Lord Broughampresented petitions from the members of the Universal Rational Religious Society, Reading, Glasgow, and Northampton, complaining that their doctrines had been misrepresented, and praying for an inquiry into them. He presented these petitions because they were respectfully worded, and because the parties complained of misrepresentation. He, therefore, deemed it his duty, as the petitions had been put into his hands, to submit them to their Lordships, although he was himself unacquainted with the subject and totally uninformed whether the 509 charges alluded to were well founded or not. He wished, however, to take that opportunity of once more stating to their Lordships his firm belief—a belief which all his experience and observation had tended more and more to confirm—that if there were any absurdities so great as not to bear the testimony of calm inquiry for one instant; if there were anything so revolting to men's feelings in the principles of these parties that all must shrink from the consideration of them with abhorrence and disgust; if their doctrines were so profligate as had been stated, no mode more effectual to diminish the natural abhorrence which these doctrines might inspire could be devised than making those professing them the objects of persecution and punishment. He entertained that opinion still more strongly with regard to political opinions, however revolting they might be. His belief was, that any attempt to put down such principles by prosecution, and by checking the discussion of doctrines which, if left to themselves, would die a natural death, was a course fraught with inconvenience and danger. He applied that to all doctrines, as well religious as political, and he applied it to political heresies of the most revolting kind. He included under it the Repeal of the Union in Ireland, and his deliberate opinion was, that his noble Friends behind him had been ill-advised if they held out, as he understood they had, to parties in Ireland, that whoever took part in the discussion respecting the Repeal of the Union, must no longer look to the countenance or the patronage of her Majesty's Government in Ireland. He believed that was not the way to put down the repeal agitation, but that if left to itself it would die, like all others, a natural death.
§ Petition laid on the table.—Adjourned.