HC Deb 31 May 1811 vol 20 cc368-9
Mr. Hutchinson

presented a Petition from the Roman Catholics of the county and city of Cork, whose names are thereunto subscribed, on behalf of themselves and others his Majesty's subjects, professing the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland, setting forth,

"That the Roman Catholics of Ireland, amounting to nearly five millions of his Majesty's subjects, constituting a vast majority of the population of that part of the united kingdom, and contributing largely and liberally to encrease the revenues, and to recruit the fleets and armies of the empire, have long suffered, and do still suffer, from the restraint of laws humiliating in their provisions, and most injurious in their effects; and that their services to the country have been at all times conspicuous and important; at home they have improved and extended the arts, agriculture and manufactures, abroad they have promoted the success and exalted the glory of the British arms, yet are they ignominiously proscribed from all the higher ranks of trust or honour in the state, shut out from the just rewards of a laudable ambition, and degraded below the condition of the meanest of their fellow subjects; the petitioners beg leave to state that they yield to none in loyalty to the King, obedient to the laws, attachment to their country, and in the great duties of morality to their fellow subjects, to whom they are bound by close consanguinity, daily social intercourse, friendship formed in earliest days of childhood, and cemented through the successive stages of life, and from whom they cannot separate their interests, one of the strongest ties on the human mind; under these circumstances, the petitioners most earnestly solicit the attention of the House to the imminent dangers which must result from a system of legislation so oppressive and impolitic, at a time when our mighty enemy has laid prostrate almost every other nation of Europe, rendered incapable of effectual resistance by the discontents and disunion of their people, and when the safety of our own is threatened by the same powerful and implacable foe; and they do beg leave to state, that to restore to the Roman Catholics of Ireland a full and unqualified participation in the benefits of the constitution of their country, and to remove all the restrictions and vexatious distinctions which affect them, is now become a measure absolutely necessary for the preservation of this kingdom from the perils which surround it; and praying the House to take into its most serious consideration the nature, extent and operation of the aforesaid penal laws, and by repealing the same altogether, to restore to the Roman Catholics of Ireland those rights so long withheld, and their due share in that constitution, which they, in common with their fellow subjects of every other, description, contribute, by taxes by arms and by industry, to sustain and defend."

Ordered to lie upon the table.