ROMAN CATHOLIC DISABILITY REMOVAL BILL.

HL Deb 17 April 1821 vol 5 cc279-359

The order of the day being read, for resuming the adjourned debate, on the motion, "That this bill be now read a second time,"

The Bishop of St. David's

said:—my lords; though I am wholly unable to do justice either to the great importance of the subject before the House, or to my own convictions, yet I am unwilling to give the vote which I shall do this night against the second reading of the bill, without endeavouring at least to state the grounds of my objections to it. But, before I state those grounds, I wish to make a single observation on what fell from the noble earl, whose eloquent speech closed the debate of last night. The noble earl observed, that the constitution of this country is "essentially Protestant, but not exclusively so." My lords, the history of the constitution, if I mistake not, requires both terms. From the Constitutions of Clarendon downwards, its Protestant character was forming. It was forming by the variety of checks which were given to the intrusive authority of the pope by the laws of Edward 1st and 3rd, Richard 2nd and others. It was formed, and in great measure completed by the laws of Henry 8th. It was finally completed by the statute of the 30th of Charles 2nd. It was completed, my lords, by the active exclusion of the pope and his jurisdiction from the constitution. I object to the bill, because it appears to me contrary to the very end for which your lordships are here assembled. The writ of summons convened parliament expressly to consult for the defence of the church of England; super rebus quibusdem arduis defensionem regni Angliæ et Ecclesiæ Anglicanse concerventibus. But the church of England never can be defended by giving political power to her greatest enemy, the church of Rome. I object to the bill, because it appears to me contrary to the oath which I took at the commencement of the present parliament. The bill recognizes the foreign jurisdiction, which I then swore does not exist, and ought not to exist within this realm. The oath expressed my real sentiments. I took it without the smallest mental reservation whatsoever; and at the time I was resolved to fulfil the tenor of the oath. It seems to me therefore, if I were to vote for the bill, I should falsify my oath and my declaration. I object to the bill, because it appears to me contrary to one of the highest prerogatives of the Crown. The king is head of the church of England by common law, as well as by statute. But if this bill were to pass into a law, it would be a great encouragement to the papal power; that power which the Roman Catholics hold to be superior to the sovereignty of the realm. Every encouragement therefore, of the papal power is a diminution of the authority of the, Crown.—My lords, there are many other objections to the bill. I object to it because it appears to me a most pernicious anomaly to permit the members of a foreign church, and subjects of a foreign sovereign, to sit in either House of parliament without renouncing their foreign allegiance; and especially to legislate for the church of England, against which they are united by principles of conscientious hostility. I object to the bill, because it offers to the church of England false securities. It proposes, by way of security to the church, an oath to be taken by the Roman Catholic clergy, which no conscientious Roman Catholic clergyman can take, or can keep. It is contrary to their religion, or what they call their religion, to swear that they will enter into no communications with the pope for the disturbance or the overthrow of the church of England; their creeds and oaths, their preaching, writing, and ministering, having all a tendency directly or indirectly to the overthrow of the Protestant church, as every body knows, who knows any thing of the decrees of the council of Trent, and as we have been lately informed by a Roman Catholic Bishop, who stated it as his objection to the oath proposed by the bill. I object to the oath, because it is contrary to the act of union, by which the Protestant religion was declared to be inviolable. But this bill abrogates the securities which were intended to preserve it inviolate, and has provided no equivalent. My lords, the objections to the bill are endless. They may, perhaps, be described in a few words: its utter inconsistency even with the religion of that foreign church which it was intended to serve; its ruinous neglect of the church of England which it ought to have taken care of; and the consequences which may be expected to follow from so great a change in our laws by the loss of many, perhaps indescribable properties, of the English constitution, which have given to this country its present transcendent power, dignity, and character in the world. My lords, the opponents of the bill are often called upon for a proof of the danger of admitting Roman Catholics into parliament and offices of state. Can there be greater danger than that of granting political power to persons, who, have views and interests foreign and hostile to the church of England—who tell you beforehand that it is contrary to their religion to swear that they will not employ that power for the overthrow of the established church; whose religion also may compel them to betray the counsels of the king.

The Duke of York

rose, he said, with the utmost reluctance to oppose the second reading of the bill; but there were occasions on which it became an individual not to step aside, but to come forward and boldly avow the sentiments which he entertained. The present he considered to be one of those occasions; for, were not their lordships called upon to sanction a measure, which it was admitted, even by its advocates, would effect a great change in the constitution as established at the revolution of 1688, and in the system which had seated his majesty's family on the throne? When measures similar to the present had been proposed by a statesman, who had rendered the most eminent services to his country, his royal highness said, he had strenuously opposed them, on a thorough conviction of their dangerous tendency. The more he had since heard the subject discussed, the more he had been confirmed in the opinion which he had then expressed. He had always understood that the Church of England was an integral part of the constitution. Long might it remain so! But let not their lordships imagine that he was an enemy to toleration. He should always be happy that every sect should have the full exercise of its religion, as long as it did not affect the security of the established church, and as long as its members remained loyal subjects. But, there was a great difference between allowing the free exercise of religion and granting political power. As he felt, himself inadequate to the task of entering into the details of the question, and wished not to detain those noble lords who were better qualified to take an expansive view of the subject, he should only repeat, that his opposition to the bill arose from principles which he had embraced ever since he had been able to judge for himself, and which he hoped he should cherish to the last day of his life.

The Earl of Darnley

said, that no one could feel more respect than he did for the illustrious personage who had just sat down, but it was with regret that he heard the sentiments just uttered, though he was confident, that they sprung from the purest conviction, and the most conscientious regard to truth and honour. He regretted to hear the deliberate opinion of the heir to the Crown delivered in opposition to such a measure as the present. He had himself for many years attended to the discussions on the subject, and his opinion had been formed by the same honest conviction for which he gave credit to the illustrious personage. The more he read, and heard, and saw, the more he was confirmed in the opinion which was diametrically opposite to that which had been just expressed. He had for the most part abstained from taking any share in the debates which had arisen upon the subject, leaving it to abler hands to advocate its merits; but the measure now came recommended by the Commons of England; the prejudices against it had in a great degree given way, both in this country and in Ireland, and he was anxious to avail himself of the present opportunity to state why he differed from the illustrious personage and the noble lords who supported the same side. He would confess that he was much surprised at the tone and manner in which the question had been taken up. He was surprised at the arguments of the noble earl (of Mansfield) who had spoken second in the debate of the preceding night. The speech was certainly a good speech with reference to other times—it was a good speech, but it ought to have been delivered a century and a half ago. The era to which it was adapted was that in which a noble lord was known to have declared, that he would not have in his establishment "a Popish man or a Popish woman—a Popish dog or a Popish cat." At that period the speech of the noble lord would have received due honour; but at this time of day, after the Catholics had disclaimed upon oath the whole of the pernicious doctrines ascribed to them, it was too much to revive those refuted accusations. He was also much surprised to hear a right reverend prelate last night ascribe to them the doctrine, that no faith was to be kept with heretics. That imputation among the rest they had denied upon oath; and it was but justice that they should receive credit for the denial thus solemnly given. Christian charity believeth no evil. There were some noble lords for whose talents he entertained the greatest respect, who unfortunately differed from him upon this subject; but when he reflected on the constellation of talent by which he was borne out, he could not surrender his opinion to the opposite authority. When he remembered the names of Burke, of Fox, of Pitt, Windham, Sheridan, Dundas, and though last not least, of that illustrious patriot whose name would live for ever in the annals of Ireland, and who now reposed among the ashes of the distinguished dead in this country—he felt confident in the justice of his opinions. To turn from the dead to the living, he would refer to the right hon. member by whom the bill was introduced into the other House of Parliament, and by whose eloquence they were persuaded to adopt it. Mere accident could not account for this general agreement among such authorities; the laws of gravitation might as well be ascribed to accident. In his opinion the judgment of many of the opponents of the present measure, though individuals of great intellect, was warped by long continued prejudices and professional habits. This was the only way of accounting for that feeling of dread and alarm which many noble lords entertained of the bill. In his opinion no real cause of danger existed; but if it did, it was greatly exaggerated. There was a passage in Burke in which he said that a man might in his own mind, entertain a confused idea of danger; but if the grounds of his apprehension were clearly brought before the world, they would meet with nothing but scorn and derision. He believed that the apprehensions of danger from this measure were of the nature alluded to in this passage. What danger could be apprehended from the admission of the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Shrewsbury, and the representatives of four or five of the most ancient families in this kingdom to the enjoyment of their birthright, a seat in that House; for that would be the immediate effect of the passing of the bill? Would any man lay his hand on his heart and say that any danger to the Protestant church or the throne was likely to result from the admission of the Catholic peers into that House? The right of peers to sit in that House formed part of the constitution: it was coeval with Magna Charta and the institution of the trial by jury; and it was disgraceful to behold the duke of Norfolk year after year sitting above the bar, when he was entitled to walk into the body of the House. It had been stated by a noble marquis who spoke last night, that the opponents of the measure argued, as if it was a new privilege for which the friends of the measure were contending. But did they remember, that in the time of queen Elizabeth, when the Protestant religion was as anxiously protected as at present, that sovereign had not excluded Catholic peers from the House; and that it was not until the passing of the test and other acts, in the time of Charles 2nd that object was accomplished? Another ground of alarm with the opponents of the bill was, that it would lead to a Popish House of Commons. It was said, that a great majority of the Irish members would, in the first instance, be Catholics; but those who knew any thing of elections in the counties of Ireland, must be aware that they were of all things most unlike popular elections—that they were aristocratical more than any thing else. For his own part, the only consequence he could anticipate with respect to the county of Meath, with which he was more connected than with any other part of Ireland, was, that the son of lord Fingal might be returned instead of lord Bective, which would be no great misfortune; and his firm persuasion was, from what he knew of the country, that ten Catholic members would not be returned for Ireland. If, however, any attempt should be made to subvert the Protestant constitution, they could still retrace their steps, and prevent such fears from being realised. The next point insisted on was, that his majesty would be surrounded with Protestant councillors; but no Catholics could arrive at offices of high trust without the recommendation of Protestants in power, and if they discovered talents to authorise such a choice, he did not see what injury would result from it. A reverend prelate had said, that the Catholics owed allegiance to a foreign power; but that they had denied upon oath. They had professed allegiance to his majesty alone, acknowledging him as their lawful sovereign, though not the head of their church. It was impossible to have better proof than this, except it was, the review of their conduct for a long series of years, which would establish their claim to be considered as loyal and faithful subjects. Another reverend prelate had expressed a hope that the question would be set at rest by a final rejection, and that it would never be brought forward again. He could not agree with the reverend prelate either in the wish or the opinion. It was impossible that this great measure of humanity and policy, of Christian charity and substantial justice, should not sooner, or later, be carried into effect; and he should sit down with the conviction in his mind, that if the Catholics continued to conduct themselves with the temper and moderation which they had lately observed, whatever the result of the present discussion might be, their success could not be long delayed.

The Lord Chancellor

rose.^* He apologised for taking so early an opportunity of expressing his sentiments. Upon a question so important, he could not be altogether silent; and he was unwilling to postpone asking for their lordships attention, till that period when fatigue might disable him from giving his own attention sufficiently to the subject of debate. The question upon which the House was to decide, was, whether the bill should be read a second time. He was ready to say that it ought to be read a second time if the House approved its principle, and if the imperfections in its enactments were such as, admitting of amendments and modifications, the bill amended and modified might, after all, in some sense be considered as a bill somewhat alike to that which the Commons had sent up. But, making this admission, he could not bring himself to consent to the second reading of this bill.

He had heard with regret the observations of the noble earl, with respect to his conduct, and that of another noble lord, when the first reading of this bill was proposed. Disrespect to the mover of this bill he altogether disclaimed. It ^*From the original edition, printed for Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly. was also a mistake on the part of the noble mover to suppose that the bill had been represented by him, or the other noble lord, as altogether unworthy of any consideration. What the bill had for its general object had been under consideration for nearly twenty years. What the particular provisions of this bill were, had, by rumour and report, and the votes upon the table, been so thoroughly understood before it was read a first time, that it was difficult to suppose, that in the progress of such a bill, if it was to proceed further, any new light could be thrown upon the subject of it. With respect to himself also, he trusted that he might stand in some measure excused for an early and prompt interposition against a measure, which, whilst it seemed to impose upon a lord chancellor, who under the bill might be the only lay-servant of the Crown in Great Britain necessarily a Protestant, the peculiar duty of watching over Protestant interests, appeared to him necessarily and obviously to bring all those interests into extreme peril. The noble earl who spoke last, had declared his conviction, that this measure, or one of the same character, must, sooner or later, be carried. It might, be so: but he should, nevertheless, feel it to be his duty, as attached to civil liberty and to religious liberty (best protected by the Protestant establishment in this country, connecting its Church establishment with an enlightened and liberal toleration), to oppose the introduction and progress of every such measure as the present, through evil report and good report, as long as opposition to it could be offered. If the majority of the House should at any time finally determine that his opinions had been founded in error, he should at least enjoy the satisfaction, which would result from a conviction that he had not willingly erred, and that he had most anxiously endeavoured to avoid error.

He now came to the question,—Could they pass this bill? Was this bill fit to be adopted? Were the enactments of this bill such as the House could approve of? He thought he might assert that the House could not pass this bill. It was, however, he admitted, a different question, whether the House should read the bill a second time, and resolve itself into a committee, and in that committee, modify, alter, and amend it? To commining the bill he objected, not only be- cause he was averse to the principle of the bill, but because he could not admit that they were in a committee, under colour of modifying, amending and altering, to propose and enact (for such must be the case) some measure, in effect, entirely new: this he thought in all cases objectionable,—and, with reference to the present important subject, peculiarly objectionable, upon the principles upon which he had always voted against going into committees respecting it, before specific measures were proposed as those which were to be adopted. If it could be supposed that this bill, if the House went into a committee, could be reported upon, without very material variation, destroying, in a great measure, if he might so express himself, its identity, the Roman Catholic would know what he had to hope for, and the Protestant what he had to dread. But, in his judgment, any bill or measure, which could come out of a committee, must be altogether different from that which the House, if it read this bill a second time, would propose to commit; and therefore, the further proceeding on this bill appeared to him as objectionable as former motions, always rejected by this House, were, when, without the introduction of bills, the House was moved to form committees to consider generally what measures might be introduced;—motions, which, if adopted, would probably have raised expectations in the minds of the Roman Catholics, which could not be gratified, and have created alarms in the minds of the Protestants, which the legislature ought not to excite.

The noble lord, who spoke last, had enumerated the names of many illustrious men, existing in our time, though now no more, who had been advocates for some measures of emancipation, and, amongst others, the illustrious name of Pitt:—and the noble lord who has moved the second reading of the bill, has been pleased to represent those who have opposed these measures, as constantly changing their ground;—a change, which may, with much justice, be stated as clearly observable in the conduct of those, who have advocated the measures. No man living had had a more affectionate regard for Mr. Pitt, or ever held in higher veneration the virtues, the talents, and wisdom of that great man, whose name will be held in everlasting remembrance. In common with his country, he owed to that great statesman the highest obligations;—the debt of gratitude, which he individually owed to him was also large. He felt it, however, to be his unbending duty not to surrender his own opinions, unless he could be satisfied that that surrender could be safely made. If, after the Union with Ireland, that great man had been able to satisfy him that ample securities could be obtained for the Protestants, whilst concessions were made to the Roman Catholics, he would have seconded all his purposes respecting concessions. That securities were necessary Mr. Pitt had always admitted;—that they were necessary to secure the Protestant interest, and to quiet also the fears of the Protestant mind,—but it had never yet been stated, and he presumed, therefore, that no man had learnt from that great statesman—for his own part he never could learn—what securities were to be proposed,—and how the Roman Catholic mind was to be conciliated and the Protestant mind at the same time divested of its apprehensions. That great man now lay buried in the sepulchres of mortality. But there was spared to us and the country a noble baron (lord Grenville) sitting near him, a friend to concessions to the Roman Catholics,—he sincerely believed a friend to the established Church; a noble baron, to whom, notwithstanding all differences of opinions between them, he had ever looked up, and now regarded, with the highest respect and reverence, and who also, he had always understood, had considered securities as essential and necessary, if concessions were to be made.

We knew not now what securities it was the purpose of Mr. Pitt to require. We did know that, in the course of the many years which had now elapsed since what was called Roman Catholic emancipation had been contemplated, no man had yet found out what securities he could propose on the part of the Protestants, which the Roman Catholics would give, as the price of what they were to receive. And what was the state of matters now? That the House had before it a bill, proposing concessions almost unlimited; but with securities, the only securities, he presumed, which the wisdom of those who have introduced this bill, could, after meditation for twenty years, suggest, quite inefficacious, if enacted; which the Roman Catholics will not only withhold, but which they deem it matter of gross insult to have had it proposed to them to give. The bill, in its preamble, represents the Protestant succession to the Crown, by the act for the further limitation of it, to be established permanently and inviolably: and the united Church of England and Ireland, and that of Scotland, to be severally established permanently and inviolably. That after due consideration—(when had, does not appear) of the situation, dispositions, and conduct of his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects (i. e. his majest's subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion), it appears fitting to extend to them the enjoyment of the established constitution, thereby putting an end to religious jealousies, consolidating the union, and uniting and knitting together the hearts of all his majesty's subjects in one and the same interest. And then it recites that, by divers acts of parliament, the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration, therein provided, are required to be taken for certain purposes therein mentioned.

It then states the terms of the oaths of supremacy,—that the Roman Catholics are ready to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, in common with his majesty's other subjects: but, that they entertain scruples, with respect to the oath of supremacy, inasmuch as they apprehend that the same might be construed to import a disclaimer of the spiritual authority, which they ascribe to the Pope or Church of Rome, in matters of religious belief. And then it enacts, that it shall be lawful for them in all cases, where the oath of supremacy is now by the law required to be taken as a qualification for the holding or enjoying any civil right, office, or franchise, in lieu and place thereof, to make, take, and subscribe, the oath therein following. This oath contains a declaration against foreign jurisdiction, "that in any manner conflicts or interferes with the duty of full and undivided allegiance, due to his majesty, from all his subjects, or with the civil duty and obedience, which is due to his courts ecclesiastical and civil, in all matters concerning the legal rights of his subjects, or any of them." The act then proceeds to repeal all the acts, requiring the declaration against transubstantiation, as relating solely to matters of spiritual and religious belief, which do not in any wise affect or interfere with the allegiance or civil duty of his majesty's subjects." The act then contains a proviso, that it shall not alter the laws relative to the succession of the Crown in the Protestant line, or respecting the marriages of the royal family, or the Act of Uniformity. It then proceeds to enumerate excepted cases; to regulate presentations to churches; and to make it unlawful for Roman Catholics to advise as to offices or preferments in the Church of England and Ireland, or that of Scotland. It requires the persons holding the great seals of Great Britain and Ireland respectively, and the lord lieutenant and chief governor of Ireland, to be Protestants—disables Roman Catholics to vote at parish vestries—and provides in what courts the oaths of allegiance, abjuration, and the oath ordained by this statute, shall be taken.

Such were the provisions of the bill, or rather of that part of it which did not immediately apply to what was to be required of persons exercising ecclesiastical functions, professing the Roman Catholic religion, and to what was to be enacted as to bulls, dispensations, or other instruments coming from the See of Rome. With respect to such parts of the bill, as did so apply, little had been said in debate. Whether the Roman Catholics did or did not object to them, much of objection to them most reasonably might be urged; but probably the whole of this part of the bill had been found so unpalateable to the Roman Catholics, that little had been stated in debate respecting them—little but general expressions—or that they might be altered in the committee—with no very slight intimation that, at last, we might safely act as to the Protestant interests, without any securities at all to be given by the Roman Catholics. And here he stated that he was ready to admit that securities ought not to be required, if there was a well-founded opinion that concessions could be made without danger;—an opinion, to which he could not agree, and which, until this period, seemed not to have been avowed, if entertained, by any body.

In all the debates upon this subject, it had been considered as wandering out of our line of duty to consider these measures in what is called the religious view of them. Concession had, as to this, been too largely made. A right rev. prelate, in the preceding evening, had stated principles respecting the Church of Christ, upon which the legislature could not act with respect to any church, which, as a church of this world, was an established Church. He had always felt that it was one of his first duties to maintain the established religion of the country. Fortunately for the country, it had adopted the purest system of Christian faith in its established religion; by connecting with the laws, which established its Church, laws securing a liberal and enlightened toleration, as to those who dissented from its Church, it had probably placed upon the best and surest foundations, the civil and religious liberties of all who lived in the kingdom. But they were told that all this was wrong; and that they should allow every body of Christians to take its chance in the world. He was of a different opinion. He should ever assert, that an established religion was a great benefit to a people—that the object of such an establishment was not to make the Church political, but to make the state religious. Such was his firm persuasion—a persuasion so strongly entertained, that he would much rather see a Jess pure system of Christian faith established, with a liberal and enlightened toleration of those who differed from it, under which toleration we who adhere to the doctrines of our present established Church might enjoy shelter and security without power, political power, than to see this country without any established Church. Such, he said must also have been the sentiments of all those great men who had concurred in establishing, and in repeatedly refusing to shake, the provisions of the Corporation and Test acts, which, according to Blackstone, "secure both our civil and religious liberties:" among the latter of whom were to be numbered Mr. Pitt and others, who had at different times meditated and proposed the repeal of the laws respecting Roman Catholics.

It appears at first sight unaccountable how it should have happened that those who had brought forward the present measure, a measure which they had announced "as putting an end to all jealousies, as uniting and knitting together the hearts of all his majesty's subjects in one and the same interest," had not bestowed the benefit of one single enactment upon their Protestant dissenting brethren. When the constitution was settled at the time of the Revolution—a settlement now about to be shaken—the Church Establishment was secured: the Toleration act passed at the same time in favour of those Protestants who could not adhere to that Church Establishment—the members of both were thought to have contributed to the overthrow of Popery and tyranny. The present measure relieves the Roman Catholics from disabilities, from which it aims not, in any manner or degree, to relieve our Protestant brethren. Can this be right? Can the legislature think of doing this? No — nor can it be so intended. If you agree to this bill, those who bring it before you for adoption well know—cannot but know—that you must repeal—that you cannot refuse to; repeal, the Corporation and Test nets of I England. They know this—it behoves the House not to forget it, for the sake of the established Church. If it is fitting and just to communicate to the Roman Catholics, in the measure and extent proposed by this bill, the benefits and advantages of the constitution and government happily established in this kingdom," according to the preamble, it must be equally fitting and just with respect to our Protestant brethren. It should not, however, be forgotten, that our constitution and government, as established, is a constitution and government, which does not consider political power, as one of "the benefits and advantages" I to which all subjects are equally entitled.

As it is fashionable in this House, to refer to Blackstone as an author, their lordships might, in his works, find the grounds and principles, upon which the distinction, as to the grant of political power, or the withholding political power, rests; and the grounds, upon which, however friendly that writer was to the relaxation or abolition of the penal laws against Roman Catholics in given events, he holds that "whilst they acknowledge a foreign power superior to the sovereignty of this kingdom, they cannot complain, if the laws of the kingdom will not extend to them what it has done for Protestant dissenters, or complain, if the laws of the kingdom will not acknowledge them upon the footing of good subjects." A doctrine equally held by Selden, Locke, Clarendon, Somers, and others of the greatest name in our history. It is said, however, that they do not now acknowledge such a foreign power, or, at least, if they have heretofore acknowledged such a power, they will utterly, or, as far as reason can require of them, disavow all jurisdiction now, that is foreign, if they, according to this proposed act, take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and the oath specified in the proposed act. And we are told that the Protestant succession to the Crown, and the Church of England and Ireland, and the Church of Scotland, are already, by the acts mentioned in this bill, permanently and inviolably secured:—an acknowledgment this, that they ought to be so secured; that they are by the effect of these acts permanently and inviolably established and secured, if the means and provisions adopted by these acts are continued in force permanently and inviolably, may be granted. But, if the means and provisions, ordained by these acts, are destroyed by your proposed legislation, and nothing is to remain of these acts but declarations that your constitution in Church and State is Protestant, you have nothing better than what has been called a paper or parchment constitution.

To ascertain the effect of what we are doing, it is necessary to see what we are undoing, and to trace, therefore, in some measure through our history, what the supremacy of the Crown, and the allegiance of the subject, mean. With respect to the oath of allegiance, this bill proposes no modification of it. There are many statutes respecting the oath of allegiance: but the common law not only recognises what is called virtual or implied allegiance, but also expressed allegiance —that is, allegiance expressed by oath — the common law oath of fidelity and allegiance. Allegiance is undivided allegiance. The common law and the statute law look to undivided allegiance. The supremacy of the Crown is an indivisible supremacy; the allegiance due to the Crown is an indivisible allegiance. Passing over that long and eventful period of our history previous to the Reformation, in which the Crown and its subjects were so often involved in contests with the pope and the See of Home, often working the degradation of the Crown and kingdom by abject submission, sometimes asserting in those struggles the honour of both, and exhibiting a display of the most ardent love of liberty;—it is from the commencement of the Reformation down to the present time that we must look more especially to the course of events, and the nature of our laws, with reference to the present rights, liberties, and duties of the Crown, and the subjects, in matters civil, ecclesiastical, and spiritual. It is, therefore unnecessary to trouble the; House with the history of all that passed in this kingdom from about the time of Edward 3rd, and before, to the period of the Reformation, respecting Papal provisions of benefices, the purchasing of benefices, the appeals to Rome, pensions, Peterpence, dispensations, bills, rescripts, &c. and other Papal usurpations. The supremacy of the Crown had been most solemnly asserted and re-asserted by Henry 8th and Edward 6th. The acts passed in the reigns of those sovereigns it would be worthy of those whom he addressed, accurately to acquaint themselves with. Not that those acts were the foundations of the Crown's supremacy in. ecclesiastical matters, or of this doctrine of the Church of England respecting it: they asserted a supremacy inherent in the Crown according to the constitution— they did not create it; and he was mistaken if we had not an Ecclesia Anglicana, with the king its supreme head, before the pope of Rome could be said to have endeavoured to obtain any footing in this island.

To determine what was the supremacy, which the pope did claim in this country it may be important to see what was the supremacy which was claimed for and on behalf of the pope. He wished their lordships to read the statute of the 1st Philip and Mary, cap. 8. Few had read it: — but a more humiliating, a more degrading, a more debasing national record, he believed, did not exist in the annals of the world. No man who would read it, could fail to feel alive and tremble lest we should ever again open a door for the entrance of that lion, which had nearly devoured us. Observe there, how many acts of parliament touching temporal rights are repealed, as contrary to the pope's supremacy acting in ordine ad spiritualia; and then let it be determined by the old rules of construction of statutes, by looking at others in pari materiá —by the contemporanea exposilio;—by seeing what was the mischief contemplated, and the remedy proposed—what was claimed by the pope as belonging to his supremacy—and what Elizabeth in her oath of supremacy, and James I. in his oath of obedience, meant to deny to the pope, and to assert as inherent in their crowns—Let it be so determined what the pope of Rome claimed, if represented as claiming only a spiritual supremacy. These are, what lord Hale calls the two eminent oaths of supremacy and obedience, observing, "that the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown is a most unquestionable right of it,—that the pope had made great usurpations upon it,—that the statutes rejoined and restored it to the Crown,—that the Papal incroachments, yea, even in matters civil, under the loose pretence in or dine ad spiritualia, had obtained a great strength, notwithstanding the security the Crown had by the oaths of fealty and allegiance. So that there was a necessity to unrivet these usurpations by substituting, by authority of parliament, a recognition by oath of the king's supremacy, as well in causes ecclesiastical as civil."

When parliament to the oath of allegiance added this oath of supremacy, there could be no necessity of further explaining the common law oath of allegiance: and if the present oath of supremacy remains unaltered, the oath of allegiance will require no alteration now. But, if allegiance means undivided allegiance to a sovereign supreme head in church and state, it might not perhaps be otherwise than open to much doubt, whether if, for the sake of Roman Catholics, the oath of supremacy is explained by statute, the oath of allegiance may not also require, for them, explanation. It seemed to him that Locke, writing on Toleration, thought, if his meaning was such as it may be supposed to have been, that the church of Rome could have no right even to be tolerated by the magistrate—"as constituted on such a bottom, that all those, who enter into it, deliver themselves up to the service and protection of another prince, who has power to persuade the members of his church to do whatever he lists, either as purely religious, or in ordine ad spiritualia." It is most singular that our oaths of supremacy were adopted for the express purpose of unrivetting those errors, which, notwithstanding our oaths of allegiance, had crept in, in consequence of the Roman Catholics deeming to be spiritual whatever they thought proper to consider as spiritual, and that it is proposed to us to reform the oath of supremacy by substituting another, which will leave it open to the Roman Catholic to introduce the very evils, which the oath of supremacy was intended to guard against.—In the votes on the table it appears that it was at first meditated to explain the oath of supremacy by references to queen Eliza- beth's injunctions, to the statute of the fifth year of her reign, and to the 37th article of the church of England. Either he, or those, who thought of so construing the oath of supremacy, did not understand the English language. Neither the admonition, nor the statute, nor the article admitted of this,—an article, which expressly asserts that the bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in this realm.

The preamble of this proposed act states scruples inasmuch as the Roman Catholies apprehend that "the oath of supremacy might in part import a disclaimer of the pope's spiritual authority in matters of religious belief;"—and what in matters of religious belief that authority might require from them has not been ascertained by inquiry here made, or information here given, and seems not to be very easily ascertainable. The proposed oath does not, however, assert that he has no other spiritual authority, "than in matters of religious belief:" but that he has not any "authority, which, in any manner, conflicts or interferes with the duty of full and undivided allegiance, which, by the laws of this realm, is due to his majesty, or with the civil duty and obedience which is due to his courts civil and ecclesiastical, in all matters concerning the legal rights of his subjects, or any of them." It is quite obvious that this leaves it entirely with the party taking the oath to determine for himself what does or does not so conflict or interfere with such allegiance, duty, and obedience. And of how many errors may the removal, or, as lord Hale expresses it, the unrivetting become the parent when the Roman Catholic shall (as he heretofore determined for himself what was spiritual —and what portion of spiritual obedience he could withhold, though he owed full and undivided allegiance)—when he shall determine hereafter for himself, what authority of the pope does or does not conflict or interfere with the duty of such full and undivided allegiance, and such civil duty and obedience, as is mentioned in this proposed act.

That it is peculiarly necessary to consider alterations of this kind in oaths with jealousy is a proposition, which experience might sanction. In the oath permitted by the Irish Act of the 13th and 14th of George III., the Irish Roman Catholic swears to maintain the succession of the Crown, not in the heirs of the body of the princess Sophia, being Pro- testants, but in his majesty's royal family —and not in that family, being Protestants. If this oath was the oath regulating the conduct of the Irish Roman Catholic, its effects would be to be estimated, if there should be in that family, upon the demise of the Crown, an individual not Protestant. It at least demonstrates how carefully the effect of every word in a prescribed oath should be considered.

After the English Act for the relief of the Roman Catholics passed in 1791,—in 1793 that act passed in Ireland, from which a noble marquis last night read the oath which it prescribes. That noble lord observed that, after renouncing and repudiating certain principles and supposed articles of faith, and disavowing any intention to subvert the present church establishment, for the purpose of a Roman Catholic establishment in its stead, the concluding part of the oath was thus expressed:—"I do solemnly swear, that I will not exercise any privilege, to which I am or may become entitled, to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion and Protestant government in this kingdom." He now held in his hand a print of that act of parliament: he had also looked into the printed Statute book, and he found that the words were not "weaken or disturb," but "weaken and disturb;" and it was observable that the print of the statute, which he held in his hand, was peculiarly calculated to draw attention to this distinction,—the conjunctive and being printed in large characters, and made the subject of the following comment. The printer appears to be Mr. Coglan. The Irish Roman Catholic will probably have no difficulty in finding the commentator in a member of his own church. The comment is thus expressed:—"All are here agreed that, to violate the above clause, it is necessary to disturb and weaken not only the Protestant religion, but likewise the Protestant government. They are connected evidently by the conjunctive and, without any comma after religion. Both must be disturbed and weakened, not in any manner, but, precisely by the exercise of the privileges now granted. In other respects, we are in our former situation, as to preaching, teaching, writing, &c. Weaken after disturb appears rather an expletive than a word conveying a distinct meaning, for it is implied in disturb; as whoever intends to disturb, a fortiori, intends to weaken. Hence, the expres- sion is generally understood, and so it has been explained by every one consulted on it, to weaken by disturbance. Indeed, if or was between the word disturb and the word weaken, as it was proposed to be, the signification would be changed and inadmissible." Surely this sort of reasoning upon the terms of an oath should teach us to use great caution when we are prescribing in what terms we shall require oaths of security to be taken.

In those two Irish statutes, and in the English statute of 1791, much, very much is prescribed in the oaths therein respectively required, of which no mention whatever is contained in the oath required by the proposed bill. But that is not all that is necessary to be pressed upon the attention of the House. If the Bill of 1813, introduced into the House of Commons, and which had nearly passed that House is looked into, it will be seen that in 1813, an oath as comprehensive was thought necessary to be taken by Roman Catholics to entitle them to relief, as the oaths required by the statutes of 1791 and 1793: nay, more comprehensive. The preamble of the proposed bill asserts, that parliament has had due consideration of this matter. Has that consideration enabled us to learn upon what grounds it was thought necessary in 1791 and in 1793, and even so lately as in 1813, to require in the securities of oaths so much more from the Roman Catholics than this bill proposes in that species of security to require? Has this been in any manner explained to the House? It might be material to know what number of Roman Catholics have taken the oaths prescribed by the statutes of 1791 and 1793. Upon a former occasion, we learnt that a very few had taken the oaths prescribed by these statutes of 1791 and 1793. Of those individuals of the Roman Catholics, who have taken the oaths prescribed by these statutes it might not be necessary now to require an oath in the same terms. But the House ought either to know why the proposed oath is so different from that, which was deemed necessary even in 1813, or to be informed how far the Roman Catholics have or have not taken the oaths prescribed by former statutes.

There is another very material observation to be made upon a comparison of the proposed bill and these former statutes of 1791 and 1793. If they are read, and their numerous provisoes attended to, many of those provisoes, it must be admitted, were either unnecessary in those bills, or they ought to be inserted in this. Take, for example, one out of many; one, which what is said to be passing in the kingdom may make it not unfit to point out, viz. the proviso to prevent the founding of any monastic or religious order. Many other provisoes might be mentioned.

Another very extraordinary effect of this oath, which is proposed in a statute which is to unite the hearts of all his majesty's subjects, is—that no greater security by oath being heretofore required from his majesty's Protestant subjects, than from his subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion, the Protestant is now to be required to take a stronger oath in support of that which his conscience would lead him, without taking any oath, to support, than the Roman Catholic is to take, whose conscience might lead him, if not bound by oath to support it, to disturb or weaken it. The Protestant is to swear, that the foreign prince or prelate has no jurisdiction whatever. The Roman Catholic, that he has all the jurisdiction, which he, the Roman Catholic, thinks does not conflict or interfere with allegiance, civil duty, and obedience, as he understands them. Should this bill pass with the present form of oath, the same parliament would seem to require some of his subjects to swear, that no foreign prince or prelate has any jurisdiction in this country, and others of them to swear, that a foreign prelate has some jurisdiction in this country. The parliament either understands that such is the effect of the oath now to be proposed to the Roman Catholics, or what it understands is to others not altogether intelligible.

Without adverting more, as yet, to what is or is not to be the state of ecclesiastical persons professing the Roman Catholic religion, under what may be called the second part of this bill—originally another, or second bill—how would a Roman Catholic clergyman deal with such a case as the following? Two persons intermarry, being in a state of consanguinity such as does not prevent a marriage between them being valid according to our law—a consanguinity which is said, however, to form what is an impedimentum dirimens. Should a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic feel it to be his duty to refuse the sacrament to the parties, unless they voluntarily separate, it is to be supposed that he would act according to that duty. It has been understood that such would be his duty: he discharges that duty; and, by the exercise of it, induces the woman to separate herself from the person, according to our law, her husband. The husband, on the contrary, thinks proper to sue for a restitution of conjugal rights, and compels the wife to return. If such a case as this could happen, no reasoning, no casuistry, no distinction between what is temporal and what is ecclesiastical, between what is civil and what is spiritual, could lead a legislature or a state to the endurance of it, or entitle an ecclesiastic to claim the character of a good subject, or to assert that he was doing nothing which conflicted or interfered with allegiance, civil duty, and obedience, when he was using spiritual means in putting asunder those, who, according to the law of his country, were joined together.

To return to the period when, after what Hale calls the revolutions on the death of Henry the 8th, Edward the 6th, and Mary, revolutions in the struggles between regal and papal supremacy, queen Elizabeth asserted strongly the supremacy of the Crown, the rights of her subjects, and the independence of the national church. The progress of Protestantism and the Reformation had not at that period been such as to enable any sovereign to accomplish for the country what could only be gradually attained, as the necessity of further legislation became, from events, to be evident. It was found necessary from time to time between that period and the Revolution of 1688, and at the period of that Revolution, further to provide, then finally and effectually to provide, for the security of those great objects, between the maintenance of which, and the attempts to weaken and destroy them, the quiet and happiness of the country had been so often, in the mean time, disturbed. Passing over these unquiet times, let us advert to what was settled at the Revolution for the maintenance of a Protestant church and state, by enactments then ordained, and by reference made at that time to the statutes which had before passed in and subsequent to Elizabeth's reign, and the operation of some of which was then anxiously continued.

In the discussions upon such a bill as is now proposed, it cannot, too, be wholly without use to request the House to re- member how anxiously during the reign of Charles the 2nd it was sought, on the one hand, to exclude a Popish successor from the throne; and how anxiously, on the other, the struggle was made, but in vain, to convince our ancestors that a Popish king might be so surrounded with counsellors, as to secure a Protestant church and government. It seems, according to modern notions, that both may be safe, if a king is Protestant, and his counsellors in and out of parliament are all Roman Catholics. The statute of the 5th Elizabeth, had required members of the House of Commons to take the oath of Supremacy, but not the members of this House. The Corporation act, 13th Charles 2nd chap. 1, "for the preservation of the public peace in church and state," had required persons admitted into corporations, to take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and the Sacrament. The statute of Uniformity had made large provisions for the securing of the Established Church, 13th and 14th Charles 2nd chap. 4. The Test act, 25th Charles 2nd chap. 2, "to prevent dangers which might happen from Popish recusants, "had required all persons, peers as well as others, who should bear any office, civil or military, to take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and the Sacrament, according to the usage of the church of England: and parliament having recorded, "that all those laws had not the desired effect," by the act 30th Charles 2nd chap. 2, required peers, and members of the House of Commons, to take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and to make the declaration against transubstantiation, the necessity of making which by any body but the king is intended to be abrogated by this act.

James 2nd, the endeavours made to exclude him from the throne having failed, succeeded to the Crown, making his will the law of the land, and claiming that dispensing power, which those, who incline to adopt the act which we are now called upon to pass, seem disposed to commit to the lay and ecclesiastical commissioners, who are to be appointed under its authority. He rendered, as far as in him lay, the laws of the land inoperative; and in his conduct justified the assertion, that Popery and tyranny necessarily exist to pether; and convinced the nation that its liberties cannot be safe, if a Papist sits upon the throne. It had before—let that not be forgotten—been convinced that a king must have Protestant advisers only in parliament.

Advert, then, to what took place when James abdicated the government, and when William, acting with Protestant advice, became the glorious instrument, as the Bill of Rights expresses it, of delivering this kingdom from Popery and arbitrary power. The House can never look at the transactions of that memorable era, and degrade this great deliverer, and those who acted with him, as settling the liberties of the kingdom, not under the influence of a rational love and attachment to civil and religious freedom, which cannot co-exist with ecclesiastical tyranny, but under the effect of a panic, created by Titus Oates and his perjuries, and by Popish plots real or imaginary. The king and parliament solemnly continue the declaration against transubstantiation. They re-enact oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and impose upon the subject the duty of swearing that no foreign prince or prelate hath, or ought to have, any authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm;—and this certainly means what, in other statutes is expressed by the word "any manner of authority." And here be it observed, that every member of this House has sworn that a foreign prelate "ought not to have any" authority. But in this act are not we, who have sworn that he ought not to have any authority, proposing to give him all that a Roman Catholic shall think does not conflict or interfere will his allegiance and obedience?—

They then established the Coronation oath, the object of which they declare to be the maintenance of "all the people in their spiritual and civil rights and properties." They require the king to swear, that he will, to the utmost of his power, maintain the Protestant reformed religion established by law. In the same session, they enact the law for exempting the Protestant Dissenters from penalties,— the act of Toleration, "as an effectual means of uniting the Protestant subjects in interest and affection," requiring from them, nevertheless, that they should take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and make the declaration against transubstantiation,—extending the benefits of toleration to Protestants,—not to Roman Catholics, to those, whose interests this proposed bill overlooks, and not to those, who, from this proposed bill, are to reap benefits and advantages, which the con- stitution has hitherto denied to Dissenters. In the succeeding session, they pass the Bill of Rights; stating, that "by the assistance of evil councillors, judges, and ministers" (our Protestant king, it seems, is now to have Roman Catholic counsellors, judges, and ministers), king James endeavoured to subvert and extirpate, not merely the laws and liberties, but what they ranked in value and estimate as equal to, and necessarily connected with, the laws and liberties of the kingdom,—the Protestant religion,—by the various (his) acts there enumerated. They declare that the Lords spiritual and temporal, being Protestants, and Commons met, "in order to such an establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, might not again be in danger of being subverted." What religion? The Protestant religion assuredly. They express their confidence that they shall be protected against all other attempts upon the same religion, laws, and liberties. They re-enact oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. And, then prefacing the enactment with the memorable declaration, "that it has been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this 'Protestant kingdom' (a kingdom Protestant with Protestant religion), to be governed by a Popish prince;" they exclude such a prince from the Crown, and absolve the subjects of their allegiance to any such prince. And they require every person, coming to the throne, at his coronation, or coming to parliament, which shall first happen, to make the declaration against transubstantiation, which, in a former act, they had required the subjects to make, and which they considered as the only sure and certain test that a king or a subject was a Protestant. All which are then declared, enacted and established to be the law of this realm for ever.

True it is, that parliament cannot be absolutely bound by such an enactment for all generations:—but, when it is discussing whether such laws as these are to be considered as fundamental and essential, as making the state and the religion of the country fundamentally and essentially Protestant, and the kingdom itself a Protestant kingdom, no man can deny that they are—as far as in the nature of laws they can be, unalterable, i. e. that they are not to be altered without cogent necessity clearly shown; and that it is incumbent upon those who propose the changes now meditated, to make out the necessity of so much alteration in the nature of "an establishment, expressly formed in order that our religion, laws, and liberties, which had been subverted, might never again be in danger of being subverted."

The act for the further limitation of the Crown, 12 and 13 William III. states that, after the passing of the bill of rights, his majesty's subjects were restored to the full and free possession and enjoyment of their religion, laws, and liberties; and makes further provision for the succession of the Crown, in the Protestant line, for the happiness of the nation, and the security of, its religion,—requiring every person, who comes to the possession of the Crown, to join in communion with the church of England, as by law established, and confirming all the laws for securing the established religion. At the Union with Scotland, both in England and Scotland respectively, it is made an "essential and fundamental" condition of the Union in all time coming," that the Protestant religion in each should be "effectually and unalterably secured," and, with respect to that of England, that all acts for the establishment of the church thereof should remain and be in full force for ever.

The House has been told, that in Scotland they do not acknowledge, as we do in England, the supremacy of the king as the head of the national church: but it is most material to recollect that they have no intercourse with any foreign prince or prelate, as connected with their religion; that their established religion, the religion of the country—of the great mass of the people—is Protestant; and that Scotland is not, like Ireland, with a national religious establishment unalterably Protestant, and a great body of the community Roman Catholics and in constant intercourse with Rome. The established religion of England, and the established religion of Scotland, differing in some respects, though both Protestant, their established churches are perfectly distinct. The established church of Ireland, on the other hand, is part and parcel of the one established church of England and Ireland; a church affected in both its parts by what affects it in either of its parts; and that part of it, which is in Ireland, is opposed constantly by a religious body, to which there is nothing alike, in num- ber or nature, in Scotland, which can enter into controversy with Scotland's established church.^*

The fifth article of the act of Union with Ireland, unites into "one Protestant church the churches of England and Ireland," declares that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and the government of that church, are to remain in full force for ever, as now by law established. That the continuance of it as the established church, shall be deemed, and taken to be, an essential and fundamental part of the Union. And if the eighth article can be taken to affect this provision made by the fifth article, it can never be contended that it can be consistent with the intention of parliament to enact laws, endangering that part of the united church which exists in Ireland; and, through that medium, endangering the whole one Protestant church of the United Kingdom.

Not meaning to infer an intention to endanger the church from any thing which ^*In the Scotch Act recited in the 5th i Queen Anne, c. 8, (the Act of Union) entitled, "An Act for settling the manner of electing the sixteen Peers and forty-five Members, to represent Scotland in the Parliament of Great Britain;" the Queen, with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament, ordains the manner in which the sixteen peers shall be named, and in which the forty-five members for shires and burghs, shall be chosen. And it is therein expressly declared, that none shall be capable to elect or to be elected, for any of the said estates, but such as are Protestant, excluding all Papists; and, by the Act of Union, this act is declared as valid as if the same had been one of the articles of Union, ratified and approved by the act; every clause, matter and thing in which articles, are, by the Act of Union, for ever ratified, approved, and confirmed. The act of the 6th of queen Anne, for rendering the Union more complete, and providing that there should be only one privy council in Great Britain, made it necessary to make other provisions in the proceedings as to the election of members of the House of Commons, and the sixteen peers; but the acts making such provisions do not appear to alter the provision, that both electors and elected should be Protestants. And the act of the 33rd George III. which, as to persons professing the Roman has been proposed to parliament since this Union, no man can deny that measures have been proposed, from time to time, which some well-disposed persons and some usually deemed well-judging persons have found it difficult to consider as not endangering the terms of that Union as to the established Protestant church, almost as soon as the Union was made. Let it be observed that acts of parliament regulate, according to the language of them, the discipline, worship, and government in the Protestant church. Will his majesty's subjects, professing the Roman Catholic religion, and, if this bill passes, summoned to both Houses of Parliament to consult concerning the affairs of the church, and therefore joining in acts relative to the discipline, worship, and government of the Protestant church, consent that the Protestant members of these Houses shall so legislate as to the like ecclesiastical matters affecting the Roman Catholic body. If the statutes of 1791 Catholic religion in Scotland, substitutes a new form of oath instead of the formula required by king William's statute, does not appear to affect this provision requiring as to parliament the electors and elected to be Protestants. The proposed bill had no clause continuing to confine the right to elect and to be elected, to Protestants, with respect to the sixteen peers, and forty-five members of the House of Commons for Scotland. Was it then intended to alter the articles of Union with Scotland in this respect, and with regard to one of their most fundamental provisions? Or, was a special clause to be finally inserted in the bill, excepting those peers and members, and their electors, from the operation of this bill, and preserving the aid of Scotch Protestants, representing Scotland in the two Houses of Parliament, in support of the Protestant succession and government in the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, when the doors of both Houses should be opened, as to England and Ireland, to peers and commoners professing the Roman Catholic religion? Was it intended that a native of Scotland, not a peer, professing the Roman Catholic religion, might be a representative of an English county or city, but that he should not represent a Scotch shire or burgh? and 1793 did not sufficiently relieve the Roman Catholics of the United Kingdom from pains and penalties, let them be so relieved. That is not the object of this bill; which is, to give them political power in almost as great a degree, and to as large an extent, as it can possibly be conferred. If there be any thing, not political power, which it may be proposed to enact for them, or any of them, neither is that the object of this bill.

This bill does not propose certainly to change the system established at the Revolution, so far as it ordained that the sovereign should be Protestant, by positive enactment. It does propose that that system shall be changed by such enactment, so as to admit Roman Catholics to offices of the highest trust, and with the exception of almost none. It certainly is not proposed by such enactment to discharge the Crown of its sworn duty to maintain the church of England, as by law established—and, true and strange it is, that it does not propose to repeal the Test act and Corporation act. But whether the bill has not a tendency to weaken the system, which requires the king to be Protestant—to weaken his power of effectually maintaining the Protestant church and religion, and the Protestant throne, and to lead unquestionably to the repeal of the Corporation and Test acts, is a question of great importance, and the solution of which is matter of no very great difficulty. Our ancestors thought there was no sufficient security if the sovereign professed the Roman Catholic religion, though his ministers, councillors, and parliaments were Protestant. Can it rationally be doubted that there is much less security for civil and religious freedom, if the king is Protestant, and his ministers, councillors, parliament, and judges, are Roman Catholics? The House is told, indeed, that there is ample security, if the lord chancellor must be Protestant; and it seems to have been thought that the actual security would be found in the fact that the Crown never would actually appoint those whom the act makes eligible, to those great offices. Those who know the state in which a Protestant chancellor would stand in a cabinet of Roman Catholic ministers, will readily believe that, if he had either sense or honesty, he neither would remain there, nor be permitted to remain there an hour. And look to the effect of rendering the Roman Catholics eligible to high offices, but not appointing them to such offices. This is insult towards them, more intolerable than ineligibility. But what would be the effect with reference to the king? Do the Roman Catholics now complain? Does the present state of the disqualifying statutes goad and irritate them? Make them eligible to office, and yet withhold office from them, what is this but acting most unworthily towards them? You are also directing their discontent, hitherto pointed at the laws of their country, against the king upon the throne; it being, too, your duty to render him an object of affection, as far as may be, with all his subjects; and, compelling him to continue Protestant, you are engaging, in a great degree, his conscience to deny to the Roman Catholics the benefits you pretend to enable him to confer upon them.

But it may be said, the king's confidential servants may be partly Protestant, partly Roman Catholic—that such was the case under queen Elizabeth, and other sovereigns. But what did her experience teach her as to this? And what did the experience of those who came after her teach? That experience led to the change of system which was completed at the Revolution. If the king's confidential servants ought not to be Roman Catholics, it is said, nevertheless, his privy councillors may be chosen from among them; provided only they abstain from advising the Crown as to benefices and offices in the Protestant church, and that Roman Catholics may safely be admitted into both Houses of Parliament.

With respect to privy councillors, it seems strange that, if their duties are to be changed, if they are to be restrained by this act from advising in the matters specially mentioned, it had not occurred, to alter, by enactment, the privy councillor's oath when administered to a Roman Catholic. It may be said that the law which required the oath, will qualify the oath; but it is a little difficult to admit the consistency of my submitting to a law to day, requiring me to withhold advice on some matters, and to take an oath tomorrow that I will faithfully give my opinion in all matters moved and debated. In the matter of oaths it is surely satisfactory and necessary to prevent the swearing in terms which are in apparent contradiction according to their obvious meaning, to what is really intended to be sworn. The Roman Catholic privy councillor is not to advise the Crown in the disposal of any benefice or office in the Protestant church; but in how many matters of mighty import to the welfare of the community is he left at liberty to advise—and how many respecting even the welfare of that very church? and of much more consequence to its welfare than the disposal of a church preferment?

It has been said, and most reasonably, that if you admit Roman Catholics into parliament, you ought not to exclude them from the privy council: if you admit them into the great council of the nation, that you cannot well exclude them from among the number of those who are to act in inferior councils. In truth, this argument, which points out the extent to which you must go, if you admit Roman Catholics into parliament in a country, whose government and church are essentially and fundamentally Protestant, furnishes very weighty reasons why you should not admit them into parliament.

It has been urged that the repeal of the laws which prohibit Roman Catholics from sitting in either House of Parliament, would, in fact, make little change in the composition of parliament—that it would not introduce more than six or seven peers into the House of Lords, and very few commoners into the other House of Parliament. And it has also been urged that after giving the elective franchise to the Roman Catholics in Ireland, you are, almost of necessity, required to render them capable also of sitting in parliament. With respect to the House of Lords, that reasoning has been enforced by the fact that Roman Catholic peers did sit in that House until the 30th of Charles the 2nd, and that being very few in number, if they should now sit in that House, it cannot be very objectionable; and their pretensions to sit there have been strongly recommended in observations, unquestionably most just, upon the excellence of the characters of the modern Roman Catholic peers. In a question of this nature, the personal merits, however great, of particular individuals, must be laid out of consideration—it must be decided upon general principles. If Roman Catholics are unfit advisers of a Protestant king—in a Protestant state in the House of Commons—unfit there to counsel the king with respect to the worship, discipline, and government of a Pro- testant established church, they cannot be fit advisers to give counsel touching such matters in the other House of the Protestant parliament. Previous to the Revolution it was, if not from actual danger, upon principle, determined, that persons professing this religion should sit m neither of the Houses of Parliament.

This exclusion from both, the prince of Orange sanctioned, when as the Bill of Rights states the fact, he addressed his letters only to the, Lords Spiritual and Temporal being Protestants. This exclusion king William sanctioned in the several acts which passed during his reign, which committed to the hands of Protestants, or continued in the hands of Protestants, all offices connected with the government of his "Protestant kingdom." If the government of this kingdom is fundamentally and essentially Protestant,—and Protestant it is fundamentally and essentially,—it is not, in just reasoning, matter of much consequence, whether the passing of this bill would or would not introduce many Roman Catholics into the House of Commons: but it is difficult to assent to what has been stated repeatedly in assertion, that the number introduced would be too small dangerously to influence the decisions of that House. What has been the effect of giving to the Roman Catholics in Ireland the elective franchise? It has operated, as lord Clare foretold in his able, prophetic, and constitutional speech. It may perhaps be reasonably asserted, that though as yet Roman Catholic representatives have not been sent to parliament, such has been the influence of Roman Catholic electors, that to that very act, which gave them the elective franchise it is owing, that the bill now under discussion has passed the House of Commons. He must have been a very inattentive observer of what passes in parliament, who has not remarked that a small band or knot of individuals, acting together upon system, constantly acting together, and watching for opportunities and moments favourable to their views and projects, may achieve great and important changes.

It must be further recollected, that, if this bill passes, the Test and Corporation acts must be repealed, and the members of Roman Catholic corporations entitled to send representatives to parliament, would not be likely, if they had an option, to choose Protestant members; and, considering the other means which many Roman Catholics would have of obtaining seats in the Commons House, the calculation of the numbers of them that would become members, seems in argument to have been stated much too low.

It is of little consequence that this bill provides that nothing contained in it shall be construed to alter the laws for establishing the uniformity of public prayers, and administration of the Sacrament, in the uniting episcopal church of England and Ireland. How futile and inefficacious must such an enactment appear to us—when we are enacting by this bill itself—what seems to have a tendency to subvert all we have seen to have been declared by parliament essential, fundamental, and to continue for ever!

This bill excludes from the Ecclesiastical Courts of judicature the Roman Catholics; but it seeks to capacitate them to fill all the benches of the temporal courts, and the highest seats of judicature in such courts, with an exception only in the case of the lord chancellor,—an exception, not founded upon duties in his judicial character, but upon the nature of his other duties. Such, however, is the nature of our temporal and ecclesiastical laws, such the connexion between them, that the assertion may be ventured, that this object of the bill, as to this matter, is unattainable; and, indeed, unless mis-in-formation has been given to the public as to what has passed somewhere, the answer which has been given to those who have objected to this provision of the bill has been, that nobody could conceive, that Roman Catholics would actually be appointed to the judicial seats in Westminster Hall. To enact by law that you may do what is, in fact, never intended to be done, does not seem to be very wise or conciliatory legislation. Suppose it enacted, and Westminster Hall crowded with Roman Catholic judges, and commissions of review of the sentences of the Ecclesiastical Courts to issue, to what class of men are they to be addressed in the place of those temporal Protestant judges, who now form so essential a part of the courts constituted by such commissions?

If Roman Catholics are not to be judges, it is said, that you ought to allow them to have silk gowns, that no policy can justify your prohibitions against their being distinguished by professional rank of this kind. Certainly, as the law stands, they cannot be appointed king's counsel, but there is no law to prevent their having the same rank bestowed in patents of precedence—such a patentee has no office, and takes no oath. Mr. Ponsonby's bill did not affect their situation because they had not the situation of office.

It appears then, from what passed at the Revolution, that our ancestors were satisfied that political power in any department of the state, in the hands of papists, was inconsistent with the maintenance of a Protestant establishment. Upon the principle that, in a Protestant kingdom political power should be placed in Protestant hands, the settlement then made, was made. Upon this principle, the settlement then made, has been continued from generation to generation,—and the wisdom of the principle is in itself sufficient to account for the adoption and maintenance of that settlement without reference to the dread of Popish plots, or apprehensions about Popish pretenders.

With respect to the repeal of the laws relative to the declaration against transubstantiation, the House may be referred to what has been before stated, and to its decision upon a similar project in a former session. This is said to relate solely to matters of spiritual and religious belief, not interfering with allegiance or civil duty. The object of it, however, was to ascertain effectually what persons did hold, or were thought to hold opinions interfering with allegiance properly understood. This provision was most industriously preserved at and since the Revolution as a most essential provision of law: not only the subjects, whether members of the chnrch of England, Protestant Dissenters, or Quakers were required, but the sovereign was required to make this declaration—the sovereign to make it in the most solemn manner, upon the most solemn occasion;—from that era to this hour, from reign to reign, the declaration has been continued to be required. And the present king, upon his first entrance into this House as king, solemnly, on the throne, made this declaration. From all his successors, from none of his subjects, it seems to be the purpose of this bill hereafter to require it.

Let us now advert to the other parts of this bill—this bill of conciliation,—which, professing to unite and knit together the hearts of all his majesty's subjects, has unfortunately set them all together by the cars, to use a vulgar phrase. It has, however, been said that you are to legis- late; others, satisfied or dissatisfied, are to I take the measure. Be it so—but then, if all are dissatisfied, do not insult them by calling this a bill of conciliation! — by telling them that it is a bill knitting together all their hearts in interest, and love and charity one towards another,—do not remind them of the fact that a person, perceiving one man running after another with a cat of nine tails, and being asked what he was about, declared that he only wanted to make a volunteer of the person he was pursuing.

As to all the remaining parts of this bill, the first objection is, that the Protestant sees no sufficient security in its enactments, and, such as that security is, the Roman Catholic is utterly averse to granting it. But the bill is open in these parts of it to many observations. The House must be aware that this bill is composed of what originally appeared in two bills,—the former confined to the concessions, the latter to the securities. In the former bill, his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects were frequently mentioned as such, but no mention was made in that bill of "the Roman Catholic church within any part of the United Kingdom." The second bill, now forming the latter part of the proposed bill, provides the precautions to be taken in respect of persons in holy orders professing the Roman Catholic religion, who may, at any time hereafter, be elected, nominated, or appointed to the exercise or discharge of episcopal duties or functions in the Roman Catholic church, or to the duties or functions of a dean in the said church within any part of the United Kingdom. And the oath speaks of a Roman Catholic bishop or dean in the Roman Catholic church in the United Kingdom.

Surely, the House would expect, if it thinks proper to acknowledge in statutes a Roman Catholic church as a church in England, that this acknowledgement should have appeared in some other form. Surely the House, before it can pass such a law as this, speaking of bishops and deans in the Roman Catholic church, as a church acknowledged by English law, as existing in England, will expect to be somewhat better informed than it now is, how these bishops and deans are to be elected, nominated, or appointed to the exercise or discharge of their duties and functions. We have often heard of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland,—of its titular bishops of particular places in Ireland, its titular deans and chapters; and, if this bill passes, you will have two churches there ready formed,—the Protestant church, and the Roman Catholic church, with all its members ready to take their places. Whether the law of Ireland acknowledges the right of these functionaries to assume the titles of archbishops and bishops of Dublin, Armagh, and the other episcopal sees, the House may satisfy itself by inquiry. But, is it meant that in England we are to see a similar Roman Catholic hierarchy, with its titular archbishops and bishops of Canterbury, York, London, Durham, &c.; its titular deans and chapters, &c.? Can it be possible that the legislature can pass such a bill as this; and that too as a bill of peace and conciliation, without previously settling in some measure how and in what form the Roman Catholic religion is to be exercised in England? Can it be meant, that in England, you are to introduce all the inconveniences and mischiefs, which are experienced in Ireland, by the co-existence of the Protestant hierarchy and the Roman Catholic hierarchy? We do not hear in England of titular archbishops and bishops of places in England.—We admit the episcopal character resides in the Popish bishop; but our law has, at least heretofore, been supposed to prohibit their assuming titles connected with places in England as a misdemeanour. It seems, therefore, to be a great objection to the bill, if you think to give to the Roman Catholics political power, that you make no provision for the peaceable co-existence of the Protestant church and what is termed the Roman Catholic church in the united kingdom, but leave them to jostle against each other, as they may.

Look at the bills of 1791 and 1793;— see the provisions therein as to the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion; among others, even as to the form and structure of their places of worship, to preserve the predominancy of the Church of England. Has it been considered whether any similar provisions will be in force after this law passes? Or, are we to have a Roman Catholic cathedral vying in magnificence with our Protestant cathedral for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion by its archbishops, its deans, and chapters? Is it meant there shall be this public display of a Roman Catholic church? A mode of worship, when set up in opposition to the national worship, and when allowed to be exercised in peace, we have been told, "should be exercised with decency, gratitude, and humility."^*

It is unnecessary to trouble the House much as to the enactments relative to the commissioners to be appointed in England and Ireland according to this bill. There has been abundant reason to know, that the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland will not accept, as a boon, those enactments; —that they will not submit to that interposition of a veto by Protestant authority, which is conceded by other Catholics to temporal sovereigns. This is not the first time in which this sort of conciliation has been attempted, and in vain, and probably some in the House know what has passed in Ireland upon this subject in the course of the last week.

As to that part of the bill, which relates to bulls, dispensations, and other instruments from the see of Rome, in a country in which the exercise of a dispensing power cost a king his crown, this bill proposes in some instances to do what looks as if it authorised some commissioners, in others one commissioner, and that one an ecclesiastical commissioner professing the Roman Catholic religion, to dispense with the laws against receiving such instruments from Rome. How could it be expected, that the Roman Catholic clergy would admit the inspection of these instruments? We have heard that the present Pope has himself declared, that, neither in any intercourse with a Protestant or Roman Catholic power was the ecclesiastical power so subservient to the lay authorities, as to allow the rescripts or other instruments to be submitted to them. It well behoves the legislature to pause before it will give a legal sanction of any kind to foreign intercourse with Rome—if such are the sentiments of the Roman Catholic clergy and the Pope.

Without meaning to impute, and disavowing the intention to impute, to the Roman Catholics of this day some of the tenets, which some in former times were ^*Is it meant that Roman Catholic judges upon their circuits, robed in their ermine, and surrrounded by their attendants, shall, before they proceed to the administration of justice, be conducted in the face of all the country to Roman Catholic places of worship, as they now are to Protestant churches. said to entertain, their opinions and those of their church are yet such, as make it seem to be altogether inconsistent in a government, settled as essentially Protestant, with a Protestant established church, to grant them political power. The churches of England and Ireland are now one united Protestant church. What endangers the one must endanger the other. If the concessions proposed to be granted by this bill are granted, and without securities, (and what securities that will be given has the wisdom of man yet devised?) is it possible to believe that the Irish Roman Catholics will make this bill of concessions a resting point? Demand has followed from time to time upon demand, and demand will follow from time to time upon demand, till nothing more can be asked, for till toleration of the Roman Catholics in Ireland gives way to Roman Catholic establishment, and Protestant establishment shall be succeeded by such a portion of toleration of Protestants, as the Roman Catholics maybe disposed to allow them, it cannot be rationally expected that the Roman Catholics there will cease their struggles to supplant the Protestant church, if they did not disturb the settlement of property. In fact, the more sincere the Roman Catholics are in their religious belief the more strongly must they be impelled to weaken the Protestant church. The fears of those considerable men, who opposed the grant of the elective franchise in Ireland, were thought to be chimerical; but do they now appear to have been chimerical?

If this bill should pass, the next demand will be to repeal all the securities, which it enacts. And, indeed, rumour has told us that there have not been wanting those who have thought it expedient, on the part of the Roman Catholics, to let the bill pass, such as it is, notwithstanding all their objections to it; thereby establishing the concessions, and trusting confidently to the repeal, in another session, of the securities. It is said, that this bill, if passed, would be a bill of peace and conciliation. Is there not abundant reason to believe that it would in truth introduce confusion, and domestic discord, and eternal struggle for power? We know what has been the effect of our present establishment for many generations. What will be the effect of the proposed changes can at best be but matter of uncertain speculation and conjecture. The Lords and Commons were assembled at West- minster, by the prince of Orange, "in order to such an establishment, that religion, laws, and liberties might not again be in danger of being subverted." Is it possible to maintain that by such a total change of what was then established as is now meditated, they may not again be in danger of being subverted? Let us not disturb the happiness of the great mass of Protestants. Let us not mistake the present peaceable demeanor of the Protestant part of the community, produced by the influence of the confidence, with which they hope Parliament will not finally adopt them, for their assent to these measures, or an indifference about them.

The times, it is said, are changed, and the Catholics, it is said, are changed:— be it so; but such change does not affect the soundness of the principles, upon which this kingdom has established itself as a "Protestant kingdom," with the powers of the state in Protestant hands, and with a Protestant church establishment, and toleration,—toleration from time to time enlarged to the utmost extent the public welfare will admit; but toleration only,—for those who dissent from it. It may be that the Church of Home itself has changed some of its tenets. Its Protestant advocates tell us so,—its Roman Catholic defenders deny it. But we are led not to doubt that the present pope has re-established the order of the Jesuits,—that the Inquisition was revived,—we have heard of bulls against Protestant societies distributing the Scriptures, — We have heard of transactions respecting bishops in Belgium. We hear of the establishment at Stonyhurst, —we hear of Jesuits there, though we are told the pope does not consent to their establishment in countries which are not willing to receive them; and we might ask where the person at the head of the Stonyhurst establishment now is, and for what purpose he is where he is said to be?

We have been told that in Ireland, where the Roman Catholic hierarchy exists, they have their synods and consistorial courts; and they are mis-represented, if they do not use their excommunications, and their refusals to give the sacrament, for purposes which it would be difficult to consider as of a purely spiritual nature, or to reconcile to the law of the land. Persecution for religious opinions, says Blackstone, "however ridiculous and absurd, is against sound policy and civil freedom. If men quarrel with the ecclesiastical establishment, the civil magistrate has nothing to do with it, unless their tenets or practice are such as threaten disturbance in the state. He is bound, however, to protect the established church, and if this can be better effected by admitting none but its genuine members to offices of trust, he is certainly at liberty so to do, the disposal of them being matters of discretion." Men of great name seem to have been influenced by a persuasion, that popery had necessarily a connexion with civil tyranny. Lord Clare held "canonical obedience to the pope, to be inconsistent with the duties of civil allegiance to a Protestant state." Let the words of lord Hardwicke he had in remembrance:—"It well deserves," he says, "the serious attention of the whole nation, of what important consequence it is, to preserve not only the name and outward form of the Protestant religion among us, but the real uniform belief and practice of it. Indifference to all religion prepares man for the external profession of any, and what may that not lead to? Give me leave," added he, speaking in the presence of the Lords and Commons, "give me leave to affirm before this great assembly, that, even abstracted from religious considerations, the Protestant religion ought to be held in the highest reverence, as the surest barrier of our civil constitution. Ecclesiastical usurpation seldom fails to end in civil tyranny, The present happy settlement of the Crown is, in truth, and not in name only, the Protestant succession; —and the inviolable preservation of that wise and fundamental law made since the Revolution, whereby every Papist is absolutely excluded from inheriting the Crown, will be a solid security to our posterity against all who shall watch for the destruction of our liberties." [Hear, hear!]

If the cries of "Hear, hear," mean to intimate that noble lords who are near, deem this as lord Hardwicke's declaration of opinion, that the happy settlement of the Crown, consisted only in excluding a Papist from the throne, and in no manner depended upon the Crown's being surrounded with Protestant councils, and that that exclusion alone, though the Crown should be surrounded in all departments of offices with Roman Catholic advisers (enemies to that Protestant reli- gion, which is here said to be the surest barrier of our civil constitution) would be a solid security for our liberties, they impute to him a want of judgment, and contradictions in what he declares, altogether inconsistent with his great character. May the posterity of those noble lords find, in the preservation of our present laws, in those wise and fundamental laws, which require the throne, the government, and the church, to be unalterably and for ever Protestant, that solid security for their liberties, which they can never find in excluding a Papist from the throne, but surrounding a Protestant king with Popish advisers!

Lord Grenville

said, that how reluctant soever he was, to intrude upon the House at any time, there was something in the present measure so closely connected with the transactions of his past life, and still more with the future prospects of his country, that he could not reconcile himself to be absent from this discussion, or being present to give a silent vote in behalf of a measure, the principle of which, on so many other occasions, he had so zealously and earnestly advocated. Much as he had considered the subject since the time when he had last the honour of addressing their lordships, he was but the more strengthened in his firm conviction, that there was no way in which it was possible for parliament to convey so great a benefit to the people of this united realm, as by giving effect to the principle of the proposition before them. In offering himself as the advocate of this bill, the importance of which it was impossible for zeal to exaggerate, his first duty was, to hail the altered character in which the proposal for the relief of their Catholic fellow-subjects was now presented to their lordships. It had formerly come before the House, crowned by the sanction of many eminent names, but now it came before them recommended by the weight of the ether House of Parliament. It was not now a question as to the authority of individuals, however respectable; but, after a discussion carried on with a temper and calmness which to him were scarcely less gratifying than the result, the representatives of the Commons of the United Kingdom had determined that the happy moment had arrived for which even the noble lord on the woolsack allowed they ought to pant, when they might safely remove from the Catholics these degrading disqualifications by which they were kept out of the pale of the constitution. Such a measure, tending to such a purpose, and brought before them in such a manner, he had never expected to see met by a discussion in which the question of the principle of the bill was evaded by verbal objections to its clauses. The learned lord on the woolsack had endeavoured, by pointing out inaccuracies in language, or some inconsistencies in the clauses, to induce their lordships not to read the bill a second time, which was a necessary preliminary to the committee in which those inaccuracies could be corrected, and those inconsistencies obviated. He had not thought that this was the mode in which the bill could have been met. If it could have been stated, indeed, by any man that it was not desirable to admit four millions of subjects into the pale of the constitution, it would have been right for the person who held such an opinion, to say at once, "I will not enter into the details. I will give my negative to the bill; or I will show by a contemptuous postponement, that it is not worthy of the consideration of the House." He was not disposed to say, that in a question involving the fate of one-fourth of the subjects of the British empire, in which on both sides there was so much feeling excited, the House might not on some grounds refuse to enter into the discussion; but he could affirm, that he had heard no arguments to show him on what principle, either of respect to the other House, or of wisdom to the empire, or of justice to those more particularly concerned, the House could refuse to enter fully, deliberately, and in detail into the consideration of the proposition before them. If he had agreed in every one of the arguments of the learned lord on the wool-sack, he should have come to directly an opposite conclusion from that to which they had led the learned lord; for if he had considered the bill ever so full of defects, he should have been anxious to carry it to a committee, where the objections to it might be discussed. He must, therefore, without any disrespect for the learned lord, take leave of his arguments.

He intended no disrespect to the learned lord; but he must say, that he thought it absolutely necessary, in discussing this measure, to depart from those grounds which the learned lord had laid down, and to apply himself to what he considered a more enlarged view of the question. The question before the House was this:—There was, in this united kingdom, a difference in religious tenets; a difference between the religion of the state, and the religion professed by a portion of its subjects. In all that the learned lord had said on the subject of religious belief, in all he had advanced with respect to the importance of religion, in every point of view that could be imagined, on the prosperity and happiness of every nation, he for one, was perfectly prepared to agree. In all that the learned lord had uttered, respecting his attachment to the Protestant religion, as being, according to his conscientious feeling, the purest church in doctrine, and the best in discipline, that ever appeared in the Christian world, he entirely concurred. He admitted the superiority of the doctrines of that church, over what lie considered, with the learned lord to be the gross errors of the church of Rome. No man could be impressed with a more deep and decided conviction of the truth of the grounds on which that belief was built, or of the firmness of the principles on which it rested. Pie was as anxious as the learned lord, or any other individual could be, to preserve the Protestant church in all its purity.—No person could feel more strongly the necessity of upholding the establishment under which that faith was administered to the subjects of this kingdom, and which form of ecclesiastical hierarchy he considered, as the learned lord had done, to be inseparably connected with the civil government of the country. On these points no man living held more decided opinions. And if the question were to be decided, whether it was possible to unite in one faith, and to rule under one ecclesiastical establishment, and that the ecclesiastical establishment of the Church of England, every heart and soul that owed allegiance and duty to the government of this realm—nothing could be more grateful to his mind—nothing could be more in unison with his feelings, than to assist in such an effort. But did reason teach their lordships that a moral revolution of this nature could be effected? Did experience give them any encouragement to hope it? And if not, would they waste, in ineffectual wishes for that which they knew to be unattainable, that time, that labour, and that exertion, which ought to be ap- plied to the consideration of the means of rendering the difference which did unfortunately exist, and which it was not possible to remove, less susceptible of evil to the inhabitants of both parts of this united kingdom, than at this hour it was unhappily found to be? It was unhappily the policy of this country for a long course of years, to endeavour, by oppression, by severity, by confiscation, by punishment of every description, either to reduce or to annihilate the religious opinions that prevailed in Ireland; or at all events, to destroy any facilities that existed for disseminating them. To the success of that experiment he need not call the attention or their lordships. So far from accomplishing the intended purpose—so far from putting down opinions—no method could be more successfully employed by those who wished to produce a contrary effect than the method of oppression and persecution.

Their lordships had been told, and it was urged on them as a principal part of the argument by the learned lord, that they had two duties to perform on this subject. Both were stated, both were spoken of, as if they were nearly connected; and yet the two propositions were in direct and complete opposition to each other. In the situation of difficulty in which the interests of the empire were placed by the existence of civil disabilities and religious differences, the learned lord said, "Leave the matter on the footing on which it was placed by king William, as it was settled at the Revolution. Leave it fixed on that foundation; do not attempt to interfere with the principle then established, and which ought not to be departed from. No change, no alteration, no innovation, should be made on the system established by king William." But at the same time, and almost with the same breath, the learned lord told them, and it was also told them by others, that; it is our duty to let the matter rest as it is. "We are now" said the learned lord, "in a happy and contented situation—there is no cause for change—take the thing as it now exists—fix your ground here, and let nothing induce you to depart from it." He would ask to which of these two systems did they mean to adhere? Because no man could be so ignorant—no man who had heard even one discussion on this subject, could be so forgetful—as not to know that the system of policy pursued towards the Catholics of Ireland at the Revolution, and for eighty years afterwards, was totally, fundamentally, and diametrically opposite to that which had been pursued, and he would say, happily pursued, since that period. Those, therefore, who said, "Let us rest here," were diametrically opposed to such as boasted of what was called the system of king William: for they admitted, in terms, that, by the privileges which had been extended to the Catholics, the foundation of that system was shaken; and they rejoiced in that alteration; although it seemed to imply that the opinions of Locke and Somers were worth nothing on this subject, when they expressed their anxiety that it should continue. On the other hand, to those who wished to rest the subject on the grounds on which it stood in former times—who wished to revert to the old system, or who did not desire to ameliorate the present—he would say, that that system, of which a fragment only remained, was big with mischief. He thought it was a libel on the Revolution to charge that glorious period, or the great men who flourished at the time, with the concoction of such a system. He felt that it was a libel on the memory of king William to trace to him that system of cruel policy which had existed long before the reign of that great and illustrious monarch. He found it in operation when he ascended the throne, and the necessities of the times compelled him to continue it. But after his death it was aggravated and enforced; it was rendered infinitely more severe and intolerable to the unhappy people who were governed under it. From the reign of Elizabeth—so far back as that period—the first attempt was made to compel the Catholics of Ireland to submit themselves in all things relating to ecclesiastical, spiritual, and religious opinion, to the authority of the English government. A long succession of acts of parliament passed in Ireland, every one of which their lordships would find was calculated for the purpose of aggravating the severity of the system, which was not brought to its height, he blushed to say, in the reign of William, of Anne, or of George 1st. No; not until the reign of George 2nd did it arrive at its highest point. Their lordships had already heard, in detail, the horrors of that unjust system. They had been told how the property of Ireland was in the course of one century—and for the correctness of the statement he would refer to that document, with an extract from which the learned lord had concluded his speech—he meant the memorable and most eloquent speech of the late earl of Clare—in the course of one century, the amount of the land confiscated in Ireland, was 700,000 acres more than covered the whole surface of that kingdom. The whole of the land had been confiscated once, and many parts of it twice, and even three times over.

Thus was one portion of the system pursued. He would not ask, by what mutual aggressions, by what crimination and recrimination, so deplorable a system of feudal tyranny was introduced and continued. He sought not to take up the ashes of long-buried animosities—he would not take up their lordships time, nor outrage his own feelings, by opposing cruelties on one side to cruelties on the other. Robbery and massacre, and war, were carried on in a manner more barbarous than was ever heard of before in any place that bore the character of a Christian or civilized country. Every good man must deplore the scenes that were exhibited on both sides; and his detestation would be increased when he knew that the system did not end with the guilt which occasioned it, but that the remembrance of that guilt was made a pretext for its continuation. After the system of confiscation came a more legal mode of oppression—inquisition into titles; and, lastly, came a body of laws, directed to the avowed object of taking from the Catholics of Ireland the little remnant of property of which former spoliations had not bereft them. To provide for the safety of the Protestant church and of the Protestant establishment in Ireland, all means of possessing property, either inherited or acquired, were taken from the Catholic. He was effectually prevented from inheriting property, or from acquiring it, by his own labour, by the bequest of a friend, or by marriage. Laws might be made with a good intention, although they operated badly; and the man would confine his inquiry to a very narrow compass, who contented himself with considering the laws of a country, as they stood, without searching for the causes in which they originated, and what their effects had been. He therefore, would not point out to their lordships what the laws in question were; but what they were intended to produce, and what they did produce. It was an essential feature of this case that their lordships could form no just idea of that system, in opposition to which they had been acting for the last forty years, and the last remnant of which they were now called upon to destroy, unless they traced it, not in the words of an enactment, but in the effects which it was intended to produce, and which it had succeeded in producing. To show their lordships the system in all its deformity, he would quote a passage from dean Swift, who detailed in one of his tracts what was the condition of "the Papists," as he called them, in his time. That individual was not pleading for them. He merely introduced their situation incidentally. The purpose of his argument was to prevent the parliament of Ireland from extending to dissenters certain privileges which had since been conferred on them. The doctor prophesied "that the greatest evils would be the consequence if ever Presbyterians were allowed to become judges, or were admitted to seats in the parliament of Ireland." But the measure he so much dreaded had been adopted for a long course of years in Ireland; and he challenged any man to say that any thing except good had resulted from that wise and liberal policy. But, in arguing the question, dean Swift had occasion to describe the condition of the Catholics; and, before he read the passage, he called on the House to bear in mind what the condition of the Catholics was, how it had been made so, and for what purpose the government had resorted to such measures. "We look on the Papists," said Swift, "to be altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children. Their lands are almost entirely taken from them, and they are rendered incapable of purchasing any more." Those persons descended from the hereditary owners of the soil, were, it seemed, almost entirely deprived of that soil which they had inherited from their ancestors; and though in their own country they were governed by laws which treated them as aliens, since they could not acquire any interest in the soil, supposing that they should, under any peculiar circumstances, become wealthy, still the right to purchase land was denied to them. "And," continued Swift, "for the little that remains, provision was made by the late act against popery." Provision for what? To carry away daily from the Catholic inhabitants of that country the little property that remained to them in the soil. This was stated, not as the effect of any incidental or extraneous cause, but as part of a settled system, for which provision was made by an act of parliament. "Some of the most considerable Catholics," said the Dean, "to prevent this, have already turned Protestants; and so, in all probability, will many more." What did they find here? Was the property of these people protected? Was provision made by their legislature for the increase of wealth and prosperity amongst them? Not the authors of this system, which had been pursued since the days of queen Elizabeth, until the first dawn of change to a more liberal policy appeared in the late reign, thought fit to provide, not for the safety of the subject, but that his property should be diminished and carried away. But they did not attack his property alone. Swift went on to say, "The Popish priests are all registered, and, without permission, which! hope will not be granted to them, they cannot stay in this country." The purpose, therefore, contemplated was, that those men, thus deprived of their property, should equally be deprived of the administration of that faith in which alone they lived. When the learned lord told them, and told them most truly, that the first essential provision to be made by those to whom the happiness of the community was intrusted, was the establishment and maintenance of religion among them, he would point to the system acted on at that period, the principle of which the learned lord recommended for adoption; that principle being to take from two millions of Christians the consolations of religion. Could any man suppose that such a passage could be written and printed in any country? Could he suppose that any human being would avow the doctrines it contained? And, above all, could it be credited that they were not only tolerated, but supported by this eminent individual? Not only was this system avowed and approved of by dean Swift, but it was absolutely acted on. The hope he expressed was turned into certainty. The register was not renewed; priests were not allowed to officiate under severe penalties; and in some cases it was made a capital crime to return to Ireland. No clergyman could be found in that unhappy country to administer the consolations of religion in that particular form in which alone the religious tenets of the people of that country would allow them to be received. Of such a system he need scarcely say any thing more; but he would read one other passage, in which the dean expressed a grave hope that it would be instrumental to the great purpose of conversion. "The clergyman," said he, "will find, perhaps, no great difficulty in bringing over great numbers of Catholics to the Protestant church." It was, however, recollected, that many of those converts would be ignorant of the language of their pastors; but the solution of this difficulty was easy. It was provided by act of parliament, that if the convert did not understand English, and if the clerg3'man could not speak Irish, the service might be celebrated in Latin.

The noble lord proceeded, in a strain of impassioned eloquence, to reprobate this system, which, to use the words of Swift, was intended "to deprive the Catholics of leaders, of discipline, and of natural courage," by which means they would become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, from whom no mischief could be apprehended. This was to reduce them to the situation of a body of helots, without any interest in the prosperity or happiness of their country. But vain and idle was the persecution of those who imagined that this system could extinguish the native courage of the people of Ireland. It had not that effect; but it led them to exercise that courage, not as they had recently done in supporting the glory of this country—no; they employed it in destroying the peace of that community, the blessings of which they were not permitted to enjoy. Instead of supposing that two millions of men, placed in this situation, were out of all capacity to do mischief, he would contend that they were out of all capacity to do good, and could only perform mischief. This was a lively and faithful picture of the effects of that system which was adopted long before the Revolution, which prevailed at the Revolution, and was enforced and acted on for eighty years afterwards, until that period arrived when, in the reign of his late majesty, liberality triumphed over intolerance. This description of the effects of that system was the more important, because he had heard no argument against the present measure which did not necessarily lead, if acted on, to the indispensable obligation of returning to the whole and every part of it; because, however horrible in its purpose, however base in its means, it formed one complete and regular machine, admirably calculated to produce what was intended—namely, to bring down to the lowest state of degradation and wretchedness those against whom it was directed.

The noble and learned lord had alluded to one particular act of king William, which he had not distinctly pointed out, but on which, he asserted, the safety of the constitution depended. But when he referred to the system of king William, as he termed it, he was bound to take the whole system. He had no right to select one statute from the black catalogue; and, if he took it as a whole, however it might be dressed up in mild and conciliatory terms, the result must be this—that it was produced because there was, in the principles of the Roman Catholic religion—that there was, in the faith professed by one-fourth of the subjects of the British empire—something that was incapable of suffering them to discharge with uprightness the duties of faithful and loyal subjects. If this were once admitted, to-what conclusion did it lead? It inevitably led to this, that, doubtful as their success must be, they must unquestionably retrace their steps. A noble friend of his, who bad moved the postponement of the bill, alluded on the preceding evening to an oriental tale, which described the circumstance of a fisherman having drawn up a jar from the sea, broke the seal which closed its mouth, out of which ascended a vapour that soon assumed a gigantic form, and to this giant he compared the Catholic body. But their lordships had not broken the seal: it was broken when the first privilege was granted in 1778 True, the giant appeared to be hourly gaining strength and influence, and he hoped would continue to increase in power: but when his noble friend had quoted this tale, he should have gone further; for he believed that the man who gave the giant liberty, by some happy contrivance induced him to return to his prison again. That was the task which the noble earl declared they ought now to perform; but would the Roman Catholic, after he had enjoyed power and privilege, be easily persuaded to return once more to his shackle and disabilities?

The noble lord then contended, that when, in 1793, large immunities were granted to the Catholic, those who had agreed to the extension of the privilege were not to blame because they had not given them the last boon. It was just that a pause should take place before every thing was conceded to them; and it was also proper that the feelings, nay, the prejudices, of the Protestant community should be consulted. If it could have ever entered into his mind to think that the act of 1793 was intended by the framers of it to be final and conclusive, that it was to be subject to no revision under any modification of time or place or circumstance, that upon that point the question must remain and rest for ever, he should then say that, so far from concurring in the mode of that final adjustment, as fixed by the act of 1793, he thought it quite impossible there could be devised a more anomalous principle of adjustment, or one less calculated to conclude so mighty a question. Could it be possible to have devised a more unsound or less durable principle of conclusive settlement, than one which, while it conferred privileges on the ordinary classes of society, degraded the higher ranks, and excluded them from that station which would give them a natural influence over those who moved in an inferior rank of life, and consequently tend to the promotion of peace and good order amongst them? That the higher classes of the Catholics should alone be marked out of the whole body, as those to whom objections were to be finally and irrevocably taken; that they alone should be the permanent objects of exclusion, degradation, depression, and misery, was the most extraordinary proposition that had been ever started in legislation. To call it a final adjustment was monstrous, for as such it never could have been intended; the act was not, he repeated, so intended; it was a mediate, and not a conclusive proceeding on the part of the legislature of 1793. He never could admit that this line of separation, with reference to a capacity to fill office, had ever been recognized by the legislature, throughout the whole of these anomalous proscriptions. He knew not how to draw a line of separation between one class and another as to eligibility to power: he was at a loss to define from which class the privilege ought to be withheld, or to which it should be extended. To admit the practicability of such a distinction, was to countenance a direct and plain violation of the fundamental principle of the constitution.

It was said, that no alteration was called for which could be safely conceded, and that no disadvantage arose to the great bulk of the people of Ireland from the exclusions which still remained. That position he must deny. Would any man truly acquainted with the situation of Ireland say, that no disadvantage was felt by the people of that country, by the exclusion from rank and honours of the higher class of Catholics, and the consequent loss of that influence which by a different system they might possess over the other classes of their own body? To permit such a state of things to exist was not only the most inconvenient position in which such a question could be suffered to rest, but it was a direct and manifest violation of the whole principle of conciliation which had governed the relaxation of the old system—of that system which sought the attainment of security by oppressive enactments, but which, at length yielding to the dictates of reason and wisdom and justice, adopted a system of conciliation, and endeavoured to make men worthy of trust, by anticipating that they were worthy of what the legislature was ready to confer, and reposing that confidence which was alone calculated to beget confidence in return.—The learned lord had said, "What a mockery to hold out to Catholics the privy council and the judicial bench, when you do not mean they should be advanced to either!" His noble friend, the mover, had said no such thing, and it was most important on this occasion, that the Catholics should be really understood as dealt candidly with in the bill, and practically and fully entitled to all the eligibilities it opened to them. He would beg leave to re-state the argument of his noble friend; and it was one in which he entirely concurred. What he had said was this—that it was not to be believed that any man would be advanced to offices of such rank and trust, until, after a long course of public conduct, he had given the most entire proofs of his allegiance and duty as a subject, and shown by his acts and the uniform tenor of his conduct, that his belief in transubstantiation had no effect upon the faith and trust of his allegiance.

Having disposed, as he thought he had, of the argument, that the settlement of 1793 was intended to be final, he now called upon the House, in the spirit of that act, to come to the completion of the great work which they had had in progress during the last forty years, relaxing the severity of their code step by step during that period, and at every step deriving greater advantage and peace and security by the relaxation. He could not urge too often, that the present bill was do new measure, but a continuance, to its final completion and accomplishment, of an ameliorated and wiser system of legislation—the erasure from their Statute-book of that disgraceful remnant of the penal code, which was still a blot and stain upon its page, and a stigma on the age which suffered its wanton continuance. Whatever were the fate of this bill, he implored their lordships not to reject it on the ground of the imputations which had been cast upon the tenets of the Catholics. It was no light thing that it should go forth to the Catholics on authority, great and venerable from its station, and respectful and powerful for the talents of the person exercising it, that the Catholic subjects of his majesty were necessarily incapacitated by their religion from paying a full and undivided allegiance to their sovereign. If there were time, he felt confident he could remove from the mind of his learned friend, what he had heard with great pain, the ground upon which he felt himself justified in casting such an imputation. The error arose from confounding two things in their nature so distinct that they ought never to be blended together. It was a confusion of the duties of unlimited obedience with those feelings of religious scruples which were never implied in the oath. A civil allegiance to a government was distinct from that obedience to the moral law or revealed will of God, the sense of which must be regulated by the conscientious feelings of the individual. It had no reference to the question of complete allegiance: the Protestants as well as the Catholics never included it in their sense of the oath. Nothing could be more unreasonable or unfair than to deny that the Catholic meant the fullest and most complete allegiance in the oath he was ready to subscribe. And upon what ground, therefore, were these men held forth as the objects of a disgraceful and degrading exclusion?—Not upon the ground of any opinions which they themselves hold or profess, but upon opinions which their opponents deduce as a consequence from what they say Catholics profess. So that it was not from their own principles, but from what their opponents deduced from those principles, that the reason for their exclusion was to be derived. He was astonished at any attempt to found an argument injurious to the Catholic upon his construction of an oath, after the years of experience they had had of the validity of such an obligation, and how consistent it was with the feelings and practice of a Catholic to be, at the same moment, a good and useful citizen in a Protestant state, and an adherent to the faith of his own religion.

Should he have the misfortune, however, of finding that their lordships differed from him upon the general principle of this bill, involving concessions to the Catholic body at large, still he should remind their lordships that there was a case connected with this subject of one particular body, who came before them as separate petitioners, to whose application he was utterly at a loss to conceive what argument in resistance could be offered. He had already mentioned that this measure came before them after the most deliberate recommendation of the Commons House of Parliament. That recommendation had not been sent up until after the most mature deliberation upon every part of the bill, and particularly upon that part of it which it was the peculiar province of the House of Commons to judge, as it referred to the composition of its own body. Upon that point, namely, the eligibility of Catholics to sit in the House of Commons, they who were the best qualified to form a just opinion had already pronounced. They had therefore told them in this bill that they were satisfied no danger, but on the contrary an advantage to all the institutions of the state, would result from admitting Catholics to an equal eligibility with Protestants to sit among the representatives of the people. The opinion of the House of Commons upon that point was necessarily entitled to great deference, and so would, he trusted, their lordships opinion upon the peculiar claim which he was now about to submit to them. He approached the subject, however, in a different manner, and for these reasons:—The House of Commons had deliberated upon the capacity of Catholic gentlemen to acquire a right of sitting in that branch of the legislature. But he was about to call upon the House of Lords to deliberate, not upon the propriety of extending any eligibility for seats among them, to a class of persons who: had never occupied them; but to determine in the face of the world, whether it was necessary and just any longer to ex- pose to a degrading exclusion six members of their own body—six Catholic peers, holding by the same title of birth and hereditary descent that any who now heard him did, and tracing it to (in some of their cases) a much higher antiquity, a right to sit amongst them in their legitimate capacity as peers of this empire. In the cases of these six or seven peers there could be no possible objection, whatever was the fate of the general provisions of the bill. They had shown every feeling of attachment to the constitution, which ought to invite confidence in their declarations. Upon their characters, high and honourable as they were, he should feel a disposition to dilate, did he not know, that living as they had lived among those whom he had the honour of now addressing, they had long since become known as well in character as in name, and had rendered any exposition of their principles unnecessary. As it would therefore be invidious for him to point to any one of those peers, all of whom must be so well known to many of their lordships, he should be inclined to ask any individual who was disposed to question the truth of the character, to select from the six or seven distinguished personages to whom he alluded, one name, to which by possibility suspicion had ever attached, or to state one reason entitled to the smallest attention, why any thing but honour, advantage, security, and credit could arise from admitting those Catholic peers to the enjoyment of their just and hereditary right of sitting in that House. The question of original right was here in existence—a right of which no man could be legally deprived without the showing of just cause. It was incumbent, therefore, upon those who opposed the rights of these peers, to show that their exclusion was founded upon the commission of some crime, or that they could not be now admitted without imminent danger to the state. With respect to their exclusion on account of any imputation of crime, it was impossible to sustain it by any reference to the acts of their ancestors, who had been excluded owing to the ever memorable and infamous perjury of the execrable Titus Oates. It was to the act of that atrocious wretch, and not to the pure time of the Revolution, that the exclusion of the Catholic peers was to be traced It was not to be imputed to the reign of William, but that of Charles—not to the best and most illustrious monarch who had ever swayed the British sceptre, but to the worst monarch that had ever degraded the British throne. Let not, then, the degradation of the Catholic peers be ascribed to the brightest era of the history of the country—an era upon which an Englishman could look back with pride and gratitude, but to one which could not be contemplated without contempt, disgust, and indignation. It would perhaps be well if an Englishman could strike out from the records of his country all traces of a reign so humiliating to his pride, if it were not of greater importance that they should remain, in order to teach public men the dreadful consequences of resorting to violent acts, which not only lead to the perpetration of crimes not contemplated by those whose acts had led to them, but which also armed one class of society against another in a scene of civil strife, where all the original evils inflicted were retaliated with tenfold force. This example should admonish legislators how they embarked in a system of legislation which was founded upon the vilification and calumny of their opponents. There were, however, two principal acts committed at the period of Titus Oates, to which their lordships House had been a party, and which had arisen from the incredible confidence they had shown a disposition to place in his infamous evidence. The first of the acts to which he alluded was the judicial murder of one of their own members, lord Stafford, who had been accused of a crime so absurd that no evidence could be brought which would justify a conviction upon such a charge. When, therefore, the opponents of the Catholics indulged in historical references to the cruelties which were inflicted under their rule at earlier periods, they should recollect with humiliation and self-reproach, what might be urged of still more atrocious acts in the much later period of Charles 2nd. In speaking of that atrocious period of Oates's plot, Mr. Fox had well observed, that it was difficult to say which had incurred the greatest disgrace—the prosecutors, the judges, or the witnesses. But it was not the single murder of a peer that had been inflicted by the dreadful delusion which then prevailed; it was on that monstrous evidence of Oates that the legislature further proceeded to act, and to disqualify the Catholic peers from sitting in parliament, by framing for them a disqualification which it was known at the time they could not pos- sibly take. Not even the forms of justice were observed in this latter act. There was no trial, no conviction, no attainder; but the legislature, acting in conformity with the maddened fury of the moment, proceeded at once to act against the Catholic body, as if the imputations alleged against them had been fully proved and substantiated. The question, so far as the Catholic peers were concerned, was then simply this—whether that exclusion, so unjustly carried into effect against their ancestors, who were innocent, should still be maintained against their descendants, whose loyalty was unimpeached and unimpeachable? To continue such a degrading exclusion, so basely enacted at the outset, was, in fact, to participate in the guilt that had been incurred by the framers of it. The ancestors of these peers had committed no crime; their descendants had incurred no penalty. Why, then, were they to be proscribed as unworthy of their birthright? Why were they to be excluded from those seats which they had never disgraced? The humane policy of the country had been of late times prone to a reversal of attainders, where even the justice of the attaint had never been questioned; and yet here were six cases of continued exclusion where nothing but innocence could be traced through the long track of proscription. Here stood the excluded peers who complained of that unjust and unworthy exclusion: they stood before the peers of that House, their equals by birth, and claiming precisely upon the same right the enjoyment of their hereditary privileges. If, then, upon the ground of guilt, there could be no justification of this proscription, was there any reason of policy for adhering to it, on the supposition that the restoration of justice to the innocent could be attended with any imminent danger to the state? What! was the state to be endangered by the appearance in that House of the duke of Norfolk, in the enjoyment of his hereditary honours? Were the liberties of the country and the immunities the church to be endangered by the earl of Shrewsbury's taking his seat within the walls of that House? The danger was idle and visionary.

The noble lord then repeated several of his arguments, showing the injustice of the exclusion of Catholic peers, and the false grounds upon which it had been originally inflicted, and observed, that he hoped, when he urged this pregnant case of injustice to a few individuals of exalted rank, no man could imagine he meant to confine the measure of redress to the particular act of injustice borne by the Catholic nobility. He had no such intention; for the conviction of his mind was clear, that until substantial justice was done to the great body of the Catholics at large, the peace of the empire would not be effectually established. It was said, that this bill, so far from uniting the Catholic clergy and laity with the state, would only alarm those who now protested against ecclesiastical restrictions. He did not think that this would ultimately be the effect of such a measure, if all parties seriously desired to meet the adjustment with mutual candour aad fairness. Of this he was convinced, that a wise government and a prudent legislature might improve to its own advantage and the general benefit of the community a measure of conciliation like this. His noble and learned friend had said, that he could never learn either from him (lord Grenville) or the late Mr. Pitt, what were the securities which were intended to be provided for the established church, although, the indispensable necessity of securities! was on all hands admitted. To this observation he would reply, that he had never dissembled the necessity of adequate securities. If they went into a committee upon a bill like that before them, containing so much grace, concession, and conciliation, then they could maturely and deliberately weigh the whole subject of securities, and calmly provide them in such a manner as to secure for all parties what could be reasonably desired. If he were asked what securities ought to be given, he should reply, that the first and greatest security was to be derived from the government itself: the best security to any government was the care it took of the interests of the population; and the best bulwark of the established church was the soundness of its doctrine, the correctness of its discipline, and the learning and virtues of its ministers. If further securities were required, the next was to be found in the great object of the law itself, which was intended to identify in one common interest all classes and all religions. On the subject of the clergy and. ecclesiastical preferments, an attempt had been made to confound two things essentially different—the power of nomination, and the power of exclusion. The distinction was tea obvious to require any laboured illustration, and the security against the abuse of the power of exclusion was to be found in the nature of the government, and in the exercise of that power by responsible ministers. But even this question of nomination and exclusion was now to be viewed in a light very different from that which was cast upon it some years ago. Not only was the situation of the clergy changed, but the pope himself, and the influence or authority he might possess, were not to be considered at all in the same manner as when he was under the absolute control of the public enemy of this country. Here again, he could see no ground for suspicion, when that was conceded which had been required, and given in all states whether Catholic or Protestant. After all, these were matters merely subordinate; and if this bill had come up to the House in the form of an absolute and unconditionnal gift of political privilege, he should have given it his concurrence without hesitation, because he thought the concession proper in itself, because it was a measure of wise justice and true policy, and because the benefits it would achieve (though improved by the securities) would be such as to warrant the passing of the bill without them. Beyond the particular enactments there remained this last and strongest security—that all the subjects of the Crown were firmly attached to the constitution in church and state, while the parliament had manifested in the clearest manner, the same absolute determination to support the Protestant ascendancy, the same invariable attachment to the constitution.

He should now draw to a close his observations on this question, by appealing to the House, and asking whether, in a candid, sober, and deliberate view of the whole subject, any man, in the present prospect and condition of affairs, could believe that the final accomplishment of this great measure would actually produce any considerable injury or danger? He asked this with confidence, for he did not think there was any individual, either in or out of parliament, who would prefer to a complete, general, and harmonious system, the present imperfect execution of the law, and partial division of the benefits of the constitution. From all who held that the hour was not yet come, that the times were not yet ripe, for this change, he begged, in the name of the dearest interests of the empire, to know what benefits they expected from delay; while he, in his turn, would remind them of the mischiefs that might be produced by postponement. He most earnestly impressed upon the House what had fallen from his noble friend (earl Grey) yesterday, when he asserted that the present was a most favourable opportunity for passing this bill. There never had been but one occasion more favourable, and that it was neglected, he should ever lament; and he feared that Ireland also would long have reason to regret. How different might her situation and that of her inhabitants now have been, had these political rights been conceded at the auspicious period of the union! That happy moment having been allowed to escape, what better opportunity was likely to be afforded than the present? Tranquillity had been restored to Europe: the aid of the Roman Catholics was not required for foreign wars or internal protection; and the bill might go forth as an act of grace and kindness, instead, perhaps, of owing its adoption hereafter to the compulsion of circumstances. Though the storm in Europe had been quelled for a time, who would say how soon a period of disturbance might not return? But, if this bill were passed, the country would be able to meet it with additional strength and new resources. It would attach the population of Ireland not only to the throne and monarchy, but to the person of the Protestant sovereign. Looking at the other side of the picture, the disadvantages of rejection were obvious. If after the measure had received the sanction of the Commons, the cup were dashed from the thirsty lip, and fond expectation disappointed, who would say what discontents might not be the result? Who would say what would be the feelings of the Catholics against this House, composed as it was of laity and clergy, which alone had opposed an obstacle to their hopes? If the decision of that night were contrary to that which bad been come to by the other branch of the legislature, it was obvious that it could not be final. Renewed and continual agitation must follow; and the bill might perhaps at last be forced upon parliament at a less happy moment and under more equivocal circumstances. He conjured their lordships, therefore, to pass the measure now, as by doing so, they would confer the most lasting benefit, not only on the Roman Catholics, but on the country at large.

The Earl of Liverpool

said, he rose with reluctance, and the more so, because he had urged on former occasions all the topics it was possible for him to advance on the present. He was ready to admit, at the outset, that the question came before the House in a new shape: as the noble barcn had remarked, it was not introduced on the recommendation of an individual peer, or by the exertions of a particular party; but it was recommended to peculiar regard as the opinion of the other branch of the legislature. On all accounts, therefore, it ought to receive a full, a temperate, and a candid discussion. It had been asked last night, and this night repeated, why in this new view of the subject, he did not agree that the bill should be read a second time and referred to a committee? He answered, that if he agreed in the general purview and object of the measure, though differing upon clauses and particular provisions, he should have consented to that farther step. He had no difficulty, however, in saying, that after the most thorough consideration—after looking carefully at the two parts of the bill, the one relating to concession and the other to security, he found in it scarcely three lines to which he could in any way give his consent. It was not a fair view of the question, to say that every man who was for curing certain anomalies, or who even thought that some farther concession might be made beyond what was given in 1793, ought to vote for the second reading. He felt that he could not honestly consent to that stage of the bill, as approving generally of the provisions, and then reduce in the committee a measure of this magnitude and extent to any thing so limited and insignificant. What was the bill? Stating it fairly, and upon the principles of its supporters, its object was to remove, with certain exceptions, all civil disabilities from persons professing the Roman Catholic religion. Those exceptions were three:—but if he thought merely that they were too few, he would vote for the second reading, because those exceptions came correctly within the province of a committee. Without prejudging the question whether certain minor points might or might not be granted, his opinion was this—that the great direct influence of the state in parliament, and in the privy council, ought to be kept where it was; and so thinking, the more honest and manly course was; to take his stand upon the principle of the bill, and not to disappoint, expectation by suffering it to go into a committee.

The noble baron had commenced by a reference to the penal code, enacted at the beginning of the last century; and he must say, that he had the misfortune to differ upon this very question; and it arose from an entirely different view of the principle on which all the laws upon this subject seemed to rest. The noble baron seemed to consider the exclusion, of Catholics as the remains of that penal code, and had endeavoured to place his learned friend on the woolsack, in a sort of dilemma regarding the precepts and examples of our ancestors. He (lord Liverpool) looked to the precepts and example of our ancestors only, where he could see that those precepts and that example were consistent with justice and sound policy. He felt that at this distance of time, and after all that had passed, he could not estimate the circumstances of the rebellion and the state of feeling it produced; and, without presuming, therefore, to give an opinion on what ought to have been done, he was ready with the noble baron to pronounce that code, in all its parts, one of the most nefarious, oppressive, and abominable systems that had ever disgraced any country. He denied, however, that the existing exclusion of Roman Catholics was any part of that code or was a relic of it. He could draw a clear distinction between the two principles, namely, the right of personal liberty, the right to property, and to the enjoyment and inheritance of property, and the right to political power. He allowed that those rights might run into each other, and be in some degree blended; but the principles were in themselves quite distinct. The question, whether Catholics ought, for any thing but positive crime, to be deprived of their personal liberties or property, and whether the consequences of the transgressions of the ancestor ought to extend to the successor, was altogether different from the question, whether, they should be invested with political privileges and power. It was for the state to determine to whom political privileges and power should be given, and from whom they should be withheld; and that determination must always be governed by considerations of necessity and even of convenience. For this reason he held that the whole argument of the noble baron derived from the penal code, was inapplicable to the question before the House.

He trusted that he came to the consideration of this great question with as few personal prejudices against those who professed the Catholic faith as any noble lord who heard him. Some individuals of that persuasion he had the pleasure of knowing; with others he had been in the habit of living on terms of intimacy: and he was convinced that in the body of Catholics were to be found as many honest, virtuous, conscientious, and useful men, as in any other sect of the community. It was not to be disputed that the House was bound by every duty to religion, good faith, and justice, to support the Protestant throne and the Protestant establishment; but he had no difficulty in saying, that if the policy of our ancestors at the period of the Revolution had been different, or if from some unforeseen contingency the Roman Catholic religion had been the established religion of Ireland, J his firm belief was, that what might be called, for brevity's sake, foreign allegiance, would not have prevented the Catholics from being as beneficial supporters of the government as the members of any other establishment. A noble friend last night (the earl of Harrowby) had referred to the union with Scotland, where the Presbyterian religion was established. But surely it would not be argued, that that was the condition in which the Roman Catholic religion stood in Ireland. The situation of the king of Prussia with regard to Silesia, of the emperor of Russia with regard to Poland, or of the king of the Netherlands with regard to Belgium, was not at all analogous to the situation of this country with regard to Ireland; for in all those cases the Roman Catholic faith was the religion of the country. He admitted, therefore, that there was nothing absurd or inconsistent in the idea of an establishment with a monarch of a different persuasion. Such was not the state of Ireland—the short difference being, that Catholicism was not the establishment. Was it possible or probable, being what they are, that the Catholics, if they had the means, would not always look forward to the time when they could make the Roman Catholic the esiablished religion? The question was, whether it was the duty of parliament to defend the established church from the danger that might arise to it, if the Roman Catholics obtained political power.

Before he proceeded to discuss the bill in its two important branches, he wished to call the attention of the House immediately to what he conceived ought to be the foundation of all considerations of this subject, and a departure from which he thought had been the origin of all the difficulties that had arisen in the discussion, and the source of many of the arguments in support of the bill. He here referred to the period of the Revolution, not merely because in his judgment there was then consummated what had proved essential to the peace and prosperity of the country—he meant the alliance between church and state. That he took to be the foundation of our constitution. He maintained that if the opinion of their lordships was, that there was by law, and ought to continue to be, that alliance between church and state, they could not adopt the bill upon the table; for the principle of it was to dissolve the connexion between church and state, and consequently to endanger the establishment. His opinion on this point had not been at all weakened by what had been said on the other side. And here he might particularly refer to what had been urged last night by a right reverend prelate, that the summons of every peer required his attendance in parliament to consider of affairs for the safety of the kingdom and church, so that his political functions were connected with the establishment in the very instrument that required him to exercise those functions. The noble baron had referred particularly to the works of a great authority, whom he never read without admiration, nor, he trusted, without improvement—he meant Mr. Burke; and it was not immaterial or uninstructive to direct the attention of the House to the letter written by him to sir Hercules Langriche, when the question of concession was limited to the elective franchise. There it would be seen that Mr. Burke urged the grant on the ground, that it was not necessary that it should lead to the acquisition of more extensive privileges, drawing a distinction between power directing and instrumental. Yet, a very short time afterwards, the very same distinguished orator became the advocate of a more extensive grant, in the face of his own previous doctrine; The first question, therefore, he would put was, if this bill, now on the table, was passed into a law, could concession stop there? What security had he that it might not be extended to dissenters? that the Test and Corporation acts might not be repealed? for such seemed the inevitable result of acquiescing in what was now required. This would bring the country to an equality of political privileges; and Quakers, nay Jews, and every description of non-conformists, would be put on the same footing as members of the establishment—the doors of parliament and of the privy council would be open to all. The next step to be urged would be, that no man was bound to contribute to a church of which he was not a member. Dr. Priestley had avowed that the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts was his object; and after the Irish rebellion in 1798, the Catholics maintained precisely the same doctrine; Dr. Macnevin contending that no man ought to be compelled to pay to any but to his own clergyman. This doctrine had received support, at a later date, from a zealous Catholic, sir John Throckmorton, who published a pamphlet, in the course of which he anticipated the time when there would be a sort of common establishment between the Catholics and Protestants, and when they should alternately, and for stated periods, have the appointment to ecclesiastical benefices. He asked then, with confidence, whether any man believed that, by making these concessions, the Roman Catholics would continue satisfied? Was it not far more likely that they would pursue their great ulterior object? For there was not a Catholic who paid fees to his priest, and tithes to the church, who was not interested in procuring that Catholic establishment to which assuredly, this bill would lead. When people asked, "Do you really believe that the Catholics would subvert the established religion?" he answered, that undoubtedly he did believe that every zealous and sincere Catholic would make the attempt, because he must feel it his duty to do so. Nothing could be more incontrovertible on this point than the reasoning of Dr. Milner, who spoke the natural sentiments of a conscientious individual. He left the House to consider whether, when it had passed this bill, it had done all that would be demanded of its easy liberality. He contended that this would be only the first step of a system, and that parliament could not stand upon better ground of re- sistance hereafter than it occupied at present. Concession would increase demand; and it was far better to fight for the frontier than for the capital. At present the House held the vantage ground; and it could resist now with better success than when it might hereafter have to oppose the formation of a Catholic establishment, and to resist the claim that no man should pay tithes but to his own priest.

Such was the fair and practical view of the subject. A noble friend of his had last night referred to the history of the various laws upon the subject, from the Reformation to the Revolution; and it had been shown, that soon after the former of these two events the enactments had varied from year to year; so that it was difficult to state precisely on what footing the church establishment stood. The consequence of this uncertainty was, that in the earlier part of the seventeenth century it was overturned by the Puritans, and in the latter part of the same century again nearly destroyed by the Catholics. These great evils led to the subsequent provision at the Revolution, that the king must be a Protestant at the head of a Protestant establishment. A system was thus settled which had not since been disturbed, under which the nation had enjoyed the utmost prosperity and acquired the greatest glory, and which he hoped would never again be abandoned for a vacillating policy, that had twice so severely afflicted the country, with the execution of one sovereign and the abdication of another. The noble earl here took a brief view of the course pursued by James 2nd, to accomplish his project of a Catholic establishment, repeating, that to consent to any change was to resign the advantageous position in which the country now stood. He was decidedly of opinion, that if any alteration were now made, their lordships were only changing the ground of contest, and not changing it for the better; and he doubted much whether it would have the effect of harmonising the sentiments of those to whose relief it was more particularly directed. When toleration was first extended to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, forty-nine-fiftieths of the land were in the hands of the Protestants, though four-fifths of the population were Catholics; but at present', though the numbers of Catholics were nearly in the same proportion, yet the accession of property had greatly increased; and the question now to be considered was, whether such property would not introduce into parliament such a number as would be capable of creating a contention, of the result of which no man could entertain an opinion.

After the fullest consideration of these bills, he had no hesitation in declaring, that he did not think them bottomed in sound policy; and that, though they set out with a declaration to maintain the established church and the Protestant succession, he was satisfied, if they should pass, that the principle of a Protestant succession could not be maintained in this country. If the presumptive heir to the throne should be of the Catholic religion, might he not say, "Am I to be the only man in the kingdom, with the exception of the lord chancellor, who is to be prohibited from worshipping his God according to the dictates of his conscience? You have the president of the council a Catholic, you have the secretary of state a Roman Catholic, and the judges of the King's-bench Roman Catholics; and I am not more hostile than they are to the support of the established church." "What answer could be given, and what, on the other hand, would be the feeling of those of the same religion with the heir to the Crown, if a punishment were inflicted for that belief? What would be more dear to them than the placing of such a sovereign on the throne? The moment the House declared that there was no inconsistency between the Roman Catholic religion and political power, it by inference allowed that there was no inconsistency between the Roman Catholic religion and the Protestantism of the head of the state. He begged the House to look the question fairly in the face: let it neither conceal what the old law was, nor what the new law was intended to be; and let it not forget that the old law connected church and state, while the new law dissolved that union, and effected a total change in the constitution of the country.

The noble earl then came to an examination of the second part of the bill—the securities it afforded; observing, that if the bill passed, and the securities were refused or rejected by the Catholics, the country might hereafter be exposed to all the dangers of religious persecution. This bill, which was called a measure of grace and favour, how was it received—how was it looked at in Ireland? Was there more than one opinion respecting it among the clergy of that country? Their lordships were reduced by this measure to the extremity of attempting an impracticability: they were giving unlimited power to the Roman Catholics, and at the same time endeavouring to build up new securities against that power. The more he reflected on the subject, the more he was convinced that by this measure they were sapping the foundation of all the great establishments of the country, both church and state. It was said, that the dangers lie had pointed out were visionary. They might be so; but if they were not provided against, who could say that the safety of the state was secured? The legislature had therefore done wisely in providing a general law for the security of the constitution; and from that law he could see no reason for departing. If, indeed, he could believe that this measure would do any practical good, and give satisfaction to the Catholics in general, he might then consider what practical risk he would undergo for the attainment of so desirable an object; but he could see no such effect likely to result from it. With the great mass of the population of Ireland he believed this measure would have no effect at all; and therefore to them he conceived it would be insignificant. A few respectable individuals might be gainers by it; but to the great body of the Catholic population it would produce no advantage whatever. He was therefore disposed to adhere to the fundamental law, which said, not only that the King should be Protestant, but that he should have a Protestant parliament, a. Protestant council, and Protestant judges. Their lordships had a duty to perform to the Catholics of Ireland; and in discharge of that duty, ought to confer upon them any benefits which could be conferred without danger to the established church; but their lordships had also a duty to perform to the Protestants of Ireland and of the empire at large; and as he did not think the good that would be conferred upon the Catholics overweighed the evil which would be done to the Protestants, he should recommend to their lordships to keep every body of men in their proper places, to give them the advantages of the laws under which they were born, and not to take away those securities which had for so long a period preserved the constitution. These were" his feelings upon this measure, and he should therefore vote against the bill.

The Marquis of Lansdown

said, he desired it might be distinctly understood, that how gratifying soever it might be to his feelings to give his vote for the admission of any description of his majesty's subjects to those constitutional privileges and blessings which they had a right to enjoy, the ground on which he rested his support of the present bill was, not the "advantage of the Roman Catholics, or of any description of men whatever; but the advantage of the state and the church, the strength and stability of which must depend on the unanimity of all the subjects of the realm. He was glad to hear it conceded by the noble earl who spoke last, that the period was gone by when attempts were to be made to exterminate the religion professed by a great portion of the subjects of this kingdom, and that their lordships were now arrived at that state of feeling, in which it only remained for them to consider whether they ought to admit the professors of that faith to the privileges enjoyed by other subjects. The noble earl had stated, that this measure of favour, even if extended, as proposed, to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, might prove a boon which after all would not be acceptable. What might be the result of some of the provisions of this bill he was not prepared distinctly to say; but this he would confidently state, that the main part of it would be received with gratitude by the great body of the Catholics. The noble earl had next stated, that the effect of the measure would not be so great or so beneficial as was expected. He knew not by what advocates the noble earl had heard it stated that Catholic emancipation in Ireland would have the immediate effect of quieting and dissipating all the discontent and dissatisfaction which a long continued system of misgovernment had created in that country: but he was still more at a loss to conceive where the noble earl had found that the privileges granted by this bill would not give satisfaction to the great body of the population, because the immediate benefits of it would be experienced by only a small number of individuals. Did the noble earl mean to say—and did the sentiment tome with a good grace from him—that the privileges of the superior orders were not held for the public good? Were the privileges of their lordships held for their own sakes solely? Could it be reasonably supposed that the eligibility of the superior orders to offices of honour and distinction would not be gratifying to persons of inferior station? Such a supposition was contrary to human nature, and particularly contrary to the feelings of the Irish nation; and he was therefore well assured that the present measure could not fail to be productive, in time, of the most beneficial effects on the minds of the population of Ireland. They had been told by the learned lord on the woolsack, and after him by the noble earl, that the fundamental laws of the constitution would be affected by this bill; but let their lordships look at the Bill of Rights and the act of settlement, and they would see that neither of these was in the slightest manner affected by the present, measure. None of the laws affected by this bill were fundamental: on that assertion he was willing to stake any credit that he might have with their lordships. The laws which it was proposed to alter were not a part of the constitution as established at the Revolution. They were laws enacted to protect the Protestant establishment from particular dangers, such as the infamous plot of Titus Oates. And here he might observe, that he had heard with astonishment that night for the first time in his life, and that too from the Speaker of their lordships' House, that their lordships were daily in the habit of praying for deliverance from the plot of Titus Oates. Were it not for the high authority from which this information had proceeded, he should have been led to believe that the plot from which their lordships prayed for deliverance was the gunpowder plot. But the learned lord had also inculcated, that it would be an outrage upon the memory of king William, as well as a vital attack upon the security of the constitution, to accede to the proposed repeal of the penal laws. Many of the professed admirers of the Revolution, of whom king William was the idol, were but too apt, as most persons devoted to an idol were, to attribute to that idol all their own prejudices and partialities. Hence some such persons ascribed to that great and glorious monarch, opinions, or rather prejudices, which he never entertained. But that king William never entertained such prejudice or intolerance as some of his sudden admirers ascribed, was obvious, from a paper addressed on the part of his majesty to the congress at Ryswick, which paper was drawn up by lord Somers. In this paper king William stated, that he saw no ground why Catholics should not enjoy complete toleration, or why they should not be admitted to offices of state, under a Protestant sovereign. But for the purpose of repelling the idea that the laws to which the bill referred were radical propositions, connected with the principles of the Revolution, as the learned lord on the woolsack and others had maintained; he quoted the Journals of that House to show that riders had been proposed to the 31st of Charles 2nd, and also to the act of William and Mary, to prevent the lords justices from giving the royal assent to any bill for the repeal of those acts, which riders had been negatived. A similar attempt was made at the union of Scotland, by proposing that the act for the security of the church might never be repealed, and it also was negatived. This showed in the most satisfactory manner that these laws had not been considered fundamental, as was contended by the learned lord. He had heard with regret from a right reverend prelate, that the Roman Catholics enjoyed already complete toleration. That right reverend prelate might have been expected, on the subject of toleration, to have referred to the authority of Dr. Paley. Had he done so, he would have found it stated by Dr. Paley, that the toleration of dissenters was only partial; that admission to offices was necessary to make it complete; and that, while that privilege was denied, there could not be said to be complete toleration. The noble earl had stated his apprehensions that great danger would arise to property in Ireland, if the disabilities were removed from the Catholics, since a great part of the property in that country was held under forfeited titles. It should be recollected, however, that a very great proportion of the property possessed by the Catholics in Ireland was under these forfeited titles; and therefore it was chimerical to expect that they should labour to set aside their own titles. He challenged the learned lord, or the noble earl, to adduce a single instance in which the Catholics had not shown themselves the promoters, of the good fortunes of the country, and participators in its bad fortunes. To the tried fidelity of the Catholics the learned lord owed his seat at present on the woolsack, and the learned prelates their mitred dignity. But for the Catholic population of the kingdom, whose faith their lordships had laboured to exterminate, they would never have come with safety out of that struggle through which they had passed, and in the course of which, during a period of twenty years, there had been no instance of Catholic treason, Catholic cowardice, or Catholic infidelity. It had been said by an eminent divine that the Catholics had a leaning to arbitrary power, and the Presbyterians to republicanism. Both assertions were perhaps equally unfounded; and for a contradiction of one of them, he might appeal to the conduct of the peers of Scotland, who had sat in that House since the Union, of whom it could be said that the breath of calumny durst not accuse them of advocating republican principles. The other charge was sufficiently refuted by the constitution recently adopted in various Catholic countries. The truth was, that when the services of the Catholics were required, no suspicions were entertained of their loyalty, no danger was apprehended from their religion. When the mutiny took place at the Nore, Catholic priests had been gladly sent down to bring the seamen back to their duty. When the government had an object to gain, they were glad to rely on the fidelity of the Catholics, and to avail themselves of their services; but when that object was attained, they were treated as enemies, and told that their oaths were distrusted. Of all the provisions of this bill he attached the greatest importance to what some noble lords viewed with the greatest suspicion—the admission of Catholics to seats in parliament. Those persons took a narrow view of the functions of parliament who measured them by the votes it passed and the ordinances it enacted. He conceived that from the manner in which opinions were brought into conflict and examined in a legislative assembly, unanimity of sentiment was promoted, erroneous impressions corrected, and much public good resulted. Seeing that this was the effect produced on others, were they to suppose that Catholics were so constituted by nature as to be incapable of deriving the same advantage from the same cause, and of approximating in sentiment to those whose opinions they were in the habit of hearing?—Here he should have concluded, if allusion had not been made to the persons who composed the establishment at Stoney-hurst, in Lancashire. The existence of the order of Jesuits was unquestionably contrary to the law of this country; and into the propriety of that law it was not for him to inquire. This he was able to state—that the Jesuits could not be established by the pope in any country, without the sanction of the government of that country, and the individuals of that order who were at present in England had received an intimation to this effect. The present bill, therefore, would not affect their situation in any respect. This measure would not give the Catholics power to disturb any sacred institution of the country: it was not the admission of one or two Catholics, whom a Protestant king might be pleased to call into the privy council, that could endanger the Protestant establishment. It was rather from a great population, discontented and irritated at being deprived of their constitutional rights, that danger was to be apprehended; and from that danger, he wished their lordships to guard themselves and the country, by reading this bill a second time.

Viscount Sidmouth

began by observing, that it was with the most painful feelings he felt himself called upon to oppose the measure before the House. Nothing was more revolting to his mind than to declare it necessary to withhold from so large a portion of his fellow subjects, as the body of Roman Catholics, the privileges enjoyed by the other classes of the community. The measure came before their lordships now under different circumstances than on former occasions; for it had already obtained the sanction of one branch of the legislature. Could he believe that all the beneficial consequences would result from the measure which the noble marquis who spoke last, and other noble lords anticipated, he should consider it the greatest blessing ever conferred on the country by the wisdom of parliament. It had been said, that the bill would put an end to religious differences and cement the union of all classes of his majesty's subjects; but he was sorry to say that he thought no such effects would result from the passing of the bill. He objected to the first part of the bill on grounds which would be offensive to many of the most ardent supporters of the measure; he objected to it, not on the ground of individual distrust of the Roman Catholics, but because of the nature of the tenets and principles inherent in their religion. He objected to it for the reasons assigned by a noble earl; namely, that the Catholic religion was hostile to civil and religious liberty. He was ready to admit that many of the obnoxious tenets of the Catholic religion had been abandoned by its professors; but many also still remained, and particularly the doctrines of exclusive salvation and infallibility. The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, in a letter which he had addressed to the individuals under his immediate influence, had stated, that the church of Rome was infallible in its decisions, not only in points of faith, but also of morality. These doctrines were also embodied in the resolutions of the Roman Catholic clergy of Drogheda, and the professors of the college of Maynooth. It had been represented that a very inconsiderable number of Catholic members would be returned to the House of Commons; but he was at a loss to conceive upon what grounds this argument was founded. The constitution had declared that no foreign influence should exist in this country, but the effect of the bill would be to give spiritual authority to the head of the Roman Catholic church. In referring to the second part of the bill, the noble viscount was of opinion that the securities therein proposed were insufficient. With respect to the oath intended to be substituted for that which now legally existed, which if the bill passed would be taken by all members of parliament, and persons holding offices under the government, being Catholics, he maintained that it could not be subscribed consistently with the principles of the Catholic religion. He knew that this opinion was entertained by many most respectable individuals of that persuasion. There had been numerous meetings of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics of Ireland, at all of which there had been but one unanimous feeling of hostility towards the clauses contained in the second part of the bill. Besides the meetings to which he alluded in different districts of Ireland, there had been a general meeting of the Roman Catholic clergy in the city of Dublin, at which, resolutions were unanimously passed against the clauses in the second part of the bill. He understood that a petition, founded on these resolutions, had been sent to the metroplis in order to be presented to that House, and he did not understand why that presentation had not taken place. No measure had ever been brought under the consideration of parliament which was calculated to produce more disunion among different classes of the community than the present bill. It had not only effected a division between the Catholics and the Protestants, but had introduced disunion among the Catholics themselves. The noble viscount contended, that the great body of the Protestants in this country, as well as in Ireland, were decidedly averse to the measure, and concluded by calling upon their lordships to reject it if they wished to preserve the existing constitution.

Viscount Melville

said, that under the very particular circumstances in which he was placed, he felt it to be his duty to state to their lordships the reasons which induced him to give his vote for the second reading of this bill. That vote he intended to give from a strong conviction of the utility and necessity of the measure. In giving his decided opinion that the bill should be read a second time, he had to regret that it was his misfortune to differ from many noble friends with whom he was usually in the habit of agreeing. Notwithstanding the ability with which the debate had been conducted, and the number of noble lords who had delivered their sentiments, he had not been so fortunate as to hear one main point sufficiently touched upon, to which, above all others, he thought their lordships' attention ought to be directed—he meant the consequences of rejecting the bill. They had heard a great deal of the danger, which he thought magnified—he would not say entirely visionary—of carrying this bill into effect; but little or nothing had been said of the danger which was to be expected if it should not be carried. Under any government, particularly under one like our own, the exclusion of a considerable proportion of the population from rights and privileges enjoyed by others must be attended with risk. The population of the colonies and of India, though under the same government, was placed in circumstances which rendered it necessary that a different rule should be applied. The population he referred to was one like that of which their lordships were a part, having the same kind of education and the same feelings as themselves, and engaged, as far as they would allow them to be engaged, in the service and the defence of the country. It had been said, that the passing of this bill would not make the population to which he had referred either better or worse. But if any people were told, that such as they were they must remain—that whatever talents, what ever industry they might exert, it was all in vain, for a boundary was put to their rank in society—surely it was not in human nature but that such language must produce irritation in a high degree. Surely their lordships must see that such a state of things could not be suffered much longer to exist without incurring considerable risk. They had been told that danger was to be apprehended from the insufficiency of the securities, should the bill pass. Perhaps there might by some ground for this observation; but the whole question resolved itself into a balance of dangers. Their lordships ought to be satisfied that the danger of passing the bill was paramount to every other, before they refused to give it a second reading. He was convinced that the danger on the other side was infinitely more formidable: that it existed and would exist until some remedy of the kind now under consideration should be applied. There the real danger was to be found; and he was of opinion that their lordships ought to remove the disabilities under which the Catholics laboured as speedily as possible. It had been argued that the admission of a few Catholic peers to that House, and some Catholic members in the House of Commons, would have the effect of making parliament act as if all the members were no longer Protestants. It was also argued that the admission of one or two Catholics to the privy council would have the effect of changing the whole institutions of the country. The entire of this reasoning he thought founded in fallacy, and was convinced that after the passing of this bill the two Houses of Parliament and the executive government would remain as before, essentially Protestant. With regard to the provisions of the bill, he was not one of those who thought that they might not be advantageously altered if their lordships agreed to go into a committee. He approved of most of the alterations suggested by the noble earl who moved the second reading. But there were other alterations he should propose, if the bill were committed, for the purpose of rendering it more applicable to Scotland, where the laws respecting Roman Catholics were not the same as in England. The opinions of that part of the united kingdom he was certain would form no obstacle to the execution of the present measure. Of the spirit of liberality which prevailed there on this subject, he could speak not only from particular information, but from facts which were public and equally accessible to all their lord- ships. About seven years ago the general assembly of the church of Scotland had addressed a petition to that House on the subject of toleration, from which, though the Catholic disabilities were not expressly mentioned, it was evident that the assembly had no objection to their removal. On the contrary, the words of the petition implied the desire of that object; for the petitioners recommended to their lordships, in any measure they might adopt, to proceed with caution, and to take care to secure the constitutional establishments of both countries, and at the same time extend the privileges of the constitution to all the subjects of the united kingdom. The noble lord, after explaining the nature of the laws respecting Roman Catholics in Scotland, the reference to the subject in the Scotch claim of rights, and the articles of the union, again strongly urged the reading of the bill. He observed, that rapid improvement in education in Ireland increased the danger of withholding this conciliatory measure; for the more a people advanced in civilization, the more stongly they must feel the injustice of depriving them of their civil rights.

Lord Ashburton

, in looking at the immunities enjoyed by Protestant dissenters, found it difficult to perceive why similar advantanges should be denied to the solicitations of the Catholics. It did appear to him that in its political qualities and effects the Catholic faith approached more nearly to the established religion of the country than did the Protestant sects so especially favoured. The Catholics certainly did acknowledge—just so far as they could acknowledge it without failure in their allegiance to their sovereign—a foreign spiritual supremacy; but what there was about foreign spiritual supremacy for people to be afraid of, he had yet to learn. The country, as he thought, might as reasonably suspect sir Humphrey Davy of treason, because he was a member of foreign scientific associations; or the illustrious duke opposite a dangerous man because he had received titles or orders of knighthood from foreign states. Those who doubted the loyalty of the Catholics had perhaps forgotten that Catholics in the reign of Charles 1st fought and fell for their king—for that king who was deposed and murdered by Protestant dissenters. Their lordships had been told that the grant of the requested rights would little benefit the great mass of Catholics; that very few individuals indeed would find their way into parliament. No matter how few did make their way, if all were qualified to make their way. He had no prospect of an earldom; he had done nothing to deserve such a title, nor had he any hope of receiving it; but still, if a bill were passed providing that no baron whose name began with the letter A should be capable of becoming an earl, it would give him serious uneasiness.

Lord Somers

had no difficulty in voting for the second reading of the bill. Had his noble ancestor, to whom allusion had been made, been living, he would assuredly have been friendly to this measure. The circumstances of the country were changed, and what the greatest patriot might in a former age have thought necessary, was now no longer so. He did not apprehend any danger from the admission of a few Catholics into the House of Commons. That House was intended to represent all the interests of the country; but as things now stood, that intention was not carried into effect. The admission of a few Catholics would repair the deficiency, and cause another interest which had hitherto enjoyed no representation, to be duly represented. He had no doubt that if the measure passed, and if the Catholics at any future period had an opportunity of establishing their own religion, they would avail themselves of it; and so would the dissenters, of whatever class or description. There was, however, no prospect of the occurrence of any such opportunity; and the apprehension of that which might be treated almost as an impossibility would not justify the House in refusing a course of justice and of conciliation.

The House then divided:

List of the Contents and also of the Not Contents.

CONTENTS.—Present.
Duke of Sussex	Grafton
Lord President	Argyll
Harrowby	Leinster
Dukes Devonshire	Marq. Buckingham

Lansdown	Melville
Headfort	Granville
Camden	Duncan
Anglesea	Hood
Conyngham	Bishop Norwich
Earls Thanet	Lords Clinton
Jersey	Dacre
Elgin	Saye and Sele
Cassilis	Howard of Effingham
Galloway
Stair	Howard of Walden
Roseberry
Aberdeen	Colville
Cowper	King
Harrington	Grantham
Warwick	Holland
Fitzwilliam	Hawke
De la Warr	Foley
Spencer	Ashburton
Fortescue	Somers
Carnarvon	Amherst
Charlemont	Grenville
Darnley	Auckland
Besborough	Dundas
Donoughmore	Calthorpe
Belmore	De Dunstanville
Limerick
Rosslyn	Wellesley
Grey	Lilford
Minto	Abercrombie
Morley	Lauderdale
St. Germains	Crewe
Blesington.	Ellenborough
Viscounts Torrington	Hill

Proxies.
Duke Somerset	Earls Hutchinson
Bedford	Melbourne
Marq. Stafford	Berwick
Bute	Clancarty
Queensberry	Sherborne
Earls Mulgrave	Dartmouth
Breadalbane	Mount Cashel
Lynedoch	Kingston
Hillsborough	Cawdor
Yarborough	Darlington
Sondes	Oxford
Essex	Grosvenor
Mendip	Gwydir
Monteagle	Bolingbroke
Carysfort	Braybrooke
Ducie	Suffolk
Carlisle	Albemarle
Hardwicke	Waldegrave
Granard	Alvanley
Keith	Hereford
Anson	Derby
Belhaven	Carrington
Glastonbury	Lord Erskine
Tweedale	Bishop of Rochester

NOT-CONTENTS.—Present.
Duke of York	Earl Westmoreland (L. P. S.)
Archb. Canterbury
Lord Chancellor	Dukes Beaufort
Archb. York	Newcastle

Northumberland	Sydney
	Sidmouth
Wellington	Lake
Marq. Winchester	Exmouth
Lothian	Curzon
Cornwallis	Bishop London
Northampton	Winchester
Donegal	Lincoln
Earl Pembroke	St. Asaph
Bridgewater	Bangor
Winchelsea	Exeter
Cardigan	St. David's
Shaftesbury	Salisbury
Kinnoul	Ely
Glasgow	Chester
Plymouth	Peterborough
Coventry	Oxford
Macclesfield	Gloucester
Pomfret	Landaff
Harcourt	Clogher
Bathurst	Killaloe
Aylesbury	Kilmore
Chatham	Worcester
Abergavenny	Lords Dynevor
Mount Edgecumbe	Saltoun
	Napier
Digby	Boston
Mansfield	Bagot
Liverpool	Kenyon
Mayo	Selsey
Enniskillen	Rolle
O'Neill	Bayning
Romney	Bolton
Powis	Northwick
Chichester	St. Helen's
Lonsdale	Redesdale
Cathcart	Dufferin
Verulam	Arden
Whitworth	Gambier
Brownlow	Harris
Longford	Beresford
Abingdon	Walsingham
Visct. Hampden

Proxies.
Duke of Clarence	(Aboyne)
Rutland	Ferrars
Richmond	Malmesbury
Marlborough	Maynard
Dorset	Farnham
Marq. Exeter	Prudhoe
Hertford	Willoughby de
Salisbury	Broke
Bath	Tyrone
Cholmondeley	Rous
Thomond	Strange
Earl Scarborough	Stamford
Kellie	Beauchamp
Loftus (M. Ely)	Rodney
Poulett	Suffield
Morton	De Clifford
Huntingdon	Middleton
Zouche	Denbigh
Orford	Graham
Sheffield	Salterford
Carrick	Norwich (Gordon)
Meldrum

Gordon (Huntley)	Rivers
	Charleville
Stewart (Moray)	Lord Carleton
	Manners
Home	Combermere
Harewood	Dudley and Ward
Fgremont
Falmouth	Wodehouse
Radnor	Gray
Aylesford	Archbishop of Armagh
Balcarras
Portsmouth	Bishop of Hereford
Nelson	Carlisle
Craven	Chichester
Brodrick	Durham