sed arrangement without incurring the guilt of schism, and that they would sooner die than submit to it. What then would have been the consequence of passing this bill, by which the Legislature would have alarmed the Protestants by concession, and inflicted martyrdom on the Irish Roman Catholic bishops, by demanding securities? If the right honourable gentleman could now come forward with proposals more satisfactory, let him declare them to the House; but let him not ask for a committee, in which he had no definite propositions to make, and which might agitate the country with vague hopes or alarms, without leading to any certain result. These were the grounds on which he should oppose the motion.

Lord Mount-Charles defended the motion for going into a committee, on the ground of the insufficiency of the arguments by which it was opposed; Mr Brownlow maintained that there was no modification in the Roman Catholic religion, which could justify an extension of political privilege to its professors in this country; Mr W. Becher replied to Mr Brownlow and, after a few words from Sir R. Wilson, the House divided, when the motion of Mr Grattan was lost by a majority of 2, the numbers for it being 241; against it 243.

On the 5th of May, a great number of petitions, both for and against concession to the Catholics, were presented to the House of Lords, and ordered to lie on the table; and on the 17th, the Earl of Donoughmore rose, pursuant to notice, to call their Lordships' attention to these petitions. In furtherance of this object, he submitted to their Lordships a resolution, to the effect that the House should resolve itself into a committee to consider the state of the laws which

inflict civil disabilities on account of religious opinions, particularly in so far as these laws deprive his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of the exercise of their civil rights; and in how far it may be expedient to alter or modify the same. His Lordship had obviously been induced to bring this matter so soon before the Upper House, by considering the small majority (two,) by which Mr Grattan's motion for the appointment of a committee had been lost in the Commons. It was not, however, more successful than its predecessor.

Our limits prevent us from attempting any analysis or abridgment of the discussion which followed on the Noble Earl's motion, which, with the exception of one individual (the Bishop of Norwich) was strenuously opposed by the whole Bench of Bishops, by the Lord Chancellor, and by the Earl of Liverpool, and as vigorously defended by Earl Grey. To give our readers, however, as fair a view as our contracted limits will admit, we shall lay before them an outline of the speeches of the two great champions on either side, the Lord Chancellor, and Earl Grey.

The Lord Chancellor having left the woolsack to address their Lordships, proceeded to comment on the speech of the Earl of Donoughmore, remarking, at the same time, that if the Noble Lord would tell them what plan he intended to propose in the committee, and what defences he intended to erect for the security of the constitution, in the place of those which he was endeavouring to throw down, he for one should have no objection to grant the Noble Lord the committee which he required. But speaking with the prejudice of an English lawyer, loving the constitution upon principles of law, and yet at the same time being as warm a

friend to toleration as any man in the House, he would ask, what security by oath could the Catholics give, which could reconcile the King's supremacy in things temporal, with the Pope's supremacy in things ecclesiastical? He thought that they could give none; and, entertaining such thoughts, he felt it his duty to call upon their Lordships to consider, what plan there was that Parliament could adopt consistently with the safety of the constitution, out of all the plans which had been proposed to their notice since the commencement of these discussions. To him it appeared that none of them were practicable; because, if we were to believe the recorded history of the country, from the years 1660 to 1688, it would be seen how systematically the Roman Catholics pursued the accomplishment of their own objects, and the destruction of the national church, through every obstacle and every difficulty. There might be some individuals who supposed that the tenets which the Catholics held at that time are not the tenets which they held now, and who, under that supposition, deem the continuance of the disqualifications imposed upon them as one of the most scandalous impositions that ever was inflicted on man; but with those individuals he could by no means agree, inasmuch as there was no proof, either direct or indirect, of any change having occurred in the religious principles of the Roman Catholics. Beisdes, if the House looked to the sentiments which were avowed and expressed by the Catholic church during the whole reign of Charles II.; if it looked to the hostile spirit in which it assailed the national church for some years previous to the revolution of 1688, it would see the necessity of the present disqualifications, and how strongly that necessity was impressed

VOL. XII. PART I.

on the mind of the whole nation. Under a conviction of the absolute necessity of securing a Protestant establishment to these kingdoms, in order to render them free and happy, their Lordships' ancestors had enacted that no King who was either himself a Catholic, or was married to a Catholic Princess, should ever sit upon the British throne. The other disqualifying laws served only as a part of the mechanism, if he might be allowed to use such an expression, of which the constitution was composed; it was thought advisable to prevent Roman Catholic advisers from surrounding the person of the King, lest they should taint his mind with their pernicious counsels; it was thought advisable to deny them seats in Parliament, and places in the Privy Council, lest they should sow dissension in the great assemblies of the nation; and in order to provide for the fair and impartial administration of justice, it was thought advisable that the laws should not be administered by Roman Catholic lawyers and judges. These regulations were, in his opinion, rendered absolutely necessary by the temper which the Roman Catholics had constantly evinced. Others, however, entertained a different opinion, and contended, that as Roman Catholics had sat in Parliament in the 32d year of Charles II., there existed no rational objection to their sitting there at present. This was not a fair way of putting the question: the question was, whether the House, considering the events which had preceded the Revolution, and those which occurred in effecting it; considering the principles which had been asserted on the union with Scotland, and which had been reasserted on the union with Ireland; the question, he repeated it, was, whether the House would stand by that constitution, which had

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secured the most ample personal liberty to every individual who lived under it, or whether they would recur to that constitution under which their ancestors had lived previous to these disqualifications being enacted. Several writers upon law had said, that when the Roman Catholic religion was the religion of the country, the country had contained men, whose valour had been the admiration of the world, whose talents had rendered us glorious in the eyes of other nations, and whose virtues would have made them an ornament to the proudest era of either Greek or Roman story. He should be the last man in the world to contradict the truth of this statement; but he could not help asking after he had made it, whether these illustrious characters, with all their prowess, virtues, and talents, did or could rescue their countrymen from the slavery in which Catholicism had immersed them? The only answer which could be made to this question was, that they did not, that they could not. Lord Hale had said, that as the oath of allegiance, the act of homage, and the oath of fealty, which were all then in existence, were not sufficient to remind men of their duty to their Sovereign, which they forgot in their obedience to a religion which established another superior to him, it was found requisite, by exacting that paramount oath, the oath of supremacy, to bring back and restore to the Crown that power which had always belonged to it, by calling upon every subject to disclaim all obedience to the power of the Pope. Locke, whose work upon this subject was and ought to be always looked up to, exempted the Roman Catholics from his system of toleration, though, in so doing, he imputed opinions to them which, it had been said, were so absurd that no man in his senses ever could be found to

profess them. For his own part, he maintained that all men who did not profess sentiments hostile to the Protestant establishment ought to enjoy the utmost latitude of toleration which is consistent with the safety of the State; he therefore perfectly concurred with the distinguished writer who had said, that so long as the Roman Catholics deny the supremacy of the King, so long ought the country to refuse them emancipation. He then alluded to a similar opinion expressed by Lord Hardwicke, and said he should wish to impress upon the minds of their Lordships, that it was an instructive lesson to preserve, not only the name, but the substance of the Protestant religion. Indifference to religion generally led to great temporal evils, and, if for no other reason, at least for this, ought the Protestant religion to be supported, that it will be always a barrier against oppression, and a nursing mother to liberty and freedom. Ecclesiastical usurpation generally terminated in civil tyranny. It had been said, that by the act of union with Scotland, a church had been recognised and established which did not acknowledge the King as its head: he wished to know how this argument applied to the case before them: the Church of Scotland, it was true, did not acknowledge the King as its superior, but then, it did not, as the Catholics do, acknowledge another potentate, and that potentate a foreigner, its superior in his stead. Supposing, however, that their Lordships had, on the union with Ireland, planted the Roman Catholic religion there as the dominant religion, they would only have to consider for a moment, how far they would, in so doing, have acted consistently with the interests of this Protestant country, and the policy on which it had usually acted. When the concessions on the propriety or impropriety of which

they were then debating, were first thought of, no man ever dreamt of granting them without the consent of the Protestant part of the community, and without consulting what was due to their peace, and happiness, and tranquillity. All that was great and illustrious in the country, all the venerable names on both sides of the House, had been engaged in devising securities for the Catholics to give, not to injure the establishment; and yet was there any one of these securities that was at all satisfactory? The privileges which the country had won by the Revolution of 1688 were not gained with ease, were not the result of a slight struggle, but were long and arduously contested. Now that they were acquired, and that the value of the acquisition was perfectly recognised, it behoved their Lordships carefully to abstain from any step which could bring them into the slightest danger. The constitution, which ensured these privileges to us all, when it acknowledged the right of every man who acknowledged it to places of trust, power, and emolument, did not acknowledge the right of any man to them who did not acknowledge its full authority. He had looked upon this subject with all the anxiety which it demanded; and in his investigations had found that though certain canons, as adverse to the spirit of religion as they were to the temper of the times, had been renounced by individuals, they had not been renounced by the Church of Rome. Our ancestors had always connected together the idea of popery and slavery, and he could not look upon them without viewing them in a similar light. Entertaining, therefore, the sentiments which he most conscienti ously did on this subject, he should be guilty of abandoning his duty to the constitution, if he did not give

his decided vote against the Noble Lord's motion, and resist any concession to the Roman Catholics, while the Church of Rome had not renounced the principles which occasioned the laws of which they now complained.

The noble and learned Lord was followed by Earl Grey, who, after disavowing that he had used the sweeping expression about lawyers being bad politicians, remarked, that the noble and learned Lord had now, as on former occasions, made use of an argument, which, if true, put an end at once to the question. The argument was this:-The constitution, as established in 1688, is essentially and fundamentally Protestant; the concession of the claims of the Roman Catholics is inconsistent with this constitution: therefore such a concession would be not only inexpedient, but injurious. Upon this point he differed, with all due respect, from the noble and learned Lord, and he would attempt to prove that the principles of the constitution admitted not of this construc tion. What laws were fundamental, or were not, was a question upon which he would not enter: but when any alteration of the law was proposed, it was right to inquire how far such an alteration would militate against the principles of the constitution; and if it had any tendency to destroy the securities which guarded the constitution, it became a duty to resist it. The constitution, as established at the Revolution, was essentially and fundamentally Protestant. But what were the essential and fundamental principles of that constitution? At the Revolution, when a Sovereign of the Roman Catholic religion had been dethroned, it was provided, that the monarch should be of the communion of the Church of England, which