Lords Sitting of 8 March 1813

PETITIONS RESPECTING THE CLAIMS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.
Earl Fitzwilliam presented a Petition from Leeds, in favour of the Catholics. The duke of Sussex presented a Petition from the Catholics of the counties of Sligo and Wexford, praying for the repeal of the several statutes against them.
The Marquis of Lansdownepresented a Petition to the same effect from the Catholics of the city of Limerick; and in doing so, he thought it necessary to state, what the petitioners did not ask. They asked for no political power as a body: they only asked that they, as individuals, might at the pleasure of a Protestant sovereign, or a Protestant community, be eligible to such offices as the Protestant sovereign or Protestant community might think them calculated to fill with advantage to the country: they asked for no establishment of their own Church in the place of the establishment of the Church of England: they only asked, that they might, without a stigma upon them, exercise their own religion. They wished for no change in any of the establishments of the state, but only the opportunity of defending those establishments which their conduct and their oaths proved them willing to protect and support. This he had thought proper to say, because, from what he had read and heard, he knew that most unfounded insinuations and statements had gone abroad respecting the views of the Catholics.