The Marquis of Lansdownsaid, he had to submit to their lordships a petition in favour of the same object, from the Protestant land-owners, merchants, and bankers of Dublin and its neighbourhood. Though not so numerously signed as the petition which had been presented by his noble friend, it was entitled to the most serious consideration of the House. It expressed the opinion of the most respectable and wealthy portion of the Protestant inhabitants of that part of the country from which the petition came, on the claims of their Catholic fellow-subjects. The first name was that of the duke of Leinster; the next was the earl of Meath, the two greatest landed proprietors in that part of Ireland. These names were followed by the signatures of the marquisses of Downshire and Westmeath, the earls of Limerick and Charlemont, lords Glengal, Riversdale, Forbes, and many other noble names. After these came the names of wealthy capitalists and opulent merchants. There were to be seen among the bankers and merchants, the name of Latouche, and the names of the descendants of men who had fled from religious persecution in another country, and had found an asylum in this. Their ancestors, who were the victims of an act of great injustice committed by an ambitious tyrant, abandoned 645 France in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. They suffered persecution as Protestants under a Catholic government; for what religion did there exist which had not, at some period or other, been degraded and polluted, by the fanatical zeal of those who thought they served it by acts of cruelty and injustice? As fanatical zeal led to the formation of erroneous principles, so the exercise of benevolent feelings, through three successive generations, had taught these descendants of persecuted Protestants to regard the Roman Catholics among whom they resided, not as enemies whom they ought to dread, but as brethren, as fellow subjects of the same sovereign, discharging the same duties, and with whom they would be proud to live under the same laws and in the enjoyment of equal rights. Their lordships could not fail to recollect, that the names of these men were names essentially connected with the Protestant religion. They would besides find attached to this petition, the names of some of the principal bankers, and of various capitalists materially connected with the great interests of Ireland, and engaged in speculations just beginning to be unfolded for the benefit of that country. Of the men thus engaged in great and useful enterprises, many had come forward to add their testimony in favour of the justice and the policy of granting the claims of their Catholic brethren. And, did their lordships believe, that they who had set their names to the present petition had subscribed it without well considering what would be the consequences of granting the prayer of the petition? For himself, he felt flattered by the confidence that had placed it in his hands. He had always felt that this great question was not a Catholic, or a Protestant, but an Irish question; that it was not a question, whether or not several millions of Catholics should be admitted to an equal share of the benefits of the constitution, but how long that practical community, in which here, as in every other country all over the globe, Catholics as well as Protestants should enjoy a participation of civil rights, was to be deferred; for he felt that this measure, to use the words of a noble friend of his, would inevitably pass. But he hoped it would pass soon, and that when it did pass, it might pass with the assent and concurrence of a large portion of the Protestants.
§ Ordered to lie on the table.