The Earl of Rodenhad a petition to present to their Lordships, It came from an individual who had petitioned their Lordships on several former occasions. Those petitions had been turned into great ridicule by some of their Lordships, who expressed their belief, that any person who used such expressions as those adopted by the petitioner, could not be in his right mind—that he must labour under a perversion of intellect. Now, he would say for himself, that although he did not agree in everything stated by the rev. person whose petition he was about to present, yet if he laboured under a perversion of mind, there was certainly a great deal of method in his madness. He was of opinion with the petitioner, that many of the unfortunate circumstances which now afflicted Ireland, had occurred in consequence of those laws which the Legislature had thought it fit to pass. The petition came from the rev. Sir Harcourt Lees; and the petitioner expressed his conviction that a joint Radical and Romish conspiracy was going on silently in Great Britain and Ireland, connected also with foreign conspirators, to overturn the Es- 1389 tablished Church, to undermine the Monarchy of these realms, and to separate England and Ireland. The petitioner declared, that he had in his possession the names of the chief directors of those secret societies, who had been actively employed since the passing of the Roman Catholic Bill in 1829, in instigating the deluded peasantry of Ireland to murder the Protestant clergy. He could produce the names of those perfidious hypocrites and conspirators against the Stale, whose machinations must lead to rebellion and massacre. The petitioner, therefore, implored their Lordships to allow him to make his statement before their Lordships at the bar of the House, or to appoint a Select Committee to inquire into this deeply-organised plot for the subversion of the empire. He conceived that their Lordships were loudly called on to give to the petitioner the opportunity which he demanded for explanation.
§ Petition laid on the table.