Commons Sitting of 14 April 1847

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS. Reported.—Exchequer Bills 18,310,700 l.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Sir J. Hope, from Members of the Kirk Session of the Parish of Ratho, against the Marriage (Scotland) Bill.—By Mr. Finch, from Burley-on-the-Hill, and from Knossington, for Repeal of the Maynooth College Act.—By Colonel Austen and several other Hon. Members, from a great many places, against the Roman Catholic Relief Bill.—By the Earl of Arundel and Surrey and several other Hon. Members, from a great many places, in Favour of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill.—By Mr. W. Patten, from Blackburn, against the Rating of Tenements (No. 2) Bill.—By Mr. Henry Berkeley and other Hon. Members, from several places, against the Proposed Plan of Education.—By Mr. Christopher and other Hon. Members, from several places, in Favour of the Proposed Plan of Education.—By Mr. Christopher, from Guardians of the Poor of the Sleaford Union, for Repeal or Alteration of the Poor Removal Act; and from Gainsborough, in Favour of the Ports, Harbour, &c. Bill (1846).—By M. H. Berkeley, from Bristol, and Mr. C. Russell, from Reading, for the Suppression of Promiscuous Intercourse.

ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL.
On the Order of the Day for the House to resolve itself into a Committee on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill,
SIR R. H. INGLISsaid: Sir, when I recollect that the present Bill within the last month nearly met with its rejection by this House; that it was saved by a majority of only three; and that a Bill, almost precisely the same, was, as it ought to have been, rejected by a majority of 120 to 80 in the course of the last Session—I think the most fastidious Member of this House will not accuse me of giving any unwarrantable trouble to the House when I ask them to reverse their last decision, and to return to that sounder course of policy which they adopted last year when they rejected a similar measure. And, Sir, when I consider the immense importance of the principle involved in this matter, I trust I have still less reason to apologize to the House for intimating thus early my intention of again taking the sense of the House upon this question. Sir, this is one of a series of measures having for their direct tendency—I will not say their design and object, for I acquit the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kinsale (Mr. Watson) of any such design—but I cannot conceal from myself that this is one of a series of measures having the direct tendency to unprotestantise the Constitution of England, and to degrade its Church. But it is not a question affecting the
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Church of England only—it is a question affecting the Protestantism of England; and I trust that those Protestants who are not united with the Church in respect to certain formularies, which I myself regard as of the greatest importance, but which they do not look upon in the same light—I trust that those Protestants will support, in this House, as I know they have supported out of doors, the rejection of this Bill. I am aware, Sir, that the hon. and learned Member for Kinsale has given notice in the Votes of the House of sundry alterations, and of the insertion of new clauses in the Bill, which he regards as likely to mitigate the opposition which the measure has hitherto received. But, in the first place, these clauses, as announced in the Votes, touch nothing but the latter half of the Bill — that portion of the Bill which would virtually repeal certain clauses in the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act of the year 1829. They leave perfectly unamended the larger portion of the Bill, which refers to those earlier provisions and securities taken by the Constitution of England in favour of its Church and of its Protestantism. Even if those clauses, of which the hon. and learned Gentleman has given notice, were at this moment adopted by acclamation on the part of the House, although they would, to a certain degree, modify the character of the Bill, they would not so change that character as to justify me for a moment in relaxing my general opposition to the measure. Sufficient would remain, even if these clauses were inserted in the Bill, to justify mo, so far as I can form an opinion upon the measure as a question of policy, in urging upon the House its rejection. Seeing the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General in his place, I wish to call his attention to a legal objection which I entertain to the Bill as it now stands, or even as it may be modified by the proposed Amendments. I consider that England is at this moment a Protestant State and empire; and I consider that the provisions of this Bill tend to destroy that character. I admit, indeed, that persons who are not Protestants have been allowed, by the Act of 1829, to take a share in the legislation of this empire—I admit still more, that there are members of communions dissenting from the Church of England, and especially members of the Church of Rome, permitted, by the exercise of official patronage, to change in a great degree the external character of the Established Church

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in this country. But that to which I wish to call the attention of the law advisors of the Crown is this—that I consider I am justified in maintaining that at this moment England is a Protestant State; and thank God for it; for it is the great ornament and bulwark of this country that she can be so described; and God forbid that any of those who call themselves Protestants should ever be ashamed of that which is their distinction, their honour, and their blessing! But while I claim for England its general character of Protestantism, I also specially claim it for the Crown, inasmuch as the Sovereign is essentially and necessarily a Protestant—and more than that, a member of the reformed Protestant Church of England. I consider that this is established by statute law, which I believe the Bill on the Table of the House is calculated materially to shake and endanger; and I wish the law officers of the Crown to have an opportunity of following me if they please, and of stating whether or not I am correct in my position, that the Bill, as it stands, does virtually greatly damage and endanger that security which the country now enjoys for the maintenance of its Protestant character, by the fact that the Sovereign is necessarily a member of our Protestant Church. The point to which I wish to call the attention of the House and of the Attorney General is not, I venture to think, one absolutely unimportant, while it is one which we have not yet discussed. By the Bill of the hon. and learned Member for Kinsale, as it stands at present, and as it would stand even after the alterations of which he has given notice, he proposes to repeal the whole of the Act of the 25th Charles II., and also, the whole of the Statute of the second Session of the 30th of Charles II., entitled—
"An Act for the more effectually preserving the King's Person and Government, by disabling Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament."
And my point is this: By the statute which I have last mentioned, every person on being admitted to take his seat in either House of Parliament, was to make a certain declaration. Every one knows, however, that under the Act of 1829, the obligation to make such a declaration has ceased, and that Members are admitted to both Houses without making any such declaration. But that is not the case with respect to the declaration required from the Sovereign, by the Bill of Rights—a
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statute which no one, notwithstanding the spirit of innovation perceptible in modern legislation, has had the hardihood hitherto to touch. The Sovereign, at the first meeting of Parliament after his or her accession, is bound to recite, in an audible manner, sitting on the Throne, that declaration; and we all know that our present Most Gracious Sovereign, sitting on the Throne, in the hearing of many whom I am now addressing, recited that declaration soon after Her accession to the Throne. I wish to ask whether Her Majesty's Attorney General will be pleased to state how far that famous Bill of Rights will hold good in this respect to bind the Sovereign, when this measure of the hon. and learned Member for Kinsale has repealed, as it now proposes to do, the whole of the Act in which that declaration was included? And whether anything will remain for the Bill of Rights to work upon, so far as that declaration is concerned, which it imposes on the Sovereign; and which I trust the House will recollect is a national testimony borne against the Roman Catholic religion by the first magistrate of the State—as a republican would call it, but, as I say, by our Most Gracious Sovereign; and being a declaration of principles enforced as one essential condition of the occupation of the Throne—the principles on which the House of Brunswick has been called to the Throne? If the Throne be not occupied by them as Protestants, prepared to maintain the doctrines of Protestantism; prepared to maintain not merely the doctrines of Protestantism, but of that peculiar form of Protestantism which is professed by the Church of England, I, for one, know not what right they have to the Throne. Every one who hears me knows that they are a younger branch of the Royal Family of England who were selected for the Throne because they were Protestants, and on the express condition of making this declaration. That declaration is a national protest against the Roman Catholic Church, essentially interwoven with the Constitution; and I contend that it is intended to be and ought to be held inviolable. But this, I say, is risked by the Bill of the hon. and learned Member; for the hon. and learned Member repeals the whole of the statute in which this declaration is included, leaving, indeed, the Bill of Rights, but leaving it so that no declaration, as I apprehend, will be required of the Sovereign. At any rate, until the law officers of the Crown tell me

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that this supposition is unfounded, which to me appears to be the plain, simple, and obvious inference, I shall continue to believe that, in this matter, a question has been raised which is not wholly unworthy the attention of the House and the law officers of the Crown. The words of the statute imposing the declaration are these—and they are the words of the Bill of Rights, let it be remembered:—
"And that every King and Queen of this Realm who, at any time hereafter, shall come to and succeed in the Imperial Crown of this kingdom, shall, on the first day of the meeting of the First Parliament next, after His or Her coming to the Crown, sitting on His or Her Throne in the House of Peers, in the presence of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or at His or Her Coronation, before such person or persons who shall administer the Coronation Oath to Him or Her, at the time of His or Her taking the said Oath (which shall first happen)"—
and, as we know, the meeting of Parliament after the accession having first happened, Her Most Gracious Majesty had taken the declaration—
"then make, subscribe, and audibly repeat the declaration mentioned in the Statute made in the 30th year of the reign of King Charles the Second, entitled an 'Act for the more effectually preserving the King's Person and Government by disabling Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament.'"
If the statute which enacts the declaration which the Bill of Rights provided that the Sovereigns of this country should repeat on the Throne at the beginning of each reign, is to be bodily repealed by this Bill, then I ask whether the Bill does not shake that security which the nation possesses in this declaration, that so long as the House of Brunswick shall reign in this country it shall remain Protestant? The words of the declaration itself I need not read; but according to the statute it has been subscribed by perhaps 300 Members of this House; and without reviving the discussion as to the propriety of repealing that declaration, so far as Members of either House of Parliament are concerned, this at least I must say, that that which the deliberate wisdom of Parliament in the year 1829 continued to require from the Sovereign, should not be endangered by any proceeding under the Bill of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kinsale. I feel that there are strong objections to the Bill, even after all the Amendments in it which the hon. and learned Gentleman has felt himself at liberty to make. I stated on a former occasion—and I am now ready to repeat—that the Bill is an improvement
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on the Bill of last year. But I still consider that much of the present Bill is either needless or objectionable and dangerous. I told the hon. and learned Gentleman, on a former occasion, that the first Act which he proposes to repeal, has been already repealed by the Roman Catholic Disabilities Act of last Session, so far as making it punishable to maintain the Papal supremacy. I have also told the hon. and learned Gentleman, without meaning to convey anything personally offensive, that his historical research was very inferior to his legal acquirements; and it appears that the hon. and learned Gentleman, even with the assistance of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. B. Escott), could only produce one solitary instance of a punishment under the Act, that instance having occurred two hundred and sixty years ago. I have already told the hon. and learned Gentleman—and I now repeat the statement, as he has not thought proper to endeavour to remove the objection—I have told him, and now repeat, that his Bill, with all its—I do not mean to use the words offensively—with all its pretended liberality, cares for no parties except Roman Catholics, and leaves the case of other sects untouched. Such terms as these—"So far as the same relates to Roman Catholics"—are constantly recurring in this Bill. I am not prepared to deny that there may not be provisions in the Statute-book which ought to be in part, at least, repealed at the present time; but such statutes, if there be any such, can be brought under the consideration of the House in a separate Bill, unmixed with much that is positively detrimental, and much that is absolutely nugatory. I say this not on my own authority only, but on much higher authority. Professional friends of mine have examined this Bill, and think it possible that there may be certain provisions in existing statutes which may admit, not disadvantageously, of some revision. I give that, however, rather as the opinion of professional gentlemen than as my own, inasmuch as I cannot profess to speak confidently upon such a point. But I do speak confidently in respect to the point to which I have already called the attention of Her Majesty's Attorney General and of the House; and I repeat that that point is one which requires our special attention. I have stated that I consider the present Bill as one of a series of aggressive measures upon the Protestant Establishment. If I shall feel

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myself obliged to use language towards the Church of Rome which may give pain to any individual Member, I can truly say that I regret the necessity which compels I me to do so; for in the course of my life—and I am now no longer young—it has been my happiness to know, in the House of Commons and out of it, many members of that Church, to whom, irrespective of any other considerations, on private grounds alone, I should deeply regret to give pain. But I cannot, in the discharge of a public duty, which I regard as imperative upon me, refrain from making, even in their presence, statements which I believe to be not only true, but necessary. I regard the Church of Rome as having been, for three centuries, the inexorable and un-unchangeable enemy of Protestantism in Europe; and especially in this country the unchangeable foe of the Church of England. I say unchangeable, because I challenge any individual who is either himself a member of that Church, or who, like the hon. Member for Kinsale in this House, ably represents its interests, to contest this point with me—that, as far as its hostility to Protestantism is concerned, the Church of Rome has not changed one jot nor one tittle for the last three centuries; and although I believe that there have been moments in the history of Europe in which the pretensions of the Church of Rome have been allowed conveniently to sleep, there has never been a day in which those pretensions have been either publicly denied by that Church, or in any degree qualified. I say there have been times when its pretensions have been allowed conveniently to sleep; and I ask those who—good, easy men—in 1829 held that the danger to be apprehended from the Church of Rome existed only in the fanatical imagination of some wild Protestants, whether there have not been witnessed, during the last fifty years, scenes in which the pretensions of the Church of Rome have been proved to be as vigorous as ever, and as practical as ever? I ask the hon. and learned Member whether, in 1783, it would have been conceived possible that any Pope would have dreamt of absolving the subjects of France from their allegiance to the reigning monarch, and transferring that allegiance to another. Could more have been done in the sixteenth century? In the sixteenth century it was done; and Pope Pius the Fifth, who absolved the subjects of the English Sovereign from their allegiance, has been canonized by the
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Church of Rome; and though Roman Catholic sovereigns have frequently caused those parts of the service relating to St. Pius to be withdrawn from the breviaries in their dominions, the saint's name has again re-appeared at a convenient season. I have referred to evidence on this subject, partly in my own possession and partly elsewhere, extending from 1783 to 1810, and, again, from 1810 to last year, and I find that the services both of Pius the 5th and Gregory the 7th appear at this day, in the reviving strength and energy of the Church of Rome, in the breviaries; and until some evidence shall be given far more important than the declaration of hon. Members of this House that the Church of Rome is curbed, and is no longer a lion but a lamb—till that shall take place, I shall believe the evidence of my own eyes, and think that they have not renounced the claims thundered formerly from the Vatican by Pius the 5th, and Gregory the 7th; but that they have at this moment the same arms in their arsenal ready to be exerted on any occasion convenient to Rome. In 1801, the year after he had absolved the French subjects from their allegiance to their sovereign, the Pope dismissed from their sees no less than 100 bishops who would not join him in recognising that sovereign. The very Pope who has been considered by every Englishman as a model, and whose courtesy to the English at Rome has made him the subject of their just gratitude, has never made any alteration in the rules adopted by his predecessors regarding the liberty and independence of any other Church. I cannot consider it unworthy of notice that this most liberal Pope has not yet withdrawn his prohibition which prevents Englishmen from having any place of worship within his eternal city. At this moment can it be denied by any member of the Church of Rome, or any of its advocates, that the order of Jesuits, which order it was the especial object of the Legislature in 1829 to check and finally suppress in this country, is at this moment creating as much civil disturbance in other parts of Europe as two centuries ago. Can we forget their conduct in France, in Switzerland, and in Germany? [Lord J. MANNERS: Hear!] I hear an ominous cheer from the noble Lord with whom it is my misfortune to differ on this occasion; but does he mean to deny that the Jesuits, as such—I will take no less than this—that the Jesuits, as such, have been denounced as the disturbers of

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the public peace in France, in Switzerland, and in Belgium? In Belgium does any one forget what the Jesuits have done and are doing with respect to the University of Louvain? Does any one forget how the Jesuits have gained that kingdom almost to themselves against, be it remembered, the episcopacy of the Church of Rome? And yet it is this order of men which the Bill of the hon. and learned Member proposes to legalize in this country, when it was the express object of the Legislature in 1829 here at least to suppress that order. There is another point which renders this subject at all times interesting to our Church, particularly so at the present moment, and makes this the most unfitting time to grant further concessions. At this moment in Germany, in France, and even in England, the Church of Rome is interposing new obstacles to the peace of civil society by its conduct with respect to mixed marriages; and however conscientious the objections involved in their doctrine on the subject may be, this at least is clear, that the sympathy of the liberals is a thing which à priori could not have been anticipated. I may observe that the very Pope who made the concordat with Bonaparte — as if the Church of Rome, in his person at least, should never lose its right in this respect—proceeded in 1809 to excommunicate the very prince with whom he had made the concordat, then ruler of France. These facts have been recently brought forward in a work of Dr. Wordsworth, which is well worthy the attention of the House. I know there are those who regard the real danger to the Church of England—I cannot say the danger to Protestantism—to arise, not from the Church of Rome, but from those of an opposite extreme in religion. To me, this opinion appears not only founded on error in judgment, but to be productive of extreme danger, in fact. It carries us off to defend a post not attacked; while it leaves open the gates to a numerous, formidable, and united foe. Such I believe the Church of Rome to be. Under such circumstances, I will not deny myself the gratification of repeating that to Protestantism as such—not being negative, because it is not, but the testimony of faithful men to the great truths they find in the Bible—I am so much attached, that though I prefer that particular form of Protestantism which is at once the shrine, the bulwark, and the glory of England, I will deliberately say that I prefer any sect
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of men holding the doctrines of the Bible, and carrying the Bible in their hands—that is, the authorized version, and not any improved version used by those who deny the divinity of our blessed Lord—to those who withhold the Scriptures altogether. But it is not necessary for my present purpose that I should take my stand on that ground. I regard this, as I have already said, as one of the many measures which, in the course of the last 50 years, have been advanced for the purpose of extinguishing, if possible, or at all events degrading, the established religion of this country, and Protestantism in general. Regarding this Bill as one of these measures, I feel it my duty distinctly and permanently to oppose it. I will not consent to any further concession. I look at foreign countries, and I see that there is no foreign country governed by a Roman Catholic sovereign, with the exception of Belgium, which will admit the order of Jesuits under such circumstances as the hon. and learned Member proposes to admit them. I look at Rome, and its influence on civil society wherever it exists; and I see that nothing has hitherto satisfied that Church, and I believe nothing will satisfy it, which is consistent with the maintenance of the Church of England in its present position, and, I am compelled to add, with the existence of Protestantism. Under these circumstances, I call on the noble Lord, the leader of this House, not to forget the dying words of his immortal ancestor—words which, uttered at such a time, and by such a man, may be regarded almost as prophetic, "to resist the progress of Popery." That resistance was one of the great objects of his life; and while I admit that many wise and good men have felt it not inconsistent with their duty, or even with their professed regard for the interests of the Church of England and Protestantism, to remove certain of the disabilities which have hitherto pressed on the Roman Catholics, I call on my noble Friend the Prime Minister of England to act in the spirit of his illustrious ancestor, and resist any further measures which have for their object and tendency that which I believe to be equally included in this Bill—namely, the degradation of the Church of England, the humiliation of Protestantism, and the final ascendancy of the Church of Rome. Under these circumstances I feel I should not be doing my duty if I did not move that this Bill be committed this day six months.
The EARL of ARUNDEL and SURREY: I trust I shall be allowed to trespass on the time of the House for a few minutes on a subject which no doubt has engaged the attention of every thinking man in this country, and which particularly interests me; as, though there is no more loyal subject of Her Majesty, I am one of those who acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Church of Rome. I shall not venture on the question of the merits or demerits of any particular class of the clergy of the Church of Rome. I shall take my stand on the necessity of some such measure as this to the general religious freedom of the empire. I shall endeavour—and I hope I shall succeed—to state my views without hurting the feelings of any one who may differ in opinion from me. The Church of Rome has been accused by many hon. Members of persecution. I am not prepared to deny that many members of that Church have been guilty of persecution. But I may be allowed to observe that each of those acts of persecution should be estimated according to the spirit and temper of the times in which they occurred; and I may point to the Old Testament as containing much that may appear to authorize the persecution and extermination of those belonging to unhallowed creeds, The passages I refer to are, of course, familiar to hon. Members—those which relate to the conduct of the Israelites as to those who did not belong to the "chosen people," and impeded their progress towards the land of promise. For some centuries previous to the sixteenth century, I need not remind hon. Members, the whole of Western Europe was of one faith, with such trifling exceptions that they are hardly worth mentioning. The Arian heresy, and others, had formerly made considerable progress, but speaking generally, the fact was so at the period to which I refer; but in the sixteenth century the whole relations of society were overturned and upset by the general rise of the Reformation. Many heresies then sprung up, and many have continued to this day. And here allow me to point out a sensible distinction which the Church makes between a heretic and the members of a heresy. A heretic is one who, having once belonged to the Catholic religion, himself disputes its dogmas, and stands up for a different profession of faith. But a heresy once founded, the members of it are not considered guilty in the same degree, if at all, nor are they looked upon as deserving the same punish-
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ments, or as exposed to the same penalties. There are belonging to all the heresies which have come down to the present day, men, I do not hesitate to say, of the utmost sincerity and of the greatest virtue; and who, in my belief, if the Catholic faith had been properly submitted to them, would have embraced it. With such men it is impossible that any other means of conversion should be used than that mode of teaching which the apostles sanctioned in promulgating the gospel. The evil of any other mode is pointed out by the occurrences which took place in France in the time of Louis XIV., when he sent forth his dragoons to force the Protestants into submission. The bold refused to accept the proffered faith, and were slaughtered in the field; the timid accepted the State form of worship, and were nominally Catholics. But the repressed opinions continued under the surface of society, until a wider ulcer was formed, and the disastrous events of the end of the last century were the consequence. France is now labouring under the effects of the illegitimate repression of religious opinion. I therefore argue, that it is wrong and impossible to control men's minds by force, or to throw any restrictions in the way of the profession of any creed, other than by the legitimate means of persuasion and explanation. My hon. Friend who has just sat down says that the Church of Rome is antagonistic to Protestantism. I quite agree with him; it is antagonistic, and will be while the world lasts, until Protestantism is extinguished. I remember a somewhat striking incident which occurred to myself, and which may serve to illustrate my meaning. When travelling in Greece, about ten years ago, I was guided to an ancient temple ten miles east of Marathon. I there found a stranger who had passed some days in studying the ruins: he was a Mexican of Spanish blood. Looking at this temple, thousands of years old, considering that in its immediate neighbourhood the Persian force had been repelled by those whose descendants had been since conquered, and who had groaned under the Ottoman power, many suggestions forced themselves on the mind; and when reflecting that there stood near me a Mexican descendant of the few brave Spaniards who had overturned the throne of Montezuma, and who ruled for a long period the continent which they subdued—looking back on the whole face of empires which had vanished away—of religions which were forgotten, or remembered

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in poetry alone—observing that Catholics, Greeks, and Protestants were represented before that temple—I could not help asking myself which of the religions, Catholic or Protestant, was to stand to the last hour; and faith has led my feeble and untutored mind to the same conclusion as that to which the grasping intellect and great historic learning of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh has arrived; and in the long vista of forthcoming ages, I see, with him, the "stranger from New Zealand in the midst of a vast solitude, sitting on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's;" and in that distant hour, following his prophecy, I see the successor of St. Peter, exercising in the full plenitude of his power those spiritual gifts which were bestowed upon the Prince of the Apostles by the Son of Jehovah, and of a lowly Hebrew virgin. I will never relinquish one iota as to the superiority of my Church, for I am persuaded that our descendants will see the Catholic faith triumphant after England itself has psssed away and been forgotten. I shall, of course, give my support to the Bill of my hon. and learned Friend.
MR. PLUMPTREsaid, the noble Lord had told the House plainly—and he did not blame him for speaking what he felt to be the honest truth—that a contest was going on by Popery against Protestantism, and that it would go on until Protestantism itself became extinct. That was the noble Lord's assertion. As far as the noble Lord was concerned, that was his intention, and as far as the noble Lord was a representative of the Church of Rome, that was the intention of his Church; and this Bill was only part and parcel of that contest. The noble Lord had spoken out very plainly, and he thanked him for it. What the Protestants lamented was, that they knew not where to find their enemies; they might be bold to-day, when it suited their purpose; but to-morrow, when it might not be so convenient to them — when they might be met by a superior power, they might hold their peace; but the noble Lord, as an honest man and an open antagonist, had told them plainly what was the purpose of his Church; his language was plain and intelligible, and the Protestants of this country were prepared to meet it by entirely opposite language. He agreed with the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, that nothing was more painful to him individually than to be obliged, in taking part on this sub-
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ject, to say anything objectionable to any of those hon. Members of the Church of Rome who might be present. Nothing could be further from his wish than to say anything that might inflict pain upon the feelings of others; but they must not refrain from speaking the truth because they might hurt the feelings of others; and when the contest was plainly, and honestly, and fairly declared to be the contest of one Church against another, it would hardly become those who were interested on the side of Protestantism to be silent when they heard language such as that which was uttered by the noble Lord. They were prepared to oppose this measure, because they thought it was part of that system which the noble Lord told them was decidedly being carried forward by his Church against Protestantism. The Protestants were alive to this subject—they could not help seeing what had been going on on the part of Popery in this country of late years. Before the Bill of 1829 was passed, they were told by the Roman Catholics, "Grant us this Bill to remove our civil disabilities; we will be thankful to you, and you will receive no further trouble from us;" but from what they had seen of the acts of the Church of Rome since that time, could they say that the Roman Catholics were pacified by that measure? He believed that reflecting men were of opinion that the Catholics would be anything but satisfied with it. He believed, and he thought his expectation had been verified, that it would be a bonus for further agitation. And now they were told plainly that the contest was going on, and should go on, until Protestantism was extinct, and Popery was reascendant. That was the language of the noble Lord, who, he supposed, might be looked upon as a fair representative of the Church of Rome. But they who differed in opinion from the noble Lord, entertaining for him as an estimable man every feeling of respect, were determined to maintain that contest so far as they had strength and power. They believed that there was a steady and increasing feeling in this country upon the subject; and they would meet their opponents face to face in that contest, and would do all in their power to stand forward for Protestantism, and for the cause of truth. He was not afraid that the Church of Rome might create, as in times past, great trouble, much unhappiness and misery; she might become a persecuting Church, and

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the noble Lord seemed to think that there was some justification for her being so. The noble Lord quoted Scripture to show it. The noble Lord certainly did allude to the Old Testament—he did not go with the noble Lord — he thought the noble Lord's argument was very weak and inconclusive; but the noble Lord did refer to the Old Testament; and, if he understood him, the noble Lord looked upon the permission given to the Israelites to exterminate the nations that stood between them and the promised land as justifying the acts, the ancient acts, of the Church of Rome. He said, that the Church of Rome might be carrying on that contest, and might be disposed, when she thought it convenient, and found that she had the power to do so, to become a persecuting Church. She might be disposed to give this country and others, in proportion as she regained power, trouble, and such as might lead to great misery; but when the noble Lord spoke as the result of the contest that Protestantism was to become extinct under the foot of the Church of Rome, he was not afraid of such a result. He was satisfied that Protestantism was founded on a rock. He only shrank from and deprecated the struggle which the Church of Rome was promoting, and which hon. Members not of that Church were in their measures promoting, by advocating such a Bill as that now before the House; he took no part in such a measure—it was only parcel of that contest which was to be carried on against Protestantism unto the end, and on that ground he should oppose it.
LORD H. VANEsaid, the hon. Member who had last addressed the House, seemed, to have wandered widely from the subject. If any one were to read the Bill, with the Amendments now proposed by the hon. Member for Kinsale, he could not see how it was possible to take such a course in the debate. He considered the hon. Member who had just sat down had misrepresented, or at least misunderstood, the observations which had fallen from the noble Lord (Lord Arundel), though he must at the same time observe that the sentiments which that noble Lord had uttered were not his. He did not think that the Church of Rome would succeed over the Protestant Church, nor that they both would become one. This, he was persuaded, was also the opinion of the great body of the people of this country. Still he thought the hon. Member (Mr. Plumptre) had misunderstood the argument employed by his noble
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Friend. The hon. Member had alleged that the noble Lord supported persecution, because he had referred to certain passages in the Old Testament, which authorized the Jewish people to sweep other nations out of their path, and that therefore the Roman Catholics might again feel themselves justified in adopting a system of persecution for the propagation of their faith. Now what he understood his noble Friend to say was, to judge of persecution, you must look to the prevalent opinions of the period, and that in bygone days persecution generally prevailed and pervaded the conduct of all religious sects and opinions. Toleration, in fact, had not been, understood or practised till within the last century and a half. But his noble Friend abjured persecution now, and only expected that by the prevalence of opinion his Church would become triumphant. He, however, was of a totally different opinion. The Bill, said the hon. Member for Kent (Mr. Plumptre), would change the whole character of the population. The hon. Member objected to it, because it would unprotestantise the country. In support of that, opinion, the hon. Member had given no reasons, had advanced no arguments; but he considered it would do so. The hon. Member for Oxford had also referred to the danger of permitting Jesuits to come into the country, calling the attention of the House to the proceedings of that body abroad during the last fifty years. He deduced from that great danger to the Protestant faith. Now he would observe, that at present Jesuits did come into the country, though the Catholic Emancipation Act expressly forbad them. Practically the law was of no effect: the spirit of the age was against penal enactments on account of religious belief. The Bill as amended, by its provisions for the registration of all those belonging to monastic orders, would be quite sufficient for all useful purposes. Things would remain just as they were at present, only that this Bill would abolish an odious distinction, and remove what the Catholics felt to be a stigma. Although the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Plumptre) might not think it desirable to conciliate the Roman Catholics, and though the hon. Baronet (Sir R. Inglis) might be of opinion that conciliation had already gone too far, still he was persuaded that great benefit would result from making our legislation more in harmony with our institutions. He could not see what object was gained by having on the Statute-book laws which could not

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be enforced, and which those who supported them shrunk from bringing into operation. The hon. Baronet had objected to the repeal of the 30th Charles II., on the ground that it would affect the Bill of Rights. If that really were so, nothing could be more easy than to introduce a clause into the present Bill, declaring that the Bill of Bights should not be affected by it. This would obviate at once the difficulty. He had been induced to rise and take part in the debate, because of the unfortunate turn which it had assumed. That House was a place, least of all places, for theological discussions, and they should avoid all such allusions in their discussions. The whole—the real—question they had to consider, was the removal of certain civil disabilities which the Bill proposed. This Bill had been modified to meet the views of several hon. Members, and especially-of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth. He was quite free to confess that the public exhibition of processions through the streets of a manufacturing town especially, might to many persons prove a stumbling-block, and that the clauses, therefore, which authorized these processions through the different parts of England were inconsistent with the general character of the Bill itself. Believing this, he was sincerely rejoiced to hear a declaration to that effect from the hon. Member for Kilkenny, and rejoiced that that hon. Member had so decidedly expressed his opinion on the subject. But, as his hon. Friend had consented to remove this objection, he could not at all see that any danger whatever could arise to the Protestantism of this country from the passing of the Bill. The object of the Bill, as it appeared to him, was simply to obtain an equality of private position for the professors of the two religions; and by the expunging of the objectionable clauses, the only danger that could have been apprehended had been averted.
MR. SPOONERsaid, if the hon. Member for Kent had misapprehended the noble Lord opposite (Earl of Arundel and Surrey) he (Mr. Spooner) shared in that misapprehension, as, he believed, did also many of the Members sitting around him. The noble Lord was understood to say, that he deprecated persecution. No one, for a moment, would suppose that the noble Lord would do otherwise. But having deprecated persecution, the noble Lord came in with a saving clause, and stated that he thought he could bring something from the Old Testament in favour of persecution.
MR. SHEIL: He said no such thing.
The EARL of ARUNDEL and SURREYwas sorry to obtrude again upon the House. What he had said was, that there were passages in the Old Testament which might, in the times to which he had referred, have given rise to the impression that persecution was allowed. He did not say that there was anything that could justify persecution. He had never for a moment advocated anything but the most unrestricted freedom of conscience, and be never dreamt of any contest between the two Churches, otherwise than by legitimate explanation and discussion; and it was by that means he trusted the result that he anticipated would ultimately arrive.
MR. SPOONERrejoiced that he had given the noble Lord an opportunity of more fully explaining his views: but the expressions he had used, in his opinion, justified the remarks of the hon. Member for Kent, and did not convey to his mind the opinions the noble Lord had now stated. He begged to say that he did not think the expressions referred to in the Old Testament could in any times justify persecution. He did not mean to say any thing hurtful to the feelings of any individual, as he, with his hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, sincerely respected many individuals who professed the Roman Catholic faith. He was on terms of intimacy and friendship with many Roman Catholics; he respected their private characters, knowing their intrinsic worth, and being a daily spectator of their charity and benevolence; but no feelings of respect would hinder him from expressing what he believed it to be the duty of every Protestant Member of that House to express. If any of his remarks should give offence, he could only say that offence was not intended by him. He referred to the peculiar commission given to the Jewish nation to exterminate idolaters and idolatry. [Mr. ESCOTT: Oh, oh!] The hon. Member for Winchester might dissent; but these were his opinions and principles, and they were those of every honest and true Protestant; and it was his conviction that a great deal of that which savoured of idolatry was mixed up with the forms and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic religion. [Cries of "Oh!"] He was aware that, these views might not be quite pleasant to many persons: but that man was not a true Protestant who shrunk from avowing them. The speech of the noble Lord had, in his opinion, given a peculiar character

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to the debate. He had said that he anticipated the final extinction of Protestantism in this kingdom. The hon. Member for Kinsale had made an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney General, with regard to certain provisions of the Bill, and he looked to the right hon. Gentleman's answer with some anxiety. He thought many clauses of the Bill were objectionable; but there was one of them still more so than any other—it was that which went to legalize the introduction of bulls into this country; he had, on a former occasion, stated that he had no objection to the repeal of the penalties which were attached to their introduction; but there was a great difference between removing the penalties against the introduction of these bulls, and making the introduction legal. The effect would be to acknowledge a power over the religious opinions of the people of this country which the constitution denied. The Sovereign of this country was the constituted authority at the head of the Church, and any measure acknowledging a competing authority was unconstitutional. If he understood the principle of the constitution at all, it was that it was essentially Protestant—that the country must have for ever a Protestant Sovereign—that the Sovereign alone constituted the head of the Church—and that any authority admitted to come into collision with the authority of the Sovereign was unconstitutional, and to admit such authority was an act which the House of Commons had no right to sanction. The hon. Member then referred to a publication which had been lately put into his hands, and which had been found by a father among the books of his son. It was entitled The Consolation and Encouragement of Souls, and in which he found this passage:—"He who obeys his director is free from responsibility to God for what he has done." If that was not an unprotestant principle, he did not know what was. By legalizing bulls, they legalized a doctrine which told the son that he owed no duty or obligation to his father or his sovereign; would they give authority to such doctrine? If so, what protection had they? A man who held that doctrine felt himself absolved from all individual responsibility. The mandate of a priest would override considerations of parental authority, of what was due to his sovereign, and his country. Nor must it be alleged that this obligation to obey was confined to the "forms and ceremonies of religion." The power of
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the priest was unlimited and what would stop the person who was imbued with the principle he had quoted from committing murder or treason? To such a man the Bible was a mere dead letter. If the priest were to tell such a man that the consequences of any given act, however sinful, if done by the authority of the priest, would rest upon the priest and not upon him, and he believed him, he might sin in peace and comfort. Such priest-craft was subversive of the liberty of conscience and the Protestant right of private judgment. The noble Lord said that the Roman Catholic Church would rely upon theological learning only, in her contests with other Churches; but how did his assertion square with the principle above inculcated? Was there free play for theological argument where such a principle was recognised? The man who held it was in fact prohibited from thinking for himself, by being told that, if he did, he incurred a responsibility; but that if he left the priest to think for him, he was safe. What became then of the argument of the noble Lord, that the extinction of Protestantism was to be the result of argument, which his Church forbad, and of learning, when the contents of the wisest book were scaled?—when they were told that the word of God was not sufficient in itself to make men wise unto salvation, but, as by the Jews of old, that word was made void by their traditions? It was his firm conviction that the Bill was looked to with intense anxiety on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, and that it would be hailed by them as another step in abandonment of the line of protection drawn by the Bill of 1829. He was one of those who had been willing to make the concession of 1829; but if that discussion were to come over again, nothing would induce him to give his consent to such a Bill. If the extinction of Protestantism had been talked of that time, as it was at present, would Parliament ever have consented to pass that Bill? Would the noble Lord have ventured to have made such a speech while the Bill of 1829 was under discussion? There was an argument used by Mr. Canning, in favour of Catholic Emancipation, which appeared to him at that time perfectly unanswerable. It was, that the respect for the sanctity of an oath which had prevented the Catholics from entering the House, would also prevent them from breaking it when once within that House. That anticipation, he was sorry

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to say, had not been realized; for though the noble Lord was one of the bright examples who had adhered to the letter and spirit of that oath, there were others who had not done so. The members of the Roman Catholic persuasion had disclaimed upon oath any desire to meddle with the temporalities of the Irish Church. Let the House look to the evidence given on oath before the House of Lords previous to the Bill of 1829, and compare that with the subsequent conduct of Roman Catholic Members of Parliament, on the misappropriation of the revenues of the Irish Church, and then let them tell him whether Mr. Canning had not been too sanguine in his expectations. The Protestants had reason to be fatally convinced that in consenting to that Act they had committed a great mistake. Let it be known that the extinction of Protestantism was the object which the Roman Catholics had in view—its extinction, whether by force, stratagem, or conviction—let but that be proclaimed throughout the British realm, and they would see what would be the echo of the Protestant people of England.
MR. SHEIL: The hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Spooner) has stated that he was intimately acquainted with many highly respectable Roman Catholics, for whom he entertained great esteem and regard. If he were to avail himself of his familiarity with the individuals to whom he has alluded, and inquire from them whether they entertain the opinions which he has unhesitatingly attributed to the entire Roman Catholic community, he would, I make no doubt, receive from them the most earnest assurances that such sentiments were most wrongfully imputed to them. There prevails a most unjust and unjustifiable habit in this country of, charging Roman Catholics with dogmas which they most sincerely and most strenuously repudiate. My noble Friend (the Earl of Arundel and Surrey), in the course of this debate, gave utterance to a sentiment which has been strangely misrepresented. He believes in the truth of his religion, and that truth will in its greatness ultimately prevail; but at the same time that he candidly expressed this honest conviction upon his part, he also declared himself to be the advocate of unrestricted liberty of conscience, and deprecated the intolerance with which he has been so eagerly charged. Protestants ought not to exhibit so much sensitiveness with re-
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gard to their religion, when they consider the language which is commonly employed in reference to the Roman Catholic Church. You make little difficulty in calling us idolaters, and in attributing to us errors which involve, in your opinion, everlasting perdition. But if we venture to retort, or commit the slightest retaliatory aggression, upon your faith, you give way to resentment, and denounce what you please to designate as our intolerance in unmeasured condemnation. I pass from these general observations to the more immediate subject of discussion. My hon. Friend the Member for Kinsale invites the House to repeal a series of enactments against Roman Catholics, which have no practical operation, but which are most offensive to a-great and unoffending community. The laws with respect to religious orders are contumelious; but, excepting for the purpose of contumely, they are wholly without avail. Those laws are outrages to common justice and to common sense. A regular who takes the vows, or assists in imposing the vows of his order, may be transported. The celebrated Dr. Doyle was an Augustinian friar; Father Mathew is a Carmelite; Dr. Doyle was the first man who had the boldness to advocate a poor law for Ireland—to insist that the peasant had as good a right to his life, as the landlord to his estate; and to maintain the great axiom that on both sides of the Irish Channel the prerogatives of poverty should be the same. He may be justly designated as the evangelist of charity, as Father Mathew is so appropriately called the Apostle of Temperance; yet under the laws which my hon. Friend proposes to repeal, Dr. Doyle might have sent to teach mercy in Van Diemen's Land, and Father Mathew, if convicted of being a Carmelite, might be commissioned to prescribe the injunctions of temperance in New South Wales. But I may be told that whatever indulgence might be extended to Carmelites and. Augustinians, no forbearance should be shown to a Jesuit; and that the statutes which have been enacted against the famous Society of Jesus ought never to be repealed. "Jesuit" is, I am aware, a word of fear—we mean the Gunpowder Plot—a vague indefinite apprehension has been entertained for a Jesuit. But this dread is an idle one—it should be classed with the puerilities of fear; and it is of your early prejudices, and not of Jesuits, that you ought to be most afraid. It is true that the Jesuits have been the objects

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of frequent and strong accusation; but their greatest enemies have been the an tagonists of Christianity itself. It should be borne in mind, too, by those who conceive that they are not wholly blameless, that their merits should be weighed against any faults which they may have committed; the achievements of Xavier ought to preponderate over the imputed casuistry of Escobar. Enter the college of the Jesuits in Rome; as you walk along the picture gallery in which the portraits of the most eminent men by whose talent and whose virtues the Society of Jesus is advanced, you may observe on many a countenance the wile of statesmanship too deeply signified; but you will also see many a noble forehead bound with a red fillet—the type of martyrdom, in which so many of those enthusiastic and indefatigable propagators of the Christian religion heroically died. But if I were to grant that many of the charges preferred against the Jesuits of a remote period were well founded, I should most strenuously insist that the modern Jesuits, as they are constituted in Ireland, are innocent of any of the habits of habitual intrigue, so often adduced against their order. I never saw a Jesuit in the Catholic Association. I do not believe that a Jesuit has ever attended a repeal meeting. They totally abstain in Ireland from all political interference; they neither unite nor speak on political subjects. In the agitation which has prevailed in Ireland for so many years, they have taken no part; and yet if any Attorney General was sufficiently preposterous to prosecute the superior of Clongowes College, and were unfortunate enough to obtain a conviction, that respectable gentleman might be placed on board a hulk, and associated with the worst malefactors in the country, in their involuntary migration to the hemisphere opposite our own. But to no Attorney General would a project so absurd present itself: the laws are utterly ineffective; intolerance shows its teeth, but they are too loose to bite. The Dominican and the Franciscan, and the Carmelite, and the Augustinian laugh—the Jesuit smiles at them. I may be asked, why it is that I am anxious for their repeal, if they are particularly harmless? I seek their repeal, because they are offensive to the Catholic Church, of which the religious orders are the appurtenances. The Catholics of Ireland look upon these laws as memorials of insult, and call for their erasure from the Statute-book. You should yield to that strong
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sentiment of the Irish people, where no object of real usefulness can be obtained by the retention of these odious laws. They are not a safeguard of your Church or of your religion. After the Protestant close boroughs of Ireland, and the Protestant corporations of Ireland, have been transferred to the people, it would be ridiculous to call the laws against Jesuits a protection to the Protestant interests. I trust, therefore, that this Bill will be allowed to go into Committee, although I think that there are matters omitted in it, which my hon. Friend ought to have taken care to insert: while he seeks to accomplish the repeal of laws which are not, it must be acknowledged, a practical grievance, he has left the law by which Catholics are excluded from the Chancellorship of Ireland untouched and unnoticed. For that exclusion there is not only no reason, but there is no pretence. If the Irish Chancellor had any church patronage, it might be urged that a Catholic was unfit to administer the office to which that trust was attached; but the Irish and English Chancellorship differ essentially in this particular. The Lord Chancellor of Ireland has not a single living in his gift. The exclusion of Roman Catholics from the first prize in the profession, is a real and a grievous wrong. Since Catholic emancipation was carried, four Catholics have reached the bench-Sir Michael O'Loghlin, the late Master of the Rolls; Chief Baron Woulfe; Chief Baron Pigot; and Judge Ball. My Friend the prosent Solicitor General is at the head of his profession: he will naturally succeed to the office of Attorney General. Is it not, then, a practical injustice that Roman Catholics, no matter how great may be their legal acquirements, should be rendered incapable of the highest judicial honour? A Roman Catholic can, by law, become Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, and preside at a State Trial; and he is deemed unfit to decide whether a mortgage should be foreclosed, or to issue an injunction to stay waste. The New Poor Law has accumulated the reasons which should determine the Legislature to put an end to this odious religious disqualification. Under the New Poor Law, the ex-officio guardians must be selected from the magistracy which the Lord Chancellor appoints. The great mass of the poor are Roman Catholics; and yet the public functionary in whom the nomination of magistrates rests, must profess the Protestant

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religion. I repeat it—there is no pretence whatsoever for this penal law. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is the depositary of church patronage, and it might be legitimately alleged that he ought to be a Protestant: it might also be suggested (although I by no means concur in the opinion) that a Protestant Secretary for Ireland ought to be the adviser of the Lord Lieutenant, on questions where church patronage were concerned—(on those questions the advice of the Secretary need not be taken)—but that Protestantism should be a condition to the Chancellorship of Ireland is utterly absurd, and will not be supported except by those who seek to maintain distinctions from which they derive no sort of advantage, while they wound the feelings and affect the honourable pride of the great majority of the Irish people.
MR. FINCHthought it was quite becoming in the last speaker, who was a Roman Catholic, to speak as he had done, and also the noble Lord (the Earl of Arundel and Surrey); but still he did not consider that either of them had adduced any adequate reason why the Bill should be passed. He, for one, very much doubted whether Parliament could give the same degree of to eration to the Roman Catholic Church that they were willing to give to other Churches. He looked upon toleration as the fundamental principle of his party, and he considered that nothing but the strongest grounds could justify them in deviating from that principle. He was, however, not prepared to go the length of saying that the religious orders of the Church of Rome should come under that principle, and that they should be permitted to have full and unlimited action. The Roman Catholics in Ireland had held very different language before their emancipation to that which they had indulged in subsequently; and if it had been shown that they would have been so clamorous for a repeal of the Union as they had proved themselves to be, he thought that such a fact would have greatly endangered the carrying of emancipation. He wished he could discover in the acts or documents emanating from Rome, anything that savoured of religious freedom. He, however, had not been able to discover, from the letters of the Pope of Rome, or from the Councils of the Roman Church, a single principle upon which toleration could be based. On the contrary, he saw everything that could characterize intolerance emanating from that country. He con-
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tended that the See of Rome was diametrically opposed to the spread of religious instruction. The principles of the Roman Catholic Church were totally hostile to the freedom enjoyed by this country. He felt persuaded that they would be conscientiously discharging their duty to their Sovereign, to their religion, and to then-country, if they opposed the Bill.
LORD J. MANNERS, as one of those who had assisted in introducing this Bill, had listened with great attention to the speeches of those hon. Members who had opposed the measure; but he had not heard any argument advanced which convinced him of its impolicy. The hon. Members for Birmingham (Mr. Spooner), and for the University of Oxford (Sir R. Inglis), had devoted a large portion of their speeches to discussing the comparative merits of the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Churches. He could hardly conceive how the Bill which they were now discussing involved the question, whether the Church of England or the Church of Rome was the true Church. The question, as it appeared to him, which they had now to decide was, whether the differences which existed between those two Churches, justified them in putting down, by pains and penalties, the doctrines of the Church of Rome. And he could not bring himself to believe, in spite of all that had been said by his hon. Friend on the other side of the question, that the best way to promote the interests of the Church of England, was to continue those pains and penalties upon the professors of another form of Christianity. He should hold that opinion even if those pains and penalties were intended to be put into execution; but when they had it admitted even by the opponents of this Bill, that those pains and penalties were not to be enforced, then he was indeed astonished to hear their continuance advocated, for it was admitted that they were of no practical importance whatever. He had listened attentively with the view of discovering any reasons urged by the opponents of the measure, to show that the abolition of the pains and penalties to which he had alluded, would have a tendency to injure either the Church or the State of England; but he had heard nothing whatever to convince him that the slightest danger could be reasonably apprehended. His hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford had indeed begged the House to look at what was going on in France, and he extracted a cheer from them when he

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alluded to Switzerland; but he must remind his hon. Friend, that when he brought forward the case of Switzerland as an instance of what had resulted from the toleration of the Jesuits, he made a most unfortunate and unhappy allusion. Now what was the real state of the case as regarded the Jesuits in Switzerland? In some cantons of Switzerland the Jesuits were tolerated and fostered. A lawless and violent mob from a neighbouring canton invaded one of those cantons, and by force and arms put down the Jesuits. So that his hon. Friend came to the English House of Commons, and, alluding to a case in which a violent mob had invaded the territories of their peaceful neighbours, quoted it as an instance in which the Jesuits had disturbed the peace of Switzerland. A more unhappy argument was never on any occasion brought forward in that House. They had been told to look to France. His hon. Friend, and those hon. Gentlemen who had spoken on the same side of the question, had said, "See how M. Guizot, M. Michelet, M. Quinet, and the other writers on France, have put forth every argument with the view of exterminating the Jesuits and the other religious orders in France." Now he (Lord J. Manners) was not prepared on all occasions to profess his sympathy with the proceedings of the Jesuits; but he must say that he did not think that France had acted rightly in listening to the suggestions of her liberal and infidel writers with regard to her religious orders. He believed that in England a far better course than that recommended by the infidel and "philosophic" professors of France had been pursued by the people. He thought that if any sound Protestant Member of that House was intimately acquainted with the doctrinal systems professed by those parties, they would not willingly enter into an alliance with them for the purpose of putting down the religious orders of the Church of Rome. He believed that if the English Protestants generally knew the tendency of those men's opinions, they would hesitate very much before they acceded to the proposition laid down by his hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, as to joining in one common league against the religious orders of the Church of Rome. His hon. Friend had appealed to all the Protestant Dissenters of England to back him and the Gentlemen who were united with him in opposition to this Bill; but he begged to tell his hon. Friend that the Protestant Dissenters of England must
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have very short memories indeed if they forgot that, throughout the whole of his long career in that House, he had been as consistent and determined an opponent to any concession to them, as he now was to this moderate concession that was asked on behalf of the members of the Church of Rome. His hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham had quoted a passage from a work of some Roman Catholic, and thereupon asked the House to reject this Bill. Having finished the quotation, he asked them whether they could reconcile the passage with the principles of our Protestant Constitution? No one could deny that differences existed between the Church of Rome and the Church of England; but that was not the question at issue. They had heard a great deal about "the safeguards of the Protestant Church," which were supposed to be introduced into the Bill of 1829. He regretted, as he was sure the House generally must regret, the absence on that occasion of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth (Sir R. Peel). That right hon. Gentleman had, on a previous occasion, said, that he felt it necessary to vindicate a substantial adherence to the settlement of 1829. Now, he could not for the life of him conceive how it was possible to show any "substantial adherence" to that settlement during the last twenty years. He challenged any hon. Gentleman in that House to point out one single instance in which these so-called "safeguards" had been acted upon. And if they were "safeguards to the Throne of our Sovereign," he wanted to know why it was that they had not been in force in one instance. Although there was not an hon. Gentleman in that House who had not, over and over again, witnessed the proceedings of the Church of Rome in different parts of this country—although there was not a single Gentleman in that House who had not heard of the religious orders of Stonyhurst, Mount Melleray, and St. Bernard—although there was not a single Gentleman in that House who did not know, that if on his own responsibility he were to call upon the legal advisers of Her Majesty to put the pains and penalties against those religious orders into force, they would refuse to do so; it was still argued that their maintenance was necessary for the security of the British Throne. But if those pains and penalties could not be enforced, he (Lord J. Manners) wished to know how they could injustice be called "the safeguards of our Constitution?" If they were to say

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that the profession of the Roman Catholic religion were dangerous to the State, subversive of the Throne, and injurious to the Church of England, they must not take their stand on these miserable, pettifogging penalties, which they themselves said they never intended to enforce; but they must at once set about re-enacting those laws which had been passed against the Roman Catholics, and revert to that system of exclusion and persecution-which had been so often alluded to in terms of reprobation by the hon. Members who had spoken in the course of this debate. His hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford had made a great point of the Bill of Rights, and challenged the law officers of the Crown to say, whether this Bill would not be a repeal of the 30th Charles II. It was not for him (Lord J. Manners) to enter into so abstruse a legal question as that; but until he had heard it stated by the law officers of the Crown, he should content himself with expressing his strong and decided belief that the hon. Gentleman was totally mistaken in his views of the law on that point. He must also observe, that the whole of the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Spooner), with one exception, in which be called upon the Attorney General to express his opinions on the point alluded to by the hon. Member for Oxford, consisted of a diatribe against the doctrines, or the alleged doctrines, of the Church of Rome, which would and must exist whether this Bill were passed or not. He had heard the hon. Member for Birmingham observe, that he believed that in the contest which was going forward between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, the Church of England would remain unvanquished. If that then were his belief, he wished to ask him why he advocated the continuance of these miserable pains and penalties? If his hon. Friend had truly read the book of eternal truth, as he professed—if be believed that the Church of England was to go forth and evangelize the world—then he called upon him to join with him in attempting to free her from a dependence upon such miserable crutches, and enable her to stand forth unfettered by these pains and penalties, which were totally alien to the spirit of our free Constitution. He believed that the main object of this Bill was to abolish those clauses. He had that day presented a petition from a religious house in the county with which he
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was connected—from Mount St. Bernard—in which the petitioners stated publicly before the House of Commons, that they were proscribed by the laws of the Imperial Parliament—that they knew they were subject to the pains of transportation and the penalty of banishment; all this they admitted, and they asked the House to repeal those laws. Now, that was the question which they had to decide. Would the House grant them the prayer of their petition, or would they insist that they should remain liable to the pains of transportation and banishment, but at the same time decide in effect that those laws should, never be enforced? He could not understand on what ground these laws could be said to be the defence of our Church and State. We had used to be called a practical people. One of the great boasts of Englishmen was, that however their theories might be wrong, their practice was always consistent and sound. But if they were to adopt the system of legislation which hon. Gentlemen who opposed this Bill had recommended, he thought that they must give up their character for practical sincerity and practical good sense, and be content to be regarded by the rest of the world as a most fanciful people. After the attacks which had been made upon the Jesuits, and upon the other religious orders of the Church of Rome, he thought they could not do less—they who believed that those religious orders had done a very great good with regard to education and instruction—than manfully bear their testimony in their behalf. And when he had heard France quoted as an example in which the Jesuits and other religious orders had been put down, he must remind hon. Gentlemen of the testimony of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, who had given a most interesting account of the Christian Brothers in Paris, and who stated emphatically that during the last insurrection in the capital of France not one of the people educated by the Christian Brothers joined the band of insurgents. And that was no light testimony, given by such a person, who confessed himself to be much struck at the good effects of the Christian Brothers of Paris in the cause of education. Indeed, Dr. Wordsworth recommended the establishment of such brotherhoods in our chief cities. He (Lord J. Manners) had himself visited the schools of the Christian Brothers in Ireland on a recent occasion; and he must confess that all his anticipations were more than rea-

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lized. In the establishment of the city of Limerick, he saw 1,600 pupils, and in that of Cork 1,400, who received the best education that could be received in Ireland. He had left those establishments perfectly convinced that these cruel pains and penalties should be forthwith abolished; and indeed he believed that if his hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, who so cordially detested the so-called National system of education in Ireland, had visited those schools, he would have been prepared to throw aside the objections which he entertained against this Bill: owing to the successful efforts of these Christian Brothers, no National school existed in Limerick. He did not wish to detain the House any further on this subject; but he might conclude by observing that in his belief a strong case had been made out for going into Committee on this Bill. With respect to the main objections which had been urged against the various clauses, they would be best met in Committee. But he could not quit this subject without adverting for one moment to the very great efforts which had been made to stir up what might be called the Protestant feeling of England against this Bill; and he must take that opportunity of regretting the extreme inaccuracy of the reports and documents which had been circulated in order to procure its defeat. He had that day presented a petition from the town of Melton Mowbray in favour of the Bill; and he believed that a contrary petition had been presented from the same place. He had seen a contrary petition advertised in a Leicestershire newspaper; and he regretted to say that two-thirds of the prayer of that petition and its assumptions were totally unfounded. He regretted to say that the people had been induced to petition against this Bill by parties who stated that the Bill contained clauses to enable the Rowan Catholic prelates of Ireland and England to take the style and title of the archbishops and bishops of the Irish and English Church. The people had been informed that the Bill contained clauses legalizing the public elevation of the Host: in the streets and thoroughfares of this country. But he had greater confidence in the sound discretion and good feeling of his countrymen than to believe, that when the clauses of this Bill were truly and properly and accurately made known to them, they would oppose its progress. He had the greatest confidence that they would then be of opinion with him, that the Church of
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England was more secure in the affections of her own people, in her own increased zeal and activity, in the power which she possessed to meet all the requirements of this toiling and industrious population—in the purity of her doctrines and the integrity of the lives of her ministers and professors—than in the retention of cruel and unjust laws, which were never intended to be enforced; nor did he believe that the people of this country supposed that the Crown would be put in peril if that religious toleration which we now sanctioned in practice were sanctioned also by theory and law.
MR. NEWDEGATE: The noble Lord the Member for Newark had told them that they had not pursued a practical course in their opposition to the present measure. There was one, at the least, and that was the Member for the University of Oxford, who had dealt practically with the subject in the question which he had asked the Attorney General, and which remained as yet unanswered; and until that question was satisfactorily answered, the opponents of the Bill had a right to assert, that if passed into law, it would relieve the Sovereign of this country from the necessity of declaring his or her adhesion to the faith of that Church, at the head of which the Constitution placed Her by virtue of the regal authority which it conferred. Surely that was a fair and practical objection. Well, they had been accused of having excited deep religious feelings and animosities by opposing this Bill; but he would ask, who had awakened them? Who but the promoters of this Bill, who were not content to allow these laws, however little injurious to those affected by them, to remain upon the Statute-book? In the same breath almost, the right hon. Member for Dungarvon had complained of the oppressive nature of these laws, and boasted of the increasing numbers and importance of the Roman Catholic clergy, whom he would have the House believe weighed down and suffering beneath some withering yoke or disability. The passing of this measure had been urged by the noble Lord the Member for South Durham and others, on the grounds of religious liberty. It was because the Church of Rome was intolerant and claimed for herself supremacy in all things, that he (Mr. Newdegate) refused to admit her to the same terms enjoyed by other sects in this country, who, whilst they claimed freedom of religion for themselves were willing that the same liberty should be enjoyed by others. The Church

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of Rome claimed for herself universal supremacy, not in outward matters of discipline only, but in all matters of doctrine, of faith, and conscience—not only in temporal but in spiritual matters also. The noble Member for Arundel had spoken out nobly; he was not ashamed to say that he sought, by supporting this Bill, for the supremacy of his Church, and that he was a subject of the Pope. The noble Lord, it appeared, would tolerate a difference of opinion in respect to religion, but said he looked to one great end, and that he confidently expected would be attained—namely, the conversion of the people of this country to the Church of Rome; to the extinction, in short, of Protestantism in this country. Holding the faith which the noble Lord professed, he was quite right to follow it; and he (Mr. Newdegate) honoured him, not being ashamed to avow his adhesion to his faith, and to the objects it enjoined. The right hon. Member for Dungarvon had denied the interference of the Roman Church in temporal matters, and had defied them to point out how the Jesuits had ever interfered in politics. Let him not be asked to tell them of the acts of men whose movements he could not trace—of men who were sworn to deny the existence of the members of their own order. [Mr. SHEIL made a motion of dissent.] Would the right hon. Member assert that a Jesuit was at liberty at any time, and on all occasions, to avow his connexion with his order—that a Jesuit would ever avow that connexion, if his doing so might prove detrimental to his Church or to his order, or an hindrance to the objects which his order had in view? The right hon. Member would not assert this. He (Mr. Newdegate) should have been very much surprised if he had. It was on the grounds, then, of his objection to this secret system of absolutism that he (Mr. Newdegate) claimed the retention of the enactments with respect to the Monastic and Jesuit orders. Then they had heard much of the liberality of the present Pontiff; but he could find nothing to show that the present Pope was more liberal to those of another faith than his predecessors, or that he abated one tittle of his claims to universal supremacy. The hon. Member for Rutland had referred to the encyclical letter of the present Pope. What did he claim, after having arrived to the position of Sovereign Pontiff? These are his words. He says he is the
—"living and infallible authority" that "exists
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only in that Church which, founded by Christ our Lord on Peter, the Head, the Prince, and the Pastor of the whole Church, with a promise that her faith should never fail, has ever preserved uninterrupted her succession of lawful Pontiffs, sitting in his chair, deriving their succession from Peter himself, and being inheritors and guardians of the same doctrines, dignity, honour, and power. And since where Peter is there is the Church, and Peter speaks by the lips of the Holy Pontiff, and ever lives and exercises authority in the persons of his successors, and exhibits to those seeking it the truth of faith; therefore, the Divine Word is evidently to be accepted in that sense which the Roman See of Blessed Peter has held and does hold—that See which is the mother and mistress of all churches."
He asked the House to consider well the authority of the Pope, which the Bill proposed to admit, and see whether they could reconcile its admission with the allegiance which they owed to the Queen of these realms. He believed that they could not. According to the terms of her institution, the Roman Catholic Church constituted the Pope "the father of princes and of kings, the ruler of the world, the vicar of Christ on earth." Let him not be told then, that the Roman Chinch did not claim temporal as well as spiritual dominion. How, then, could they reconcile powers of such a character with the prerogatives of the British Crown? But it had been said that the Pope claimed no temporal power. What, however, did the Pope himself say on this subject?—
"Have a care to impress upon their minds the obedience and subjection which is due from a Christian people to princes and powers; teaching according to the Apostolic precept, that there in no power but from God, and that those who resist the power resist the ordinance of God, and purchase to themselves damnation. And, therefore, that the precept of obeying the lawful authorities cannot be violated by any one without sin, UNLESS, INDEED, anything be commanded which is opposed to the laws of God and of the Church."
And of these laws, the Pope in several preceding passages of this his encyclical letter declared himself and claimed to be sole exponent: they extend to temporal matters as well as spiritual, according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, to which the Roman Catholic Church still adhered, and which were embodied in their canon law. The Pope, it thus appeared, retained the power of exercising his supremacy temporally as well as spiritually within the realms of every kingdom in the world. Now he would beg the House to consider, what must be the result of bringing the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope into competition with the ecclesiastical authority of the Queen in the kingdom. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Queen was

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limited to what was termed the forum exterius, the appointment of bishops, and the general supervision and direction of the officers of the Church in outward matters; and there was stayed by law. But the ecclesiastical supremacy claimed by the Pope, reached not only these small matters, but extended beyond them to all matters of discipline, doctrine, faith, and conscience. This authority of the Pope could not be correlative with that of the Queen, for each claimed supremacy, and the supremacy claimed by the Pope was greater and more extensive than that of the Queen; if, therefore, they were admitted upon equal terms, the greater must overbear the less authority; in short, the authority of the Queen would be brought into subjection, as it were, to that of the Pope. Let him not, then, be told that these were any trifling matters. Let him not be told, that the framers of this Bill ignored the claims of the Pope to temporal power in this country. For if they did, what was their object in proposing by this Bill to absolve Roman Catholics from the necessity of taking the oath prescribed by the Act of George III., and the Relief Act of 1829, in which they denied not the spiritual, but, only the temporal and civil authority of the Pope in these realms. Was he to be told that on the ground of religious tolerance they should allow such extraordinary powers as these? He was as much a friend to toleration as any Member in that House; but if they did admit the powers of the Pope, into this country as proposed by the Bill, and claimed by the Sovereign Pontiff himself, they would sanction intolerance. For one, he would not tolerate intolerance; and because the Roman Church was intolerant, he refused to admit her to the same terms which those of other sects and creeds enjoyed in this country. The right hon. and learned Member for Dungarvon had told them that there were few petitions presented against this Bill. The people had not petitioned because of the way in which their petitions had been treated on the Maynooth question; they had little confidence in approaching the House. But what would the right hon. Member have? Several petitions had that day been presented; the last he (Mr. Newdegate) had presented had 300 signatures attached. It was with regret he had seen, in the case of the Maynooth grant, and on other occasions lately, the slight weight which the leaders of the House seemed to attach to the petitions of the people
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respecting matters affecting deep feelings and sincere convictions. Such neglect must have one of two results: it would either rouse rebellious anger in the people's breasts, or it would generate indifference; and indifference on great constitutional questions like the present would insensibly perhaps, but surely, loosen the people's true allegiance. Let them, however, rest assured of this, that there was a deep feeling in this country on the subject now before the House, and that when the Constitution gave the people occasion to express their mind, they would hear of this matter again. He felt that he had been led into a consideration of more topics than he had intended to notice; but he confessed that it did annoy him to hear matters of such a serious and important nature designated as trifling—that these objections to the measure were frivolous—and that the concessions asked for were small. It did arouse him to find the admission of such powers sought under the guise of an appeal to the compassion and liberality of his countrymen. The noble Lord the Member for Newark had attacked the opposition offered to the Jesuits in France and Switzerland, which he asserted had originated in democratic violence, as though the Swiss had marched great distances, assailed their countrymen, and shed their blood without a cause. Men did not these things, were they democratic as they might, without a cause. And the noble Lord knew well, that the real cause of these disputes and evils in Switzerland originated in the fact, that the Jesuits had attempted to grasp the education of the youth of cantons where they were, unwelcome, as well they might be; and then the noble Lord went on to show the evils resulting from the suppression of the Jesuits in France. Well, why had this been done? Was it not a notorious fact, that in France the Jesuits had been declared illegal, because of the intrigues for power in which they had continually engaged. It was, however, said, forsooth, that the sin was in those who had resisted this usurpation, and not in those who, by their restless and intriguing ambition, had excited these disturbances. He lamented the separation of the Church from the State in France. What had been the consequence? Why, the clergy, finding themselves abandoned, had sought the support of Rome. Such an example ought to be a warning to those who were inclined by (so called) liberal opinions to promote the separation of the

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Church from the State of this country; a measure which, whilst it would impair the efficiency of the Church, would unchristianize the State; and such was the tendency of the Bill before the House. In the last Session, the hon. and learned Member for Cork supported a Bill of a similar character to this, because, he said, he thought it would cause a separation of the Church from the State. That was in his opinion an additional reason why they should oppose the present measure. The hon. and learned Member for the University of Oxford had asked the Attorney General an important question, which ought to have been answered; for if the measure was subversive of the Bill of Bights, how could the Members of the House of Commons support it? If they agreed to such a Bill, they must relieve the Sovereign from her obligation to uphold the Protestant faith, and fully and undisguisedly admit the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope of Rome. What did Lord Campbell say of the Religious Opinions Bill, which originally contained the same provisions as this Bill, though they were afterwards struck out?
"He rejoiced that the Bill had been brought in, and rejoiced that it was likely to pass with so much unanimity; but at the same time he must say, that unless some ulterior measures were adopted, the Pope would have more authority in England than he ought to have, and than he possessed in Italy, in Spain, in France, or in Austria. He should strongly recommend the Government of this country to have a concordat with his Holiness the Pope. Until such a measure was resorted to, the Roman Catholics in this country would not be under due control, nor would there be due discrimination between the authority which might be legitimately exercised by the Pope, and that species of authority which ought not to be exercised by any Sovereign in a foreign country."
In Lord Campbell's opinion, then, and it should have weight at all events with the Ministerial section of the House, this measure, if passed, would be but a step to another, by which we should be compelled, after having admitted the Pope's authority, to go beg for his protection. It was hard to say, what measure might not pass that House; but he would say this, that if unhappily this Bill should pass, and Her Majesty should be advised to sanction such a measure, he humbly trusted that Her Majesty would well consider before she sanctioned it by her assent. He trusted that Her Majesty would not forget how the last exercise of her ecclesiastical authority was received by the people of this country, when, bowing before the heavy dispensation of Providence which has lately afflicted these
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realms, she commanded that a day be set apart for public humiliation. How at Her command Her people had not tarried, but hastened to join their prayers to Hers; how they had flocked to their churches, till they left the thoroughfares of this great metropolis more still and vacant than they were during the church time of ordinary sabbaths. He did humbly hope that, remembering this, Her Majesty would at least hesitate before She consented to abandon one jot or one tittle of an authority which Her faithful subjects so deeply respected and so willingly obeyed.
SIR JOHN EASTHOPEcomplained that the hon. Member who had last spoken had represented the Bill to be what it was not, and by an illogical mode of reasoning upon it had endeavoured to raise feelings against it in the country not warranted by a true representation of the nature of the measure. This was not a question as to the comparative merits of Protestantism and Catholicity; but whether the laws sought to be repealed were adapted to the purpose they had been intended to effect. He appealed to the hon. Member for Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) whether he was prepared to see these supposed securities of the Protestant Church put in force—whether he was prepared to resort to them as securities for the Protestant religion. If the question had been as to the comparative merits of the two religions, Protestant and Roman Catholic, he would not hesitate a moment as to the side he should support. He valued the Church of England as highly as any man; he was deeply attached to the Protestant religion of this country. His noble Friend the Member for Arundel said, with that truthfulness which was so characteristic of himself, that he believed that the ultimate result of religious controversy would be the extinction of Protestantism; he begged to tell his noble Friend that it was his conviction that without the aid of any of these nugatory and oppressive laws, the ultimate result would be the extinction of the Roman Catholic religion. Most fervently and confidently did he hope and believe that such would be the final issue. His noble Friend had a full right to say that he believed the Roman Catholic religion would be ultimately successful. This was a difference of opinion. He honoured the sincerity of his noble Friend's convictions; but he (Sir J. Easthope) entertained sentiments of a directly opposite character. The question before the House really was,

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whether they should preserve as defences for the Protestant religion, severe laws made for other times and under other circumstances? Was it fit in these days to expose to banishment and degradation some of the best and most loyal subjects of Her Majesty? It had been admitted that these laws could not now be enforced; and if so, was it fit to keep them on the Statute-book? Even the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford was not prepared to enforce them. They had been allowed to remain so long in abeyance, that they might now be looked upon as obsolete; and was it to to be argued that they were necessary defences to the Protestant religion of the State? The laws were avowedly so inappropriate, that the most violent opponents of the Bill of his hon. and learned Friend would, themselves, be among the first to resist their execution. The hon. Member for Binning ham would be the last man to support these penal statutes, if he thought there was any chance of carrying them into practical operation. In voting in favour of the Bill before the House, he felt that he only paid just homage to the faith he professed. He evinced his confidence in the Protestant religion. He believed that no such danger existed as had been described; and he was willing to rely upon Protestantism, and upon its final triumph, without resorting to the inappropriate laws now sought to be repealed. He called them inappropriate — they were manifestly inoperative; but they assumed a much graver and more important aspect—they appeared worse than he could describe them—when he contemplated the impossibility of carrying them into effect. What he had principally risen for was to avow, as he did most truthfully, that if he saw in the abrogation of these laws the smallest danger to the Protestant faith or to the Established Church, in the religion of which he had been born and lived—if he thought it possible that any of its safeguards would be in the slightest degree weakened by such a course—nothing could have induced him to support the Motion of his hon. and learned Friend. Convinced as he was that the Protestant faith stood in need of no such defences, he should cordially and fearlessly vote for going into Committee on the Bill.
MR. GOULBURNwas anxious, before the question went to a division, to state shortly the course which it was his intention to pursue. When the Bill was under discussion last year, he voted for its rejection,
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and he saw no circumstances to induce him to do otherwise than adhere to the course which he at that time pursued. He deemed the more important part of this Bill to be that which related to the repeal of certain portions of the Roman Catholic Relief Act. He was a party to the introduction and the passing of that Act—a measure removing restrictions on Roman Catholics to a greater extent than had ever been attempted before. The Bills previously introduced by the warmest advocates of the Roman Catholics fell far short of the Bill of 1829, in, he would not say, the grant of privileges, but in the removal of disqualifications; and it was unnecessary to remind the House under what difficulties the Government then laboured in reconciling Parliament and the country to the liberality of those enactments. That Act was also distinguished from previous Bills by this remarkable feature—the diminution of the restrictions which it was thought necessary to retain, either upon the religions or the civil conduct of the Roman Catholics; for the Act of 1829 abandoned what Mr. Grattan had proposed in his Bill, and what Mr. Plunkett had continued in his, as reasonable securities, and limited the restrictions to those clauses which the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Watson), either in his Bill of last year or in the present, proposed to repeal. That Act of 1829 he considered to be a compact solemnly entered into with different parties in the State as to the position in which the Roman Catholic inhabitants of this country were in future to stand with respect to civil and religious disabilities. It was well known that the alarm which prevailed throughout the country at that time with respect to the admission of Roman Catholics to political power, had its influence upon the minds of a large body of representatives in Parliament; and it was only in consideration of those restrictions which were retained, and which were deemed necessary for the safety of the country, that rapport was acquired for that measure; and being one of the parties who introduced that Bill, he could not consent to violate the compact which was then virtually entered into. Was anything now urged to induce the House so to act? Was it stated that there was any great and manifest grievance to be redressed? Was any individual named, who had been subjected to pains and penalties in consequence of the remaining restrictions, which

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since the Act of 1829 were in force? On the contrary, every hon. Gentleman said, that the restrictions had been inoperative. So little disposition had there been to enforce penalties against our Roman Catholic countrymen, that not a single infliction of penalty or inconvenience had been described to have arisen. On the one hand, there was no inconvenience to complain of; on the other hand, the House was asked to violate a solemn compact, without any sufficient reason being urged for so doing. It had been said, indeed, that the restrictions ought to be repealed, because they had proved inoperative; but he must deny that that was a just line of argument. The power of enforcing the penalties imposed by the Act of 1829, was placed in the hands of the Attorney General; it was purposely thus limited, in order that those laws might not be rashly or in heat put in force, at the will of hostile individuals, but that the Government should in each case decide whether a case had arisen in which it was necessary that the laws should be applied. Undoubtedly, since that Act passed, the clauses in question had been violated; penalties might have been enforced if it had been thought advisable by the Government to enforce them; but, exercising a sound discretion, the Attorney Generals of successive Governments did not think it necessary to interfere where no public danger arose from the violation of the law, but they reserved their powers for periods which might possibly arrive when the public safety might require their exercise. Nor was there anything unreasonable in the nature of the restrictions. Take, for instance, the appearance of Roman Catholic clergymen in their vestments of office, in the discharge of their ecclesiastical functions, in public or in other places than their churches and private houses: was it desirable, taking merely the civil ground, that Roman Catholic processions, accompanied by all the paraphernalia of such ceremonials, should be permitted in our streets? Even the supporters of the measure must feel that the law upon this point was no restriction of the religious or civil rights of those parties, but was necessary for securing public order; and yet the Bill in the first instance absolutely proposed to repeal the clause which restrained such exhibitions, and even as now to be amended would permit them all under pretence of burying the dead. Would the right hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay) or
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the Lord Advocate say what would be the result, if under pretence of a Roman Catholic funeral there were to be in the streets of Edinburgh one of those exhibitions in which numerous priests in pontificals carried crosses and other adjuncts of those processions? If the thing were to be done again, he (Mr. Goulburn) would not say that he might not prefer a penalty which could be more easily enforced than that which was imposed by the Relief Act. He did not think, however, that the State should part with all power of interference with or control over the monastic orders—another subject with which that Act and this Bill dealt. He could not say that individuals acknowledging obedience to and dependent upon a foreign Power, in respect to their conduct, were, in consideration of their being well educated or highly cultivated, safely to be trusted with every privilege in this kingdom. The question was not to be judged of by the conduct of particular members of those orders at this moment. Members of those orders were known to have been most active instruments of mischief as well as of good; and the fact of their superior education rendered them competent to do much of either. It might perhaps have been wiser if the public feeding of the country had permitted it, to impose penalties upon the religious orders, less severe, and therefore of more easy enforcement; yet he saw no necessity for infringing upon the provisions of the Act with a view to enact—for it would come nearly to that—that there should be no restrictions whatever upon the members of those orders. All that was to be required was registration, to be enforced by a small penalty; hitherto registration had been almost universally neglected, and as the penalty was to be enforced only through the medium of the Attorney General, it would either not be enforced at all, or the enforcement would be a new ground of complaint against the Government. The Bill further professed to repeal other penalties imposed by antecedent statutes; but he could see no ground for that repeal. If he had any doubts as to the inexpediency of legislating upon minute points affecting the situation of the Roman Catholics in this country, the present debate would have furnished him with the strongest argument for resisting such legislation. If the Roman Catholics were really oppressed, or likely to be so under the existing law—if there were a dignus vindice nodus—he should be willing to face

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the evil of again bringing into collision Roman Catholic and Protestant feeling; but while no evil existed even in the imagination of those who proposed to stir the subject, he felt the imprudence of agitating such questions at the risk of raising religious discussions in the country (of which the House had heard enough on that day), and inflaming one part of the population against another, exciting on the one hand the Roman Catholic to believe that he laboured under disabilities of which he had not been aware, and on the other alarming sensitive Protestant minds as to the danger which might result from their removal. It was no light matter to agitate questions of this kind; they begot ill-will and hostility which, once excited, lasted long; and this was a peculiarly inappropriate moment for such agitation, since there was in the sister country a cessation in a great degree of former hostility, and Roman Catholic and Protestant, forgetful of religious differences, were emulating each other in efforts to relieve the distresses of their common countrymen. But he must remind the House how the matter as to these obsolete statutes stood. The late Government thought it desirable that the statutes should be repealed which imposed penalties upon Roman Catholics, although in practice a dead letter; but they took the rational course of referring the whole question to Commissioners able from their eminent qualifications to lay before the House a full report upon the laws which affected prejudicially, not merely Roman Catholics, but every class of Dissenters from the Established Church. In consequence of the labours of that Commission, a general measure was passed, removing those enactments which gave offence, not from their pressure, but from their existence on the Statute-book, and all those Penal Acts were got rid of which were calculated to excite just dissatisfaction. That measure was complete, and of a final character; but if Parliament was to discuss, in every succeeding Session, minute points which some hon. Gentleman might think had escaped the notice of those who elaborately considered the whole subject, there would be no end to the excitement of animosities, and of discussions, by which nothing could be gained. Take, for instance, the first provision in this Bill. The Act passed last Session repealed so much of the 1st of Elizabeth as imposed
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penalties on persons, Roman Catholics and Dissenters, who denied the supremacy of the Crown; it was now proposed to repeal the particular clause which imposed those penalties; and this was argued as conferring a great benefit upon Roman Catholics! The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay), when this Bill was before the House on a former occasion, stated indeed that the 1st of Elizabeth subjected to fine and imprisonment any Roman Catholic who ventured to educate his children in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic faith; it was extremely fortunate that the right hon. Gentleman did not live in a former period when persecution was in fashion. A legal opinion of his upon such a point would have led to a more extensive application of that Act than was ever suggested in the most intolerant times, and have saved Parliament the necessity of passing a number of Acts which it had subsequently passed upon the subject of Roman Catholic education. The fact was, that the supremacy of the Crown did not rest upon statute; it was founded upon the common law; and, therefore, the proposal to repeal this statute was really nothing but a parade of fruitless liberality. Further the hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to repeal so much of the 13 and 14 Charles II. (the Act for Uniformity of Public Prayers) as related to the offence of being present at any other manner or form of common prayer than that which was authorized by law. Such a provision was altogether unnecessary; Lord Lyndhurst's Act, passed last Session, had effected the same purpose. The Act 13 and 14 Charles II. only applied the penalties imposed by the Acts of Edward VI., and of Elizabeth, to those who disregarded the later Form of Common Prayer; and as the provisions of those statutes had been repealed by Lord Lyndhurst's Act, the application of them by the 13 and 14 Charles II. could no longer take place. With regard, indeed, to the greater part of the statutes which the hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to repeal, the object had been already effected; the penalties at least imposed by them no longer attached. The hon. and learned Gentleman proposed in one single clause to repeal the Act 31 George III., as to uses and dispositions of real and personal property; but he thought that those who were of the same profession with the learned Gentleman would be the last to consent that the pro-

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visions as to the uses and dispositions of property for superstitions purposes should be summarily repealed by a line in an Act of Parliament. As to the provisions of the Act 10 George IV., which the hon. and learned Gentleman also proposed to repeal, there was nothing in their nature to induce him to depart from the course he had hitherto thought it his duty to pursue in upholding the integrity of that Act, which those who had assented to it on certain conditions had a right to have observed, so as to maintain the limited protection which its provisions afforded. If he adhered scrupulously to that Act, his determination to do so was strengthened by what had fallen from the only Member of the Government who had that day addressed the House (Mr. Sheil). He had suggested that there were additional offices which ought to be thrown open to the Roman Catholics, alluding especially to the Chancellorship of Ireland. The adoption, then, of the present measure might therefore be considered only as a step to further innovations upon the Act to which he referred; the view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was, that the House should make a beginning in the direction proposed, when there was a general disposition to liberality in dealing with such subjects: it might, however, be suggested for his consideration whether in taking a course not justified by the circumstances of the case, and repealing part of a statute which was as it were the charter of Roman Catholic qualification, he might not afford a precedent capable of application in a different direction. What security had he that the time might not come when the disposition would be not to extend but to contract the privileges now enjoyed by Roman Catholics? and when those who had been parties to the original construction of the Act of George IV., would be called upon to defend those privileges, and to resist the violation of the provisions made in favour of Roman Catholics by that Act of Parliament? Thinking it therefore on every ground inadvisable to depart, without manifest reasons, from the settlement made by the Roman Catholic Relief Act, and considering that no case of grievance had been established or attempted, he should certainly support the Amendment which had been moved; and vote, as on a former occasion, against the further progress of the Bill.
MR. J. COLLETT: Although it is impossible for any one to regret more than I do the declaration of the noble Lord the
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Member for Arundel, that the Roman Catholics will carry on a contest with or against Protestantism, till Protestantism shall become extinct; I shall consider it my duty to support the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Kinsale, that you Sir, do now leave the chair for the purpose of our going into Committee on this Bill. I give my vote, however, on quite the opposite principle; I give it because I am for toleration—non-interference. Objecting to the interference of any one in my religious principles, I should feel ashamed were I to wish to interfere with the religious principles of others. In my opinion, religion ought to be simply an affair between man and his Maker; and if any one discharges his duty properly and uprightly in this world, I should be sorry to think that his chance of going to heaven was diminished by his being called a Protestant, Catholic, Dissenter, Mahometan, or Hindoo. I am myself an humble member of the Church of England; but I am in no apprehension of danger from the Church of Rome. If the Church of England has anything to dread, it is from the conduct of its own members; of such men as the Bishops of London and of Exeter, who, by their endeavours to introduce newfangled doctrines and ceremonies, by having the service performed twenty different ways in twenty different places, are bringing about dissension and discord between clergy and congregation, and disgusting the laity instead of securing their respect and affections. The Crown is the head of the Church, and the Bishops next in authority under it. What shall we think of the unity prevailing, when the Queen, the head of the Church, recommends one thing, and a Bishop directly the reverse? The Queen, the head of the Church, thinks proper to attend a performance at the Opera, for the benefit of the fund collecting for the distressed Scotch and Irish: the Bishop of Exeter has the effrontery to denounce from the pulpit a ball got up for identically the same object. Well may we say, a house divided against itself can never stand; and a Church in which there exists such diversity of conduct, can never stand well in the eyes of the honest and impartial. One word more before I sir, down. We have heard a great deal from the right hon. Gentleman who last addressed the House, as well as from others, as to processions of Roman Catholic priests in their robes. Of these processions no one can more disapprove than myself: there is however, another procession of which I am also desirous of getting rid, and that is, of

799
a procession which daily takes place in the House of Lords—of the Bishops marching and parading themselves in their episcopal habits, when I am sure they would look much more quiet and respectable, if like others they attempted to legislate in plain clothes.
SIR G. GREYobserved, that although it had not been his intention to address the House on this occasion, he wished briefly to state the reason why he should vote for going into Committee upon this Bill. He regarded the question as being precisely the same in substance with that which was discussed some weeks ago, when the Bill was ordered to be read a second time. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth (Sir R. Peel), then stated that he viewed the Bill as consisting of two parts, and that while he supported the first part, he opposed the second. The statutes which affected Roman Catholics in former times, and to which the first part of the Bill referred, had been examined by the Criminal Law Commissioners; and it was in accordance with their distinct recommendation that those statutes should be repealed. With regard to the latter part of the Bill, it was hardly necessary, after the grounds so very ably stated by the right hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay) in supporting the second reading, to reopen the argument upon the Motion for going into Committee, when the question was substantially the same. The House was not pledged to the details of the measure by adopting the present Motion. For his own part he had already stated that he was not prepared to give his assent to all the provisions of the Bill. He could not agree—he could not sympathize—with the noble Lord, the Member for Newark (Lord J. Manners), in the complacency with which the noble Lord had viewed the extension of the Roman Catholic Church, as regarded its religious orders; but he was prepared to give his cordial assent to the principle of the Bill, so as to effect the removal of all disabilities which were objectionable in their nature, and which could safely, and in accordance with the constitution of this country, be dispensed with. He knew well the language which would be used as to the Bill in conformity with the views expressed by the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Spooner). It would be said that the object was the subversion of Protestant interests in this country, and the advancement of Roman Catholic. He protested against any such imputation; he protested against the assumption that the
800
supporters of the present Bill were adverse to the Protestant interests of the country, holding, as he did, that the Protestant Reformation of the 15th century was one of the most valuable boons which had ever been bestowed upon any country. But he should reckon himself unworthy of the name of Protestant, if he could consent to retain penalties which Roman Catholics, it was declared, should incur by teaching in their families doctrines that entered into the creed of their Church; and he saw no use in retaining upon the Statute-book, now that the penalties were removed, a declaration of the illegality which still attached to the profession of certain views. He could not see why Parliament should leave on the Statute-book provisions which declared that their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects were acting illegally when they were acting conscientiously. The principles of toleration in regard to Roman Catholics had been adopted into the legislation of this country; and he believed it was for the interest of Protestantism that those principles should be adopted, that hon. Gentlemen should discharge themselves of all suspicion that they wished to attempt keeping down their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, by retaining such enactments as those which the Bill proposed to remove. He was prepared to go into the consideration of its provisions seriatim, with the report of the Criminal Law Commissioners in his hand, so as to ascertain how far it was in conformity with their recommendations; and he was prepared to go then into the consideration of the latter part of the Bill, as to which he had much greater doubts. It was not likely that the provision for legalising public processions would be pressed. He knew not what was the view of the hon. and learned Member who had the conduct of the Bill; but that and other matters would be fully considered in Committee. Having voted for the second reading of the Bill, and considering the present question substantially the same as one then decided, he should vote for going into Committee.
MR. LAWregretted that the right hon. Baronet had not alluded to the difference between repealing the Statute of Elizabeth and the specific penalties attached to the crime which it prohibited. He called the attention of the House to a statute of the reign of Richard II., which threw some light on the question of supremacy; for it showed that the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was in early times no part of the religion of this country. This statute of

801
prœmunire, for purchasing hulls from Rome, and which affirmed the Grown of England to be "subject to none," was passed on the petition of the Commons of the realm to redress those grievances which the interference of the Pope of Rome had introduced into this country. It recited the remedies for recovering the presentation to benefices, the Pope having proceeded to pass sentence of excommunication against bishops for acting on the judgments of the courts; and it stated the danger to the freedom of the Crown, which was not subject to any foreign Power. The temporal Peers were asked whether it was not part of the Constitution that the spiritual supremacy of the Crown should be maintained? They answered with one voice that it was, and that it was contrary to the law of England for any Romish censure to be cast on those who carried out the ecclesiastical law of the country. This Act was passed in Roman Catholic times, when there was a spirit in the Commons of England not to allow the supremacy of the Pope to override the supremacy of the British Throne. He was tempted to quote to the House the firm and forcible language of the Commons of England of that day, in the hope that the loyal and uncompromising spirit which dictated that language had not degenerated in the days of our Reformed National Church—the bulwark of a Protestant Throne. The hon. and learned Gentleman then read the following passage:—
"And, moreover, the Commons aforesaid say, that the said thing so attempted be clearly against the King's Crown and his Regality used and approved the time of all his progenitors; wherefore they and all the liege Commons of the same Realm will stand with our said Lord the King, and his said Crown and his Regality in the cases aforesaid, and in all other cases attempted against him, his Crown and his Regality to live and to die. And moreover they pray the King, and him require by way of justice, that he would examine all the Lords in the Parliament, as well spiritual as temporal, severally, and all the States of the Parliament, how they think of the cases aforesaid, which be so openly against the King's Crown, and in derogation of his Regality, and how they will stand in the same cases with our Lord the King, in upholding the rights of the said Crown and Regality."
He forbore to make further quotations from this statute, passed in the sixteenth year of Richard II., and in that of our Lord 1392; the whole penning of the Act was remarkable, and would well repay perusal from its great political and historical interest. The repeal of the Statute of the 1st of Elizabeth, c. 1, would not repeal the
802
Constitution of England, or deprive the Crown of England of the right to exercise supremacy in spiritual matters. If, then, the common law was left in the same state, why should the statute be repealed? On these grounds he entirely objected to enter into the consideration of the question in Committee. No notice either had been taken of the observations of the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, who had pointed out that the provisions of this Bill repealed those Acts in which the oath exacted from the Sovereign were to be found embodied. For instance, by the Act of the 1st William and Mary, a very stringent test was provided that the Sovereign on coming to the Throne should make a declaration of being in communion with the Church of England, and renouncing the See of Rome. This declaration was embodied in the 30th of Charles II., which was one of the Acts proposed to be repealed by this Bill; so that, if this Bill passed, they would repeal the whole of that Act in which alone the terms of that particular declaration were to be found. He did not say that that of itself would release the Sovereign from the obligation of being in communion with the Church of England; but pro tanto it repealed one of the Acts which imposed the obligation. But he objected to involving the matter in the slightest doubt—to making it a matter of doubtful interpretation, or giving the smallest ground for any one to pretend that this security was removed. If this Bill did not of itself remove this security, it at least prepared the way for the insinuation that it was removed; and on that account he objected to it. With regard to the second branch of the Bill, his right hon. Colleague (Mr. Goulburn) had so fully explained the necessity of the safeguards which were imposed in the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, that he had nothing to add to his observations. The faith of Parliament indeed—the faith and honour of the promoters of that measure—were solemnly pledged to their continuance: the concession was sought upon those terms—it was yielded upon those conditions. The present Bill proposed to let in a whole inundation of regular clergy, without taking any precaution whatever. He would not trespass upon their attention farther than to say, that he should have great satisfaction in recording his vote along with the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, who "had done the State

803
some service" by his opposition to this Bill.
VISCOUNT SANDONassured the House he would not detain them five minutes. At the same time, it was a question on which he was unwilling to give a silent vote. In the first place, he had to express his unfeigned regret that this question had been raised at all, inasmuch as he disliked to see occasion given for religious dissension without some great practical object to be gained by it, which he confessed he could not find in the Bill now before them. It was not pretended that there was any great practical evil endured by any one under the law as it now stood. But he did see a great evil in exciting religious dissensions, which ought not to be called forth except in cases of absolute necessity. At the same time, while such was his feeling with respect to the appearance of the Bill before them, it was impossible, after that Bill was introduced, to forbear expressing an opinion upon it one way or another. It would be more convenient for him, perhaps, if he did not express any opinion; but that was a course he was unwilling to take. Looking, then, to the course of conduct he had always pursued on similar occasions—looking to the confidence he had always entertained that, with institutions so free as ours, the only way of fighting the battle of truth was to leave it unsupported and unfettered by the action of the State, he confessed he could not bring himself to vote against going into Committee on the present occasion—the question being, whether they would allow Acts to rest upon the Statute-book which had no practical effect except to wound the feelings of a large class of our countrymen, and which, indeed, could not be practically called into existence without opposing the whole course of public feeling. When such was the question before them, he confessed he could not oppose the Motion for going into Committee with the view of doing away with these enactments.
MR. ESTCOURTwould not detain the House by attempting to throw any light upon this subject; but as the right hon. Gentleman (Sir G. Grey) had stated the reasons why he wished the House to go into Committee, he (Mr. Estcourt) desired also to be allowed to state very shortly the reasons why he opposed going into Committee. The right hon. Gentleman had grounded his wish for going into Committee upon the fact, that the sense of the House had already been taken upon the
804
principle of the Bill by the division which took place on the second reading. He (Mr. Estcourt) begged, however, to recall to the recollection of the House, that at whatever length the question had been discussed, the majority for the second reading amounted only to three. He begged also to remind the House, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth, who strongly resisted this measure upon the ground that it was an infraction of the compact of 1829, did yet vote in support of the second reading, upon the distinct understanding that the hon. Member for Kinsale (Mr. Watson) would, in Committee, introduce certain clauses which would satisfy his scruples. He appealed to the House whether the clauses which the hon. Member for Kinsale had given notice of his intention to introduce in Committee, were in the slightest degree calculated to meet the objections of his right hon. Friend (Sir R. Peel)? He thought they were not; and he, for one, would maintain that if the Bill passed, the compact which had been entered into at the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act would be completely violated. On these grounds, therefore, he should feel it his duty to vote against going into Committee.
MR. WATSONtrusted the House would bear with him for a few minutes, as he happened to be the individual who had charge of the Bill, while he answered the many objections which had been made to it, and while he showed to the House what was its real and true principle. Not one single argument had been adduced against the principle of the Bill, but objections of more or less weight had been urged against detached clauses. That principle was the removal of penalties affecting individuals on account of their religious opinions—a clear and broad principle. That was the principle which he wanted the House to affirm. That principle had been affirmed on the vote for the second reading of this Bill; it had been affirmed by the Bills of 1844 and 1846, which were now part of the law of the land. There might be alterations made in the Bill without touching its principle; those alterations might be discussed in Committee; but he wanted that the House should not send it abroad to the country that they rejected the principle—this large and tolerant principle—that no man should be punished on account of his religious opinions. With reference to the observations of the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool—for whose

805
opinions he had the highest respect—he denied that it was he who had caused the religious dissensions. He had simply affirmed a principle—to remove odious enactments from the Statute-book; it was the opposite party who promoted the dissension; and the secret was let out by the hon. Member for Warwickshire, who threatened hon. Members with having this subject brought forward on the hustings, and who intended no doubt to revive the old war cry of "No Popery." The hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Estcourt) had charged him with a broach of compact. He was sure the hon. Member did not use the word offensively; and he could assure the House that he would be the last man in it to commit a breach of faith. Some Members complained that legislation was unnecessary, some that he went too far: there was much difficulty in pleasing his opponents. How would the hon. Member for Birmingham like to have inoperative penal laws in force against him for the exercise of his religion? He had promised to satisfy the scruples of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth in Committee; and he had since proposed and published clauses which he thought ought to satisfy him; and if the right hon. Baronet had not been satisfied, he would have been present to-day to say so. At all events, if those clauses were not sufficient, further securities could be taken in Committee. The Bill was divided into two parts, and the first part was intended to repeal the ancient penal laws. The Emancipation Bill was intended to restore to the Catholics the civil privileges to which they were entitled: this Bill was intended to remove the penalties to which they were exposed. All the arguments which had been urged by the hon. Member for Birmingham, and the hon. Member for Warwickshire, were beside the question. He fully agreed with their main principles. He hoped he was as sincere a Protestant as they were, and he wished to see the Catholics brought to Protestantism; every sincere man wished to see his religion in spirit and in form prevail; but then he wished to see them brought by reason and argument, and not by penal laws, for penal laws might make martyrs, but could not make converts. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge had not dealt fairly with this Bill. In 1843, he originally brought this Bill into Parliament. In 1844, an Act was passed taking away the
806
penalties from the Acts of Elizabeth and of James I. The penalties were taken away, but the offence with the common-law-punishment attached to misdemeanors, still remained. Now, it was well known that if a matter was made an offence by statute, while the statutable penalty was taken away, then it remained at common law a misdemeanor, and that was what he now wanted to remove. Then there was the 30th of Charles II., the repeal of which the learned Recorder for London said would pro tanto weaken the force of the 1st of William and Mary, known as the Bill of Rights. But the repeal of a former Act would not touch a subsequent Act, and he was at a loss how any one could conceive that it would. The 30th of Charles II. contained a declaration; the Bill of Rights did not regard subjects at all, but the duties of the Crown. The Sovereign would make the same declaration whether the Statute of Charles was in force or not. At all events, the words introduced in Committee would obviate all doubt or difficulty. As to the observations of the learned Recorder regarding the supremacy of the Crown, that was exactly his argument. He had always maintained that the supremacy of the Crown was maintained by the common law of England. It had been so laid down by Lord Coke, Lord Hale, by the Statutes of Richard II. and of Henry VIII., all declaring the supremacy of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical, was part and parcel of the common law of England. The 1st of Elizabeth, therefore, which he proposed to repeal, did not make, nor even for the first time declare, the supremacy of the Crown; but it punished individuals for maintaining the authority of the Pope of Rome in ritual or doctrinal matters. That was the first part of the Bill. The second had reference to those parts of the 10th of George IV.—the Catholic Emancipation Act—which some people called the safeguards of the Constitution. This part of the Bill consisted of two clauses—the prohibition, of religious processions, and the admission of the regular orders of clergy into the United Kingdom. Now, he was as averse as any man could be to have religious processions in the public streets. He objected to processions of all kinds, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Dissenting; for he thought they had a tendency to bring religion into ridicule in the minds of those on whom religion had not a strong hold. The Amendment which he proposed

807
was this—that as far as regarded funerals, this prohibition should be repealed. At present, he understood, the funeral service was read over the body of a deceased Catholic in a private room; and the priest did not attend in the churchyard at all. All he wished was, that at the burial ground the priest should be allowed to attend, wearing the insignia of his office as priest, to which many people attached great importance. It had been objected that the Host might be elevated at such a time; but he had been told that nothing of the kind ever occurred at Catholic funerals. At any rate, precautions might be taken against it. All he asked was, that they should not touch the principle of the Bill. Then with regard to the introduction of the Jesuits and other orders into this country, he would remark that many distinguished members of the Roman Catholic Church had been members of these orders, such as Dr. Doyle, Dr. Troy, Father Mathew, and many others. There was at present a Catholic bishop in Wales, and there were several hundred clergy, both in Ireland and in this country, members of these orders. The state of the law upon this subject was most unsatisfactory at present; for, though there was a penalty against making a man a Jesuit in the United Kingdom, or a Jesuit or regular priest coming into this country from foreign countries, yet there was no penalty against it in any of the dependencies of the Crown; so that a Jesuit might be made in the Channel Islands, or in Malta, or the Isle of Man, and afterwards come into the United Kingdom without the breach of any law. He was willing to strike out of the Bill whatever might appear to be objectionable; and all he asked was, that the principle of the Bill might be affirmed, and that their legislation might appear to be liberal and tolerant. He had advocated this measure as in in accordance with the spirit of our Constitution. He asked for a vote on the ground of toleration; and he hoped they would remove this last rag of intolerance from the Statute-book, where it remained a stigma on Catholics, and a disgrace to Protestants.
The House divided on the Question, that the words proposed to be left out, stand part of the Question:—Aves 119; Noes 158: Majority 39.

List of the AYES.

Aldam, W.

Arundel and Surrey, Earl of

Anson, hon. Col.

808

Bannerman, A.

Leader, J. T.

Baring, rt. hon. F. T.

Lincoln, Earl of

Bentinck, Lord G.

Macaulay, rt. hon. T. B.

Bodkin, J. J.

Macnamara, Major

Bouverie, hon. E. P.

M'Carthy, A.

Bowring, Dr.

M'Donnell, J. M.

Bright, J.

Maitland, T.

Brotherton, J.

Marjoribanks, S.

Brown, W.

Marshall, W.

Browne, R. D.

Mitchell, T. A.

Browne, hon. W.

Moffatt, G.

Brownrigg, J. S.

Molesworth, Sir W.

Buller, C.

Monahan, J. H.

Buller, C.

Morpeth, Visct.

Busfeild, W.

Muntz, G. F.

Byng, rt. hon. G. S.

Mure, Col.

Carew, hon. R. S.

Napier, Sir C.

Cayley, E. S.

Nicholl, rt. hon. J.

Christie, W. D.

O'Brien, C.

Clive, Visct.

O'Connell, M. J.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

Ogle, S. C. H.

Collett, J.

Ord, W.

Coote, Sir C. H.

Paget, Col.

Craig, W. G.

Parker, J.

Currie, R.

Pattison, J.

Dalmeny, Lord

Pechell, Capt.

Dalrymple, Capt.

Philips, M.

Damer, hon. Col.

Plumridge, Capt.

Dawson, hon. T. V.

Pulsford, R.

Dickinson, F. H.

Pusey, P.

Dodd, G.

Rawdon, Col.

Duncan, G.

Rich, H.

Duncombe, T.

Romilly, J.

Dundas, Adm.

Russell, Lord J.

Dundas, F.

Russell, Lord E.

Dundas, Sir D.

Rutherfurd, A.

Easthope, Sir J.

Sandon, Visct.

Ebrington, Visct.

Sheil, rt. hon. R. L.

Ellis, W.

Smith, B.

Escott, B.

Smythe, hon. G.

Evans, Sir De L.

Somerville, Sir W. M.

Ewart, W.

Stansfield, W. R. C.

Fitzroy, Lord C.

Strutt, rt. hon. E.

Forster, M.

Tancred, H. W.

Gill, T.

Thornely, T.

Granger, T. C.

Towneley, J.

Greene, T.

Trelawny, J. S.

Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

Tufnell, H.

Grosvenor, Lord R.

Vane, Lord H.

Hatton, Capt. V.

Wall, C. B.

Hay, Sir A. L.

Warburton, H.

Hervey, Lord A.

Wawn, J. T.

Howard, P. H.

Ward, H. G.

Hume, J.

Williams, W.

James, Sir W. C.

Wyse, T.

Jervis, Sir J.

Yorke, H. R.

Johnstone, Sir J.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

TELLERS.

Lambton, H.

Watson, W. H.

Lascelles, hon. W. S.

Manners, Lord J.

Lift of the NOES.

Ackers, J.

Barrington, Visct.

Adderley, C. B.

Bateson, T.

Alford, Visct.

Beckett, W.

Allix, J. P.

Bennet, P.

Archdall, Capt, M.

Beresford, Major

Arkwright, G.

Blackburne, J. I.

Austen, Col.

Blackstone, W. S.

Baillie, Col.

Boldero, H. G.

Baillie, H. J.

Broadley, H.

Baillie, W.

Broadwood, H.

809

Brooke, Lord

Jones, Capt.

Bruce, C. L. C.

Kemble, H.

Buck, L. W.

Knight, F. W.

Buller, Sir J. Y.

Knightley, Sir C.

Burroughes, H. N.

Lawson, A.

Cabbell, B. B.

Lennox, Lord G. H. G.

Carew, W. H. P.

Leslie, C. P.

Chandos, Marq. of

Lindsay, Col.

Chapman, A.

Lockhart, W.

Chelsea, Visct.

Lowther, hon. Col.

Chichester, Lord J. L.

Lygon, hon. G.

Cholmeley, Sir M.

Manners, Lord C. S.

Christopher, R. A.

March, Earl of

Chute, W. L. W.

Marton, G.

Clerk, rt. hon. Sir G.

Masterman, J.

Codrington, Sir W.

Meynell, Capt.

Colville, C. R.

Morgan, O.

Compton, H. C.

Morgan, Sir C.

Copeland, Ald.

Munday, E. M.

Cripps, W.

Newdegate, C. N.

Deedes, W.

Newry, Visct.

Denison, E. B.

Packe, C. W.

Dick, Q.

Palmer, R.

Douglas, Sir H.

Palmer, G.

Douglas, Sir C. E.

Peel, J.

Douglas, J. D. S.

Plumptre, J. P.

Douro, Marq. of

Polhill, F.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Pollington, Visct.

Duncombe, hon. O.

Powell, Col.

Du Pre, C. G.

Prime, R.

East, Sir J. B.

Rashleigh, W.

Egerton, W. T.

Reid, Col.

Egerton, Sir P.

Rendlesham, Lord

Estcourt, T. G. B.

Repton, G. W. J.

Feilden, Sir W.

Richards, R.

Fellowes, E.

Rolleston, Col.

Ferrand, W. B.

Round, C. G.

Filmer, Sir E.

Round, J.

Finch, G.

Ryder, hon. G. D.

Fitzroy, hon. H.

Sanderson, R.

Forester, hon. G. C. W.

Seymer, H. K.

Fox, S. L.

Sheppard, T.

Frewen, C. H.

Shirley, E. J.

Fuller, A. E.

Shirley, E. P.

Gladstone, Capt.

Sibthorp, Col.

Gooch, E. S.

Smith, A.

Gore, M.

Smyth, Sir H.

Gore, W. O.

Somerset, Lord G.

Gore, W. R. O.

Sotheron, T. H. S.

Goring, C.

Spooner, R.

Goulburn, rt. hon. H.

Stuart, H.

Granby, Marq. of

Stuart, J.

Gregory, W. H.

Taylor, J. A.

Hale, R. B.

Thesiger, Sir F.

Hall, Col.

Thompson, Ald.

Halsey, T. P.

Thornhill, G.

Hamilton, W. J.

Tollemache, J.

Hardy, J.

Tower, C.

Harris, hon. Capt.

Troubridge, Sir E. T.

Hastie, A.

Turner, E.

Heathcote, Sir W.

Turner, C.

Henley, J. W.

Tyrell, Sir J. T.

Hildyard, T. B. T.

Verner, Sir W.

Hope, Sir J.

Vyse, H.

Hornby, J.

Vyvyan, Sir R. R.

Hotham, Lord

Waddington, H. S.

Hudson, G.

Walpole, S. H.

Hussey, T.

Wellesley, Lord C.

Ingestre, Visct.

TELLERS.

Johnstone, H.

Inglis, Sir R. H.

Jolliffe, Sir W. H. G.

Law, C. E.

Committee put off for six months.
House adjourned at Six o'clock.