—A petition of the mayor, bailiff's, and commonalty, of the city of Oxford, in common council assembled, was presented to the house, and read; setting forth, "that the petitioners having seen, by the votes of the house, that a petition has been introduced there from certain Roman catholics of Ireland, on behalf of themselves and others, professing the Roman catholic religion, complaining of divers restraints and incapacities to which they are subject, by the statutes now in force against them, and praying to be relieved there from; the petitioners pray the house, that the several statutes constituting and establishing those restraints and incapacities, of which the said petition complains; may be preserved inviolate, inasmuch as those statutes appear to have been devised, by the wisdom of our ancestors, as the best and surest means of giving permanency and security to the protestant government of this country in church and state, and as, in the firm belief of the petitioners, the same or equally as strong, reasons now exist for the continuance of those statutes as when they were enacted."—Ordered, than the said petition do lie upon the table.