that he was alluding to that legal and respectable part of the community the quakers. Now the house required of them the same oath upon admission to office as it did of the Roman catholic; and their inability to take it had acted upon them as an exclusion from office. He was not putting any fictitious case; circumstances had occurred, in which their refusal to take the usual oaths had disqualified them from discharging duties to which they were otherwise fully competent. A quaker had been elected a member of that house; but he had not been permitted to sit in it, because he would not take the usual oaths. Now he would ask the house whether, in the case of the quaker, they had any fear of his being influenced by the pope or by any other foreign power? He was sure that the house entertained no such fears: on the contrary, it was well known that the society of friends exhibited in their conduct a pattern of every thing that was virtuous and amiable. In saying so, he (Mr. Peel) meant them no flattery; he only did them the justice they deserved; and he was glad to have an opportunity of bearing his testimony to the generous manner in which they devoted both their time and their fortune to every good and laudable object with which he had become most intimately acquainted in the course of his official duties in Ireland. If, however, the Roman catholic were admitted to a seat in parliament and to other offices in the way proposed by the honour able and learned gentleman, so also must the quaker; and the principle which would be asserted

by such an admission would lead to the introduction of such innovation upon the British constitution, that he, for one, must be permitted to oppose it. In doing so, he trusted that the house would not consider him as acting upon any intolerant or bigoted prejudices. He could assure the house that he was actuated by no such motive. He opposed the present motion, because if it were granted and danger should originate from it (as he conceived it to be likely, that it would,) the evil done would be irremediable. The present motion was to introduce into the statute book a new set of laws, conceding privileges and granting rights to those who did not now possess them; as such it was entitled to, and would no doubt meet with, their most serious consideration. The house should recollect that they were legislating for posterity; and he, in doing so, could not shut his eyes to the danger in which such a proposition as the present might possibly involve the country. He would admit, for the sake of argument, that none of the dangers against which the present penal laws were intended to guard the community at present existed; but was it altogether certain that no others would arise in the lapse of years? Acting as a legislator, he was obliged to look at the history of the past; and reverting to it, not for the purpose of rekindling the smouldering ashes of religious animosity, but for the purpose of directing himself with regard to the future, what was the result which it placed before him? He would shortly inform them. For the penal laws enacted in the reign of queen Elizabeth

he

he found that the claim made by the pope to a supremacy over the kingdom was the alleged cause. No such claim, and consequently no such cause, at present existed. In the reign of Charles the second, no danger was apprehended from the pope; but much danger was apprehended from a king indifferent to all religion, and who had among his counsellers a lord Arlington and a Bennet. In the reign of James the second, the ground alleged for the penal laws then enacted was a king attached to the Roman catholic religion, and doing every thing in his power to promote it. In the reign of William the danger was of another species. There was no apprehension of the pope; there was no desire on his part to maintain king James against king William; on the contrary, it was said in one of the histories of that day, that whilst he was giving to the ambassadors of James chaplets and indulgences for his master, he was giving money nominally to the emperor, to assist him in his wars against the Turk, but in reality to support William in his newly-acquired kingdom. In the reign of Anne the penal laws were justified by the danger arising from the policy of Louis the fourteenth, who was doing all that he could to destroy the power and prosperity of England, and who was acting in concert with a dangerous and discontented domestic faction. If, then, at five different periods, there had been five different dangers against which the penal laws were enacted as securities, how could he (Mr. Peel) be certain that other dangers might not arise, even though he did not at that period see them, against

If

which it would be necessary to use similar precautions? The right honourable gentleman then proceeded to state that it had been asked of him and other gentlemen who supported the same opinion on this question as himself, what had the state to do with religion, and why did it interfere with the direction of men's consciences? The state, he was ready to grant, had no concern with religion, when religion had no concern with the state. But in making laws to govern this moral and religious country, was he to exclude from his notice all considerations of religion? Was he to be told that he was not to meddle with any measures that were calculated to affect men's consciences? Was he to be informed that such interference was unnecessary, or that it had never been previously exercised? so, how stood the fact reference to the past? Was it from the pages of the history of England that honourable gentlemen had gleaned their information? or from those of Scotland? or from those of Ireland? or, last of all, from those of the three constituent parts of the empire collectively? Where Where was it that they found that among the motives which influenced men as political members of society, religion was not one? It could not be in this country: for what was it then which induced the honourable gentleman opposite in bringing forward the present motion, ta proclaim his attachment to the church of England? Why did he think it necessary, in order to guard himself against all misrepresentations to declare that he believed the church of England

with

to

to be pure and holy, and most wisely established? Why, except that he saw the great importance which was attached to such declaration, and the great influence which religion possesses over the minds of our countrymen? Was he (Mr. Peel) to be told that he ought on so momentous a question as the one then before the house to neglect in his consideration the influence which religion was certain to exercise even upon affairs of a temporary nature? The next topic to which Mr. Peel referred, in the course of his speech, was the observations which Mr. Plunkett had made upon the speech which he had delivered upon this question in 1817, in his place in parliament. The right honourable gentleman complained that that speech had not been fairly treated, inasmuch as the honourable and learned gentleman had forgotten to state that it was made with reference to the bill introduced into that house in 1813. That bill was founded on a resolution of the house, declaring that it was expedient to go into a committee to deliberate upon some modification of the present penal laws that would be productive of satisfaction and conciliation to all classes of his majesty's subjects. A great part of what he had said in 1817 was in reference to that bill; and his principal objection to it was, that the arrangement which it proposed was not calculated to produce satisfaction and conciliation among all classes of his majesty's subjects. If he were asked what were the dangers which he apprehended from the passing of that bill, he would refer to the bill itself, of which full

three-fourths was occupied in taking securities against apprehended dangers. He would put it to the candour of the honourable and learned gentleman opposite, and would call upon him to state whether he thought that if that bill had been persisted in which he (Mr. Plunkett) had said gave political power to the catholic on conditions to which he thought that the most zealous protestant could not object, and to which the most inimical catholic could not refuse to accede, it could have been carried into execution in Ireland. Would greater difficulties have been found in carrying its enactments into effect among the protestant or the catholic part of the population? He (Mr. Peel) recollected well that the honourable and learned gentleman had even called upon the house to suspend the usual course of legislation, and to wait until it knew whether the Roman catholics would or would not acquiesce in its provisions. Was he right in stating that, if they had done so, the catholics themselves would have prayed for the rejection of the bill? Was there not a general feeling of disapprobation excited against it, not only among the clergy, but even among the laity? Did they not say that they would prefer to labour under their present disqualification rather than accept emancipation upon such terms as were then offered to them? Had not the house the authority of the pope to say that the catholics could have accepted them without incurring his disapprobation? And yet, notwithstanding such a declaration from such a quarter, was not the bill itself considered

as

as

more objectionable by the Roman catholics of Ireland? After such an occurrence; after such a steady refusal, originating from an honest and praiseworthy attachment to principle, of advantages which they had long wished to acquire, would he (Mr. Peel) be justified in excluding from his consideration the influence which such a religion must exercise upon the minds of those who professed it? But the honourable and learned gentleman had insinuated that he had accused the Roman catholics in a body of perjury and disloyalty. He begged leave to say that he had done no such thing. It had always been his wish no less than his intention to discuss the present question with calmness and temper; and no man could be more unwilling than he was to condemn large bodies of men on account of the violent language adopted from interested motives by some of their members. There might be some obliquity of intellect in him that prevented him from seeing the propriety of yielding to the wishes of his catholic countrymen; but he could assure the house that there was no hostility to them in his bosom. Indeed he should be guilty of the utmost ingratitude and illiberality, if he could include any set of men from whom he had received such assistance as he had done from the catholics in Ireland, in any one sweeping charge of disloyalty or perjury. Allowing them, how ever, to be as loyal as any of their protestant countrymen, and to be equally as incapable of falsehood and perjury, he still must maintain the doctrine advocated by lord Somers, that it was only reasonable that persons who were to be

intrusted with high office, or with legislation, should give security for their attachment to the doctrines of the reformed religion. He did not charge the Roman catholics with being less able to discharge their social duties with. propriety than other individuals; but he was sure that if he were to be acting upon the same principles as those for which he gave them credit, and to be placed in the same situation with regard to the established religion of the country as they now were placed, he could not feel an attachment to that religion which had displaced his own, or refrain from a wish to replace his church in the proud situation which it had formerly occupied. Was there any thing then in the doctrines of the catholic religion, or any thing in the past behaviour of its profess❤ ors, which was calculated to exempt them from that suspicion which he owned that he himself should have deserved had it been his fate to have lived in a catholic country? But though these apprehensions might be enter tained, this he would admit, that so little was he satisfied with the present condition of Ireland, so anxious was he to remove all causes of dissension, both politi cal and religious, from her inhabitants, that if he thought that the present measure would act, he would not say as the panacea to her distresses, but as an operative to restore that concord which he could assure the honourable and learned gentleman, he was as anxious as he was to restore to her, all his fears of danger to the church would vanish and give way, and he would be the first to hail the success of the

present

present motion as a happy and joyful omen of future happiness and tranquillity. The honourable and learned gentleman, he was sure, would observe that he had admitted the state of Ireland to be a dangerous state; for he was well aware of the political animosities which prevailed in it, and the religious jealousies which distracted its inhabitants; and no man could reprobate more than he did the existence of any system within it which tended to promote the interests of one class of men at the expense of those of another. On this point he believed that justice was done him even by those whose claims for emancipation he felt himself bound upon principle to resist: for he could not review the past history of England and Ireland; he could not revert to the gallant struggling for mastery which had long been carried on between them? he could not recollect the perpetual transfers of power, the repeated confiscations of property, and the constant bickerings between the catholic and protestant interests of the country, without thinking that they were sufficient to produce that degree of animosity between the contending parties, which the honourable and learned gentleman had attributed to the penal laws alone. He trusted that the progress of mutual refinement and civility among the inhabitants of Ireland would lead to that general harmony among them, which he should vainly hope to see attained by the relaxation of that code of laws which it was the object of the right honourable gentleman to repeal. There might, indeed, be other causes besides religious animosi

ties which were calculated to retard the growing unanimity of the people of Ireland. There might be commercial and other laws, which had alike a tendency to keep alive popular fermentation. Admitting such to be the fact, it might be said, why then resist this single act of concession, this step towards the attainment of a more general spirit of harmony among the different classes of his majesty's subjects? His answer was, that he did not concur in the anticipation of such a result; he did not think that the repeal of the laws affecting Roman catholics would harmonize contending and conflicting feelings. He did not wish to touch prospectively upon the consequences of intemperate struggles for power; he did not wish to use language which might be construed into a harsh interpretation of the acts and objects of men who pursued a career of ambition; but he must say this,that if parliament admitted an equal capacity for the possession of power, between protestant and catholic, in this empire, they would have no means, considering the state of the population, of securing that equal division of power which was, in his opinion, essential to the stability of the existing form of government. The struggle between the protestant and catholic would be violent, and the issue doubtful; if they were to be sent forth together as rival candidates, with an equal capacity for direct parliamentary representation, so far from seeing any prospect of the alleviation of points of mutual difference, he could only anticipate the revival of animosities now happily extinct, and the continuance, in an aggra