Catholic religion, certain disabilities to which other subjects of this realm were not liable," &c. Now if any hon. member could show him that Protestants were not precluded from assuming, unless regularly elected, the title of "bishops,”—if it could be proved to him that a Protestant was not punishable for such an act, then he would admit that there was a repeal of the law. But here disabilities, to which other subjects of this realm were not liable, were clearly spoken of; and the assumption, without right, of an ecclesiastical title, was no more allowed to a Protestant than to a Roman Catholic; therefore he concluded that the statute of 1781-2 was not repealed. The enacting clause of the act of 1793 only went to put Protestants and Papists on a certain degree of equality, by allowing the latter to vote at elections; but it did not permit them to take the titles of bishops and deans. The present bill, therefore, only substituted a less powerful for a more efficacious security; and the price to be paid for this miserable change was, the sacrifice of the constitution.

Lord Tullamore, too, inveighed vehemently against the bill, and the desertion of all principle in the ministers who introduced it. They had themselves given the tone on the other side at public meetings; they had sat at the festive board, hearing with approbation the avowal of sentiments which they themselves had always avowed, but now found it convenient, to disclaim, completing the picture which the poet had drawn;

Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball;
Friendly at Hackney, faithless at

Whitehall.

But no speech delivered in op

position to the principles on which the bill was founded excited greater notice, than the maiden oration of Mr. Sadler, who had recently taken his seat for Newark. One of the members for that borough had vacated his seat; Mr. Serjeant Wilde, who had once been a whig, and now professed himself a friend of the Catholics, and an admirer of the duke of Wellington, had started as a candidate; but Mr. Sadler, supported by the interest of the duke of Newcastle, had carried the election; and he now seized and rivetted the attention of the House by a speech replete with argument and oratory. He rose, he said, to add his humble vote to that faithful band who had resigned the countenance of those whom they had hitherto respected so deeply, and to whom they had adhered so faithfully-who had surrendered, in the language of many, all pretensions to common sense or general information-who are branded as intolerants and bigots, from whom ministers had happily escaped-and, what was still more painful to generous minds, who were ranked among those that were as devoid of true liberality and benevolence, as of reason and intelligence. "All these things, however, move us not. In a cause like that of the Protestant constitution of England, now placed, for the first time since its existence, in a situation of imminent peril, an humble part in its triumph would indeed give me a share of that immeasurable joy which its rescue would diffuse throughout the nation; but to be numbered as one of those who, faithful to the end, made a last, though ineffectual struggle in its defence, will afford a melancholy satisfaction, which

I would not exchange for all the pride, and power, and honours, which may await a contrary course."

And first of all, as to the state of Ireland, in which alone any justification of this measure was sought, Mr. Sadler denied that the reason for the proposed remedy was substantial, or that the proposed change itself was a remedy. If it meant any thing, it meant that the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland was the source of the disasters which existed in Irelandand that was not true. The very evils now to be remedied, the turbulence and misery now prevalent, had existed in a far greater degree, and had produced far more lamentable consequences before the Reformation than at present, that is, when there was only one religion in the country, and that one was popery. The fact was too notorious to admit of contradiction. If it was said that the causes, however, of the turbulence and misery were now changed, and were to be found where they had not previously existed, in religious ascendancy, that, too, he denied. The causes were what they had ever been. They lay not in Protestant ascendancy, but in the fact that, while it was the misfortune of Ireland to have been a conquered country, it was the crime of England to have continued treating her as such. Her lands had been given away, from time to time, to strangers, on condition that they should reside in the country, and support the Protestant religion, but who had deserted both, thinking, as absentees, to atone for their turpitude by a few cheap votes in favour of Emancipation. The evils of Ireland had no connection with her

Protestant constitution: they had been as rife under her Catholic government. Not long ago, the manufacturing classes in this coùntry wanted bread and employment: they were told by demagogues that both would be found in parliamentary reform, and for parliamentary reform they clamoured. In Ireland there was equal distress: and agitators told the people that what they wanted was emancipation. The only difference was, that, in the one case, government had put the agitators down: in the other, it had connived at, if not secretly supported them. In the emancipation proffered there was nothing proposed in favour of the mass of the Irish community. On the contrary, a proposition was unblushingly made, to rob the cottage of its long exercised privilege, to add new splendour to the Catholic coronet; and this forsooth was to calm the country at present, and insure its future tranquillity. If it did, then would it do irreparable mischief. That country never ought to be calm and contented, till the blessings of civilization, and the rights of humanity, were extended and secured to the lowest ranks of its society. the eternally repeated question,-if we do not emancipate, what are we to do with Ireland, he would answer, develope, with the lights of wisdom and experience, her immense internal resources, hitherto unexplored, almost untouched— introduce, in behalf of her suffering population, a moderate system of poor-laws,-diffuse, in spite of priestly domination, the benefits of christian education-employ the starving people, whose labours you lose, and whose characters you destroy, by consigning them to involuntary mendicancy, and finally,

To

while you legislate about and against the poor, refuse not to touch the heartless rich, the deserters and enemies of their country; and, if they are dead to other and worthier motives, compel them, by pecuniary mulcts, to repay, and that not in words, some of their duties to the society to which they owe their all. These were the means, though ridiculed by theoretic folly, and rejected by inveterate selfishness, which would regenerate Ireland, and repay the wrongs of many generations.

"Ireland, degraded, deserted, oppressed, pillaged, is turbulent, and you listen to the selfish recommendations of her agitators. You seek not to know, or knowing you wilfully neglect, her real distresses. If you can calm the agitated surface of society, you heed not that fathomless depth of misery, sorrow, and distress, whose troubled waves may still heave unseen and disregarded; and this, forsooth, is patriotism. Ireland asks of you bread, and you proffer her Catholic emancipation: and this, I presume, is construed to be the taking into our consideration, as his Majesty recommended, the whole situation of Ireland."

In regard to the nature of the proposed measure, Mr. Sadler maintained that it could be truly described only as an inroad on the constitution of the country, and a preparatory movement towards its final destruction. The constitution demanded qualifications in, or, if the phrase was better liked, it imposed disabilities of a twofold nature on, persons called to exercise the legislative or judicial functions. It demanded, first of all, a pecuniary qualification, that the authorities of the country might be identified with its permanent interests, and

still more because the possession of property was deemed the most general, though not infallible, evidence of that information and knowledge which were essential to the due discharge of important public functions. With far greater certainty and scrupulosity did the constitution demand a moral qualification from all who were to make or administer, in the higher functions of the state, the laws of the realm. It had not only made Christianity part and parcel of the law of the land, but it had constituted its pure and reformed profession an essential ingredient in the established government; and so long as it was true, that principles. were the springs of practice, that Christianity was better than Infidelity, and its purity better than its corruptions-the constitution had done so most wisely. If the profession of Christianity in its purest form was the best guarantee of the faithful discharge of the private and social duties, it was much more so of those high and important functions, on which the character and happiness of millions depended; and it was thus that our ancestors judged and acted in establishing the constitution. Popery they identified, as they had abundant reason to do, with cruelty, tyranny, and arbitrary power; they believed it to be injurious to the morals and interest of the community; they knew its tendency to weaken, if not withdraw, the allegiance due to the sovereign power of a Protestant empire: and they sought, therefore, to secure to themselves the protection of Protestant principles, the best and most efficient form of Christianity upon earth. This moral qualification was now called a disqualification, and was to be sacrificed. Po

The

litical radicals clamoured for the abolition of the pecuniary qualification; religious radicals wished to remove the moral one. Romish faith, they said, had changed its character, and become a fitting companion for a Protestant king and parliament. Had not the same amelioration been asserted far more truly of the unrepresented portion of the community: yet their agitators were never listened to: no; dispersion, apprehension, trial, punishment, were their instant rewards. But when popish agitators cultivated practices a thousand times more seditious, they were tolerated; nay, as very many thought, they were secretly connived at, that a case might be made out for putting down the constitution.

And such, accordingly, was the case, on which this violation of the constitution was defended. Matters had reached such a point of noisy and dangerous discord between the parties, that there must be an adjustment, forsooth, of the question. Adjustment generally terminated in mutual concessions, and reciprocal advantages; but would the authors of this bill point out what it gave to the Protestant constitution in return for that which it took away. The Protestant faith surrendered every thing: it received nothing. As a security, the office of viceroy, an office of pageantry, was to continue Protestant: but what Protestant cared an iota about it, when its holder was to be surrounded with Popish advisers, and to act by Popish instruments? The king, too, it seems must still continue to be a Protestant. This reservation was the worst of all, and heightened every objection to the measure into abhorrence and disgust. "What! after establishing by a solemn act

the doctrine that conscience ought to be free and unrestrained-that disabilities, like that sought to be removed, inflict a wound upon the feelings of those whom they reach, intolerable to good and generous minds, worse than persecution, than even death itself, how do you apply it? Why, you propose to sear this brand high upon the forehead, and deep into the heart, of your very prince, while you render the scar more visible, and the insult more poignant, by making him the solitary individual, whose hereditary rank must be held and transmitted by the disgraceful tenure which you have stigmatized as the badge of slavery. Freedom of conscience to all subjects, but none to your king! Throw open the portals of legislation, that a duke of Norfolk may take his seat in your senate, but hurl from his loftier seat there, the throne of the realm, a duke of Lancaster, if he exercise the same privilege, and presume to have a conscience! Hitherto the British constitution has been fair, uniform, equal, demanding from all the same moral qualification. That qualification has long been declared, by a certain school of politicians, to be slavery. Ministers have now adopted their creed; and yet they are content, nay they propose, that the king shall be the only proclaimed slave in his dominions.'

But worse remained behind. The proposed measure did more than hurt the feelings, and stain the honour of the king: it touched his title. It was a bill to reverse the attainder which had been passed upon popery; and the natural consequences of such a reversal were obvious. While the constitution remained strictly Protestant, excluding from power the devoted