Commons were at least equal to those of Lord Castlereagh, who had not then filled that situation; but this point, which certainly came into discussion, was but a subordinate, and by no means an insurmountable one in forming his decision not to accept office. The principal reason that induced Canning, after having failed to form an administration in conjunction with Lord Wellesley, to decline belonging to Lord Liverpool's government, was because it then professed to oppose as a government the removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities. Highly creditable to Canning's consistency, and to the sincerity of his anxiety to carry the Catholic question, as his declining office at this time unquestionably was, the admirers of this great man cannot now abstain from regrettingwhat, indeed, during his lifetime he was fully conscious of that by declining office in 1812 he lost one of the most glorious opportunities that ever presented itself to a minister of England-the opportunity of presiding over the foreign relations of this country during that period in which all those important and momentous events occurred which crowded into the few years that followed these negotiations the revolutions and changes of an age."

and had passed resolutions claiming to be put on an equal footing, so far as political rights and privileges were concerned, with English subjects. The speech which Canning delivered in support of this claim is, for closeness of reasoning, lucidity, and arrangement of details, the best that the subject-though Pitt and Fox had spoken upon it-ever called forth.

He began (June 22, 1812) by asserting that the claim of Roman Catholics to relief rested upon three great principles. First, that citizens of the same state-subjects living under the same government—were entitled prima facie to equal political rights and privileges; second, that it was at all times desirable to create and to maintain the strictest union, the most perfect identity of interest and of feeling among all the members of the same community; and third, that where there existed in any community a great permanent cause of political discontent which agitated the minds of men, and had agitated them for many years past, and when experience had shown that, so far from having any tendency to subside and settle itself by mutual forbearance and accommodation, the contest only grew more fierce the longer it was protracted, it became the duty of the supreme power of the state, whether residing in one or in many, whether king or senate, to take a question of such a nature into its own consideration, to make up its own mind upon it, and finally to determine in what mode it might be most advantageously set at rest.

In the cause of the emancipation of the Roman Catholics Canning had ever, since his introduction into parliamentary life, been a stanch and active advocate. Whenever the opportunity offered he came forward to fight the battle of the Roman Catholics, and to conquer the preju- Having laid down these premises Candices of his colleagues. It was the one ning proceeded to enter upon his deductions. subject upon which he differed from the "They, sir," he said, "who argue against majority of his party. He held that in the any further concession to the Catholics on disaffected state of Ireland and the situa- the ground of a dread of innovation undertion of affairs on the Continent, it was take a task of greater difficulty than, so far unwise to postpone the long agitated ques- as I can judge from any discussion which I tion of Catholic relief. Shortly after the have yet heard upon this subject, they seem death of Mr. Perceval, and when the changes themselves to be aware. For this arguin the administration were being discussed, ment naturally implies the previous existhe brought the subject before the House of ence of some regular, fixed, and intelligible Commons. It was on the occasion when state of things, formed with deliberate wisthe Irish Catholics had met in Dublin | dom, or perfected by frequent revision, and

VOL. I.

62

enabled the defender of the faith and head of the church to exercise these indiscriminate and impartial severities in matters of religion did not scruple to bow quite as low in matters of temporal policy, and surrendered into the monarch's hands the liberties of his people, by giving to his proclamation the authority of law. It is not surely to such a reign or to statutes passed by such Parliaments that we can be taught to refer for a pure specimen of British legislation applicable to the times in which we live!

established by long consent or beneficial instruments in the hand of Heaven for experience some system sealed and sanc- bringing about the Reformation. But are tioned by the acquiescence of successive we therefore to look to the reign of Henry generations. To innovate upon such a state VIII. for specimens of civil legislation? a of things would indeed bespeak a culpable reign in which the conscience of the subdegree of rashness, and must throw upon ject was made to conform, under bloody the presumptuous innovator the duty of a penalties, to every varying caprice of the most difficult justification. But looking at judgment or passion of the sovereign; in the code of laws under which the Catholics which, according to the historians of that have lived, and at the remains of that code period, 'those who were for the pope were under which they still live, I should be hanged, and those against the pope were glad to ask those who stand upon long-burned?' The same Parliament which, by established usage, who protest against the sanguinary law of the Six Articles, being led astray from the ancient ways, who will not launch into untried experiments -I should be glad to ask them at what period of our history they conceive that system upon which they are so fearful of encroaching to have flourished in full perfection? I ask what was its origin? On what design was it framed? When did it receive the finishing hand and become incorporated into the institutions of the country, an integral part of a blameless and perfect constitution? Will they look back for this perfection to that period when the corruptions and disorders of the church first provoked that just inquiry and indignation, and gave rise to those discussions which convulsed Europe, which split the Christian world into contending sects, and ended in the establishment of the Reformation? Great and manifold as are the blessings which the whole civilized world, and this nation in particular, have derived from the transactions of that time; indebted as we are to them for the substitution of a pure and perfect form of worship in the place of a system of faith defiled with innumerable corruptions and encumbered with superstitious usages; yet can anyone be so blind to fact as to contend that the blessings which have been thus derived to us ought to recommend to our respect and imitation the violences which accompanied their origin? It is the prerogative of Providence to bring good out of evil. The lust and tyranny, the rapine and prodigality of Henry VIII. were

"During the succeeding reign these laws were repealed or suspended, and the Reformation was silently making progress and gaining strength. The horrible butcheries of Queen Mary, while they curdle the blood and make the soul sick in the contemplation of them, dispose us to look with an eye of peculiar favour upon her successor Elizabeth, and to fancy that the reign of that great and admirable princess was illustrated by the complete enjoyment of civil freedom, as well as by glory abroad and prosperity at home. Undoubtedly the government of Elizabeth was conducted with a wisdom and success that covered the British Empire with glory and prosperity; but it is surely not to that reign that the opponents of all change will refer us as to the time at which the system which they wish to uphold was in a state that should have been preserved inviolate. In the latter years of that reign a spirit of persecution arose, for which even her warmest admirers

think it necessary to apologize.

Burnet himself, in his History of the Reformation,' quotes the testimony of Walsingham to this effect, not denying the severities to which Elizabeth had recourse, but justifying them as necessary to the security of her crown against the plots and conspiracies of the pope and his adherents. Where is now the popish conspiracy against which the crown has to guard? or are the enemies of innovation desirous only of adhering to Queen Elizabeth's severities, but careless of her justification?

Bishop at that time with political doctrines hostile to the civil and religious establishments of this country, and with the interests of an exiled and abdicated sovereign. But neither would the policy of those times be necessarily just, when the connection between the religious and political doctrines no longer subsisted, nor is it true that the penal and disabling statutes which were passed in Ireland immediately after the Revolution, statutes which gleaned the refuse of the sword of the conqueror, and which are fairly to be considered rather as means of enforcing and insuring the obedience of a conquered country, than as sound legislative enactments for the government of a kingdom in loyalty and peace; it is not true, I say, that these statutes did in fact constitute the whole, or near the whole, of that code of penal laws which we are called upon to preserve as the legacy of our forefathers, as the testament of our civil freedom. That code was not completed until a much later period. We must come down through the reigns of Anne and of the two first princes of the house of Hanover before we find the system brought to perfection.

"It is not to the reign of James I., when the gunpowder treason naturally excited a horror of Catholics, and forbade any relaxation of the laws in force against them; it is not to the turbulent and unfortunate times of Charles I. that we shall be taught to look back for a model for any part of our legislative system. If the troubles of Charles I.'s time are to be connected with religious tenets assuredly the Catholic religion is not that to which we have to attribute the overthrow of the monarchy and of the established church. During the Protectorate a regular system, not of coercion and penal law, not of confiscation merely, but of extirpation, was acted upon towards the Catholics of Ireland. In the reign of Charles II. we find the establishment of the test and the exclusion of the Roman Catholics of this country from Parliament transactions, however, which must be coupled in our recollection with the special grounds of jealousy and alarm which dictated and justified such pre-mination. At the Revolution a civil war cautions.

"But the Revolution is the period to which we are desired to refer most particularly, as well for the laws against Roman Catholics as for the spirit in which they were framed, and in which we ought to maintain them. It is undoubtedly true that great restraints were at that period imposed upon the Catholics, both in England and Ireland, as the consequence, and a just and legitimate consequence, of the intimate connection of the Catholic religion

"The House will therefore observe that it was not till the middle of the last century that this system of laws was really matured. In later times the character of the enactments became less sanguinary, though hardly less severe. Under the furious and fanatical government of Cromwell the active principle was that of absolute exter

and a contested crown naturally led to confiscations and proscriptions. Subsequently to the Revolution, and up to the period at which the last penal law was passed, the principle upon which the system has proceeded has been calculated to stunt the growth, to destroy the moral energies, and cramp the industry of the Irish Catholic population; to keep the mass of the people of Ireland, for such they may be called, in poverty and ignorance for the purpose of insuring their submission. That such a