to warn him against the measure of Catholic emancipation, which his Ministers were about to bring forward. A few days after this interview, the King brought the matter to a crisis, by his conversation with Dundas at the levee. On the thirty-first of January, Pitt addressed a letter to his Majesty, announcing that a majority of the Cabinet, including himself, were of opinion, that the admission of the Catholics and Dissenters to offices, and of the Catholics, as well as Dissenters, to Parliament, would, under certain conditions,, be highly ad Lord Loughborough's defence of his conduct.-Lord CAMPBELL'S Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vi. PELLEW'S Life of Lord Sidmouth, Appendix, vol. i. Lady HARCOURT'S MS. Diary. PITT'S ADVICE TO THE KING. visable, with a view to the tranquillity and improvement of Ireland, and to the general interest of the United Kingdom. The Minister then proceeded to recite the various reasons which had determined him in this opinion. He declared that opinion to be unalterable; and he concluded by distinctly intimating that his continuance in office must depend on his Majesty's consent to the proposed measures. 549 Ch. 41. 1801 reply to Pitt. The next day the King answered this letter. The King's He said that, according to his view, the Coronation Oath absolutely precluded him from entertaining any proposition inconsistent with the maintenance of the Protestant establishment, which expressly disqualified Papists from holding any employment in the state. He added that Mr. Pitt's proposition was not only one of this character, but that it tended to the overthrow of the whole fabric. The King, unwilling, however, to part with his Minister, proposed what he seemed to consider a compromise; namely, that if Mr. Pitt would refrain from pressing the question, his Majesty would say nothing more against the pretensions of his Catholic subjects. resign. Pitt's reply was an absolute tender of his Pitt's offer to resignation, which the King could no longer refuse to accept. Pitt has been censured for committing himself to the policy of Catholic emancipation, knowing as he did, in common with every other man engaged in public life, the strong repugnance of the King 550 Ch. 41. 1801 DIFFICULTIES AS TO to any material concession of the Catholic claims. And he was supposed by some to have failed in his duty to the King, in withholding from his Majesty all information as to the measures which the Government contemplated proposing to Parliament with reference to this important question. But I do not understand that the Minister is under any obligation, either of duty or of courtesy, to confer with the Sovereign on any question of policy which may be under the consideration of the Cabinet. In former times, when the council deliberated in the presence of the Sovereign, he was the chief of his Ministers; but the modern system of Parliamentary Government, which involves the absolute and exclusive responsibility of the Ministers of the Crown, is incompatible with the participation of the Sovereign in the counsels of the Cabinet. If he disapproves of its policy, he has an appeal to the great council of the nation, and ultimately to the nation itself. But he cannot also have a voice in the policy against which he has the power of appeal. Mr. Pitt was therefore under no obligation to take the King's pleasure, with reference to any measure which he proposed to lay before Parliament, until the counsels of his Cabinet were fully matured. It is another question, whether Mr. Pitt, knowing as he did, since 1795, the King's strong repugnance to the Catholic claims, should have committed himself irretrievably to the policy of concession, without taking any pains to ascertain how far it was pro |