the mischiefs consequent upon a division between the two branches of the legislature. In regard to the first, the discord and agitation to be found in Ireland, not only were no new features in the history of that country, but were not even the result of the penal laws, and would not disappear on the removal of civil disabilities. These evils had existed in Ireland, in one shape or another, as long as we had known it; and ministers were bound to shew that the situation of Ireland was worse than it had been, when they held themselves bound, in justice to the country, to resist concession. The opponents of emancipation were asked, what other remedy they would propose for the mischiefs of the present state of things. It would be enough to say, that, at all events, a remedy was not to be sought in the overthrow of the Protestant constitution, an evil in comparison with which all others became as nothing. According to the account of ministers themselves, the Catholic Association had been a main instrument in producing that disease, for which they could now discover no cure save concession. But confessedly, at the same time, not even an attempt had been made to crush that usurping convention. Acts had been passed for that purpose, and the very ministers who called for them had allowed them, when obtained, to remain inoperative. With respect to the argument founded on the divided state of the cabinet, why did not the duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, instead of changing their own course, rather attempt to make such of their colleagues,

stated that his opinions of the danger of granting Catholic emancipation were unchanged. Surely he could not be fearful of being able to form a cabinet unanimous on the point of exclusion, and therefore should never have struck those colours, under which there were no difficulties too great to surmount. As to the danger of a civil war, unless the intended measure were acceded to, ministers had erred in not relying on the aid and force which they would have derived from public opinion, and the moral determination of the people of England. Besides, it was not a choice between civil war and concession, as far as the people of Ireland were concerned ; but a far greater chance of civil war to-morrow, on the part of the Protestants of England, if the Catholics were admitted to the entire privileges of the constitution. At best, it was only postponing the evil day; and it was for the House to consider, under what different circumstances the attack could be resisted now, from those to which it would be possible to meet it, when the Catholics possessed all the political immunities of the constitution. Unfortunately, the very manner, in which the measure was brought forward, provoked further attack. It was not the triumph of those who had long espoused the cause, gradually working their way by the power of opinion: it was the victory of force, driving former enemies into desertion, by intimidation. It told the agitators of Ireland, that they were too strong for the government of Britain, that whatever they asked would be conceded, even to the giving up of the constitution, provided only it were asked with enough of clamour and confusion. Ministers themselves did

not venture to represent this measure as an act of grace, but as one which had been forced upon them by imperious necessity, many of them still retaining their former opinions, and having their eyes open to all the evils likely to result from the course which they were pursuing. No rational man could expect, that the Catholics, and Catholic priesthood, would remain satisfied even with what was now given. The re-establishment of their church was not only their interest; if they were Catholics, it was their sacred duty, an obligation far more holy than that of battling for a civil franchise, which, in truth, would be chiefly valuable only as an instrument by which to regain religious preponderance. Even the home secretary seemed to anticipate an ulterior struggle, which implied that he believed the Catholics to entertain ulterior objects; and it was inexplicable wisdom to prepare for a contest, by clothing your enemy in new armour, and putting into his hands new weapons of offence. The intimidated spirit from which the proposal had sprung, was manifest, too, in those ridiculous provisions, which were called securities, against the danger of admiting Catholics to wield the civil, judicial, and military powers of the state. Admission was declared to be the general rule of the bill; and the securities were to be found in the exception of two offices, all the power connected with which could be just as mischievously employed by the influence of Catholics filling other offices, to which no disqualification was attached. The lord chancellor was not to be a Catholic; but the first lord of the Treasury might, and so might all the rest of the cabinet ministers.

The lord chancellor, who had the patronage and disposal of some of the smaller and less important church livings, could not be a Catholic, lest church patronage should fall into the hands of a professor of a hostile doctrine; but then the first lord of the Treasury, who recommended to the Crown persons who were to act as bishops in the Protestant church, might be a Catholic. Mr. Peel had stated, that, if any office to which church patronage was attached, happened to be filled by a Catholic, that patronage was to be transferred to some other source. What did this mean? The first lord of the Treasury was the individual who recommended to the Crown the appointment of the higher dignitaries and bishops of the church; but the appointment did not rest in himself, and therefore it would seem that there was nothing to prevent the first lord of the Treasury, being a Catholic, from recommending to the sovereign, persons to be appointed to bishopricks; though the first lord of the Treasury, or the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, if Catholics, could not exert the direct influence which might belong to their offices in conferring minor church preferments. The proposed securities or restrictions, or rather exceptions, were quite sufficient as a badge or mark to distinguish the Catholics as belonging to an inferior sect not worthy of these privileges, but for any practical purpose they were entirely useless.

Small as they

were in themselves, they were admissions of the existence of ulterior dangers, and that there were other objects behind, which the Roman Catholics had the wish and the will to accomplish, if they should be allowed sufficient power.

Else why say, when you grant almost all that they desire, that still you are not willing to trust them without some restriction, which shows you do not consider them worthy to be trusted?

Moreover, why was this change of the constitution to be forced upon the people of Britain in defiance of public opinion? Was there only one party to be regarded in the transaction? Was every thing else to be swallowed up in the interrogatories-what do the Catholics want? what do the Catholics threaten? And was it to be forgotten that there were such beings in existence as the Protestant population of England and Scotland? No observant man could doubt that public opinion, manifested by the petitions which were pouring into the House day after day, was opposed to concession. When Mr. Peel admitted that, in the event of a new election, this country would return a majority determined to resist, he admitted that he was forcing through parliament a measure of which this country disapproved; and was it right, or prudent, that, on the most important change, which had taken place since the Revolution, the voice of the country should be, not merely not consulted, but contemned and set at defiance? The country, forsooth, should have borne this in mind at the election of 1826; and should have tied down their representatives to vote against concession; and so they would have done, if they had been told, that the men, whom they trusted, were so soon to desert, and to betray them. The Catholic Question was not made a leading feature in the election of 1826 because the people saw a minister in power, under whom, supported

as he was by the very proposers of the present measure, they had no apprehension that any system of concession, and least of all, of boundless, and unqualified concession, could ever succeed. How, moreover, could so flimsy a pretext for disregarding the wishes of the country, be listened to in the mouth of Mr. Peel? According to his own statement, he had found, in 1825, that the nearly balanced state of the House rendered it difficult for government to proceed. It would only have been fair, therefore, in the home secretary, knowing with what unbounded confidence the people reposed on him, to have told them, that, unless they gave him a House of Commons decidedly adverse to concession, he would immediately abandon them for the enemy. It was confidence in the known opinions and the supposed firmness of the leading ministers, which had prevented the anti-catholic party from courting excitation at the elections by putting forth a strength which seemed to be unnecessary; and it was strange logic, as well as strange morality, that the men, who had thus been trusted, should make the very confidence reposed in them a pretext for betraying it. But again, if Mr. Peel, and other new made converts, seriously thought that they could no longer be called on to resist, because they had not a majority in the House of Commons, what did they mean by refusing to accept a majority? Let parliament be but dissolved, and there would be an end of that pre

text.

If the opinion expressed in petitions was to be contemned, and the voice of the country, as Mr. Peel had avowed, was to be listened to only as it came from its representatives, give the people at

least an opportunity of so express ing it. It was mere absurdity to talk of the constitution of the present House as a deliberate manifestation of the public voice, and the public wishes; ministers themselves admitted that it was not, for they could not deny that a new election would return a majority fatal to the Catholic claims. But what did they mean by deserting the field, because the people had left them unarmed, and yet refus ing in the very same breath, to adopt the constitutional means which would enable the people to send them forth to certain victory? Let them say at once that they were determined to surrender the constitution, be the opinion of the country what it might; but, let them not seek, in the state of parliamentary opinion regarding this measure, a false and flimsy exeuse for capitulating, while they declined to use the only expedient, by which a parliamentary opinion, representing that of the country, could be ascertained.

Different members, accordingly, urged the propriety of. dissolving parliament, as a measure which would be right at any time, when such a revolution was in view as a deliberate breaking up of the constitution, and which was peculiarly necessary in the present instance, where the country had been deceived into a security, of which those, who had practised the deception, were now seeking to take advantage. The marquis of Blandford maintained, that, if the House sanctioned the present audacious invasion of the constitution, it would break the trust reposed in it as the representatives of the people of England, who, he contended, were taken by surprise by

the unexpected announcement with which ministers opened the session. Was it right for the government to persist in measures, to which public feeling was SO strongly opposed? Constituted as the House was then, it did not express the just alarms of the people for the safety of the Protestant institutions of the country. Ministers should first have taken the deliberate opinions of the public, before they proceeded with their intended invasion of the constitution.

Mr. Estcourt, one of the members for the University of Oxford, denied that the present parliament was qualified to settle the Catholic question. It had been elected in 1826, when the affairs of the country were under the guidance of that vigilant protector of the Protestant cause-the late lord Liverpool. There was not then the same anxiety about the Catholic question, for the country had confidence in his lordship, and in the right hon. home secretary himself. It was therefore incumbent on ministers to have taken the sense of the country, by calling a new House of Commons, before they ventured to introduce so extraordinary a measure as that of admitting the Catholics to parliament and to the offices of the state. Were the purposes, for which the constitution of 1688, the date of the civil and religious liberties of England, was framed, compatible with the measure which the House was then called upon to sanction ? Was not that constitution framed for a specific purpose,-namely, the driving out of a Popish king, and the abolishing of Popish counsels? If so, and that it was so the preamble of the Bill of Rights and

the whole tenour of the Act of Settlement proved-why was not the conduct, pursued in 1688, when the constitution was founded, imitated, when it was designed to alter that constitution? In 1688 the sense of the country was taken by calling the convention parliament, before the constitution was established. At present, it was not too much to ask, why the sense of the country should not also be taken, when that constitution was about to be invaded. He felt the more anxious that the feelings of the people towards the Catholic question should be faithfully represented, because he had heard of no security for the preservation of the established church and the upholding of Protestant ascendancy.

Among the opponents of the bill was viscount Corry, who had seconded the address, agreeing to his majesty's recommendation to take the subject into consideration. He had seconded that address, he said, because he conceived that the adjustment of the question could be much better effected under the immediate influence of government than upon the motion of any individual; but at the same time he had reserved to himself the right of exercising an unbiassed opinion with respect to the measure when it should be brought forward, and had distinctly stated that he should be opposed to any measure of relief, which was not accompanied with sufficient safe guards. However sanguine might have been the hopes he had entertained that he should be able to agree with ministers with respect to the important measure in contemplation, he must confess that the plan, which had now been detailed, had completely dissipated

them. He had in vain looked for securities. In fact, with the exception of the 40s. franchise being raised to 10l., there was no attempt at securities, and even that was only a half measure. With this single exception, and the exclusion of Catholics from the offices of lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and lord-chancellors of England and Ireland, the bill was one of unqualified, unconditional emancipation. To a measure of this sort he could never assent; and although it might be more strictly conformable to the forms of the House to state his objection to the measure in the committee, he felt that he was pursuing a more straight-forward course by opposing in limine a measure to which he had the strongest objection, than by waiting till the Speaker should leave the chair, with the hope of obtaining securities which he saw it was in vain to expect.

The motion, on the other hand, was supported by sir G. Murray, the colonial secretary, Mr. C. Grant, Mr. North, and Mr. Huskisson; the opposition members who spoke contenting themselves, as has been already noticed, with general approbation and congratulation. They repeated and enforced the positions, that the pacification of Ireland was necessary to the safety of the empire, and that without emancipation that pacification could not be effected. It had been often averred, they said, that emancipation, however interesting to a few of the higher classes, was utterly uninteresting to the great bulk of the population of Ireland; but the recent events in Ireland completely refuted such statements; for all classes had identified themselves with that very question.