their demand was confined to four ob- unrestrained eligibility is all they seek for. jects" They think it necessary to de--Indeed! will nothing further remain to clare, that the whole of our late applica- be desired? Are they to stop precisely tion (I now use their own words), whe- at that point which falls short of enjoyther to his majesty's ministers, or to men ment and possession? He could not in power, or to private members of the le- conceive a greater infatuation than that gislature, neither did nor does contain on which this part of the argument was any thing more in substance, or in prin- grounded; and when he was asked, how ciple, than the four following objects: was this possession to be obtained-by first, admission to the profession and the sword, or through the senate?-he practice of the law,-secondly, a capacity would say, that it never would be acto serve as county magistrates,-third, a quired in one day, or sought for by any right to be summoned and to serve on one proposal, but proceed from the silent grand and petit juries,-fourth, the right and gradual operation of causes which of voting in counties only for Protestant must inevitably lead to such a result. It members of parliament; in such a manner was the very reason which was assigned however, as that a Roman Catholic free- as inducing the necessity of concession, holder should not vote, unless he rents a which also constituted its danger; namely, farm of 201. per annum in addition to his the predominance of the Catholic popu40s. freehold, or else shall be in possession lation, and the tendency of property to of a freehold of 20l. a year." They felt proportion itself to population, and of themselves called on to publish this reso- influence and of power to proportion lution, in consequence, as they stated, themselves to property. This was in "of reports having been circulated, that fact the principal Roman Catholic arthe application of the Catholics for relief, gument; but it was also the chief ground extended to total and unqualified eman of Protestant apprehension. When the cipation." time should arrive, which the Catholic argument assumed as inevitable, that three-fourths of the county members, three-fourths of the grand juries, threefourths of the judges, three-fourths of the magistrates, should be of their persuasion, could any one suppose that Catholic feeling would not be the influential principle of the Irish government? Of this at least he was certain, that every Catholic would then feel that it ought, and he be Well-all this ultimatum of Catholic desire was conceded to them-nay, much more; for the elective franchise was not confined to 20%., but extended to 40s. freeholders;-a fatal mistake of the Irish parliament-introducing into Ireland that universal suffrage, the idea of which you so deprecate in England; and assigning to it religious enthusiasm as its actuating motive. It was worthy of observation, that after this extra measure of conces-lieved that many Protestants would find sion, so far from being contented, the Catholics in two short years afterwards, approached the Irish parliament with such fervency of entreaty for admission into the two Houses of Parliament, that lord Fitzwilliam, who was then lord lieutenant declared in a speech delivered by him after his recall, that the Irish Catholics would go into rebellion if they were refused; and who can vouch for the future conduct of a vast collective body of men? The friends of the Catholics of 1793 became their sponsors as to the extent of their desires. The Catholics of 1795, disclaimed being bound by their promises. He did not say this as a reflection on the Catholics. It was a principle of human nature to wish to advance, and to consider the good which is attained to-day, only as the means for the attainment of a farther good to-morrow. Yet now, the sponsors of the Catholics assure you, that it no easy matter to refute that opinion. Under such circumstances it would be by no one law or vote, much less by an appeal to force, that a real Catholic ascendancy would be established, but by the successive compromises of party in this House with the Catholic interest of Ireland. And could any one suppose that the Established Church of Ireland could be long maintained in such a state of things? How powerful would be the arguments against it! How many even of its present friends, might then begin to think it a question of doubtful policy, whether it ought any longer to be upheld! How strongly would then be felt, and how openly expressed the dissatisfaction of the Catholics, at what they would then assail, as a political anomaly rather than a religious error. Give us but this, they would say, and you shall have Ireland, the most peaceable country in the globe. But if we are the reign of Mary, there was misery and weakness again. In that of Elizabeth, happiness and glory. The reign of James prepared the downfall of the established church upon a new principle, but the experiment of sacrificing it to the Protestant sectaries answered no better than the restoration of Catholicism, and the quiet which we have enjoyed since the Revolution, the very abstraction of men's minds from all thought upon the subject, ought, if rightly understood, to speak as strongly in favour of the principle of the establishment, as the crimes and misfortunes of the period which preceded it. The church of England has grown with the growth of our civil freedom, been overcome when it was overcome, and triumphed when it triumphed. Like our civil constitution, it is a happy mixture of whatever there is safe and beneficial in the opposite extremes of liberty and power, adopting the free spirit, though not the tenets, which marks the church of Geneva, but tempering it by retaining the principles of supremacy and episcopacy, which characterised the church from which it separated. And never be it forgotten, that in Ireland it superadds the additional claim to your present protection, that in all times past, it has been your tenure of the island. to suppose that England should set herself against the progress of Catholic ascendancy, then you introduce a new principle of evil, namely, a desire for the separation of the islands, which must become the general feeling of the Irish Catholics. When once their perfect political equality is acknowledged as a principle, either England must acquiesce in their proceedings to reap the fruits of it in possession, or she must oppose it. If she acquiesces in it, a Catholic ascendancy becomes inevitable, and with it the downfall of the establishment. If she opposes it, she suggests to the Catholics the separation of the islands, as the only measure which can give them the practical enjoyment of every thing that they can wish for. It was long since the union of church and state had been adopted as a vital ingredient of the British constitution. It had been resorted to, not near so much in its character of divine truth, as a principle of civil safety. The constitution, in truth, interfered not in matters of theological dispute, however the oaths which had been referred to that night, might at first sight appear to warrant the supposition. Transubstantiation was required to be denied merely as a test and as a criterion, but it was to the political Catholic, and not to his religious creed that the law objected, and it was merely as a means for ascertaining and Lord Normanby rose and said:-Feeling excluding him, that transubstantiation as warmly, and as strongly, as I do upon was referred to. For every other purpose, the present question, I was most anxious a man's creed might be what he pleased, at the first opportunity to request, for a but the constitution had ever since the short time, the indulgence of the House. reign of Charles the second, closed all the I have not the arrogant presumption to avenues to power against the professors suppose, that I could add any weight or of the Roman Catholic religion, as a ne- authority to that which has been urged by cessary means for upholding the estab- the right hon. gentleman who originated lishment of the church of England. The this motion, but I trust that I shall at perfect union of church and state a least do no harm to that cause, whose principle of all others the most irrecon- interests I have much at heart, if I show, cileable with Roman Catholic tenets be- by my zeal, in standing forward thus came finally understood at the revolution, early in defence of this question, that and it was through a course of bitter ex- amongst those most unconnected with perience that England came to the con- that right hon. gentleman,-the youngest clusion that we must assign to the national and the humblest,-there is blended with religion such undisputed pre-eminence as a distant and respectful admiration of his to crush all hopes of rivality in other sects, talents, an eager and close emulation of and further secure to the state the co-opera- his enthusiasm. Admiring, as I did, the tion of its powerful influence on the minds new and brilliant light in which this of its followers. During the reigns of our question was placed by my hon. friend early kings, the disunion of the church who seconded the motion, I shall, indeed, from the throne, was a never-failing cause rejoice if he has prevailed upon any one of internal discord and external weakness. otherwise hostile to the question, to vote When united even by the rude hands of for the committee; for I am convinced, Henry the 8th, the union conferred at that in obtaining a fair and patient inleast a degree of peace and strength. Investigation of the case, we should sap the (VOL. XL. ) (F) very foundation of that prejudice on which the opposition to the claims of the Catholics mainly rests. I listened with the utmost attention to the speech of the hon. gentleman who has just sat down, for knowing, that in him we had to encounter one of the ablest and steadiest of our opponents, I expected to hear from him an epitome of all that could be urged against the motion. Had I previously entertained any doubts on the subject, I should now be convinced, by the line of reasoning adopted by the hon. gentleman, that upon no general grounds of justice or policy can the consideration of the question longer be resisted. The hon. gentleman has, in the very front of the battle, in the foremost rank of his arguments, marshalled in dread array, all the petitions which have been presented against this measure. I would tell that hon. gentleman, that this is precisely the subject where these petitions ought constitutionally, to have the least effect in pre-judging the fair examination of the case. Petitions can here afford us no local information which we have not in ourselves the means of appreciating. Petitions can here affect no separate interest which we do not as strongly feel. This is a question of great national policy, which must be left for decision to the unbiassed deliberative wisdom of this House. But there is another class of petitions which the hon. gentleman has passed over in silence, those in favour of the motion, which acquire a double value from the very circumstance which detracts from the weight of the adverse petitions, that they have no individual interest in that for which they pray. The motives of those who come disinterestedly forward to beg a boon in which they have no share, is far above suspicion. Their prayer is equally creditable to all concerned; as honourable to the petitioners, as invaluable to the Catholics. I shall not follow the hon. gentleman through all those arguments founded on the local prejudices and feelings of one particular part of Ireland, but place my support of the motion upon a much wider basis; for I feel, that in advocating the cause of the Catholics as it is now before the House, that we are maintaining those general principles of justice and toleration, which are the brightest ornament, and the best bulwark of that constitution, which we are accused of endeavouring to violate and deface. The remains of this penal common system, I consider as the only unbroken link in the chain of British liberties; and for its iron grasp I would substitute that silken bond of social union which entwines our hearts and affections to the preservation of that which is dear to each, because valuable to all. From this sympathy of patriotism, founded upon a interest in the maintenance of things as they are, the Catholics are alone excluded from all community of feeling, from all equality of pursuit, with those otherwise. most closely connected with them by the nearest ties of fate and fortune; they are severed by the dreary chasm of civil disqualification; from every general object of patriotic ambition, the angry current of political exclusion isolates them. Is it too much to say of such a system as this, that unless it can be upheld by the paramount decrees of imperious necessity, that its wisdom and its justice are equally problematical?-that the wisdom of that system must be questionable, which ties the hands, and alienates the hearts, of so large and so respectable a class of our fellow subjects?-that its justice is not. defensible, violating as it does those very principles of civil and religious liberty of which we vainly boast the theory, whilst we retain in our practice this stigma of persecution?-I say persecution, because in what does political disqualification on account of religious opinions (provided) those opinions do not interfere with the faithful discharge of those duties from which they operate as an exclusion), in what does such disqualification differ from religious persecution, except in the degree of its rigour, or the severity of its enforce-. ment? Temporary laws may undoubtedly render temporarily necessary, obnoxious expedients. But the continuance of a. violent or unnatural remedy, after the cause which occasioned its application is removed, is no less injurious to the political constitution of a state, than the physical constitution of an individual; and weakening and detrimental as the continuance of this system is to this part of the united kingdom, how much more extended and baneful have been its effects upon the other; preying as it did for a century upon. her vitals, and poisoning the springs of. her existence! But relieved, and revived as she has been in exact proportion to the mitigation of her sufferings, it is not to Ireland that we can trace the commencement of this system: totally distinct cause occasioned the enactment of the penal code against the Catholics in England, from thence forwarded to the servile parliament of Ireland, to be there retailed out like a second-hand garment huddled on an unwilling population, impeding its progress, crippling its exertions, and cloaking its perfections; for at that period, this Orange garb, in the luxuriant folds of which the hon. gentleman has this night so gracefully decked his arguments, was not even pretended to be suited to the taste or disposition of Ireland; it was worn as the badge of servitude, the livery of her mistress. I only refer, Sir, to the origin of this system, for the sake of showing, that if in England, the necessity for its continuance can be proved to have ceased to exist, that necessity can hardly be traced to Ireland: it can hardly be said, that independent of her connexion with England, and her subjection to the same laws, that intrinsically, and separately, her interests require the proscription, and degradation, of four-fifths of her population, or that in the perpetuity of a system which has so long paralyzed her strength, and deadened her energies, is to be found a panacea for all her ills and all her misfortunes. That the necessity has ceased to exist, we may fairly infer from a retrospect of the causes in which it originated, and in the history of the world there is hardly any state of things of which the changing hand of time has in the same period more altered the appearance, and obliterated the leading traits. We should now look in vain for that virulent spirit of controversy, which maintained by a pertinacious resistance to innovation on the one side, and an overbearing disposition to reform abuses on the other, magnified the errors of both, and widened the breach between them. To this we may attribute the original imputation of those doctrines, and tenets, so long the source of odium to the Catholics, but which are now by none more stigmatised, than by those of their authorities from whom they were formerly deduced, and of which we have the reiterated abjuration of the Catholics, and the disbelief of those even who are opposed to the present question. In what then does the difference between the Catholics and the established church consist they conscientiously entertain certain opinions purely doctrinal, incompatible with the form of oaths which we now take, but in no degree inconsistent with the faithful discharge of any social or poli§ tical duties. Does this call for the perpetual persecution of the British legislature? But if this necessity be not intrinsic in the Catholic himself, and inseparable from his doctrines, it will hardly be found now, in foreign influence or extraneous causes. The experience of the last twenty years must at least have taught us, that the dangers we have to apprehend are not now as in the days of the Spanish Armada, or the campaigns of Louis 14th, those of religion. But it has been asserted in opposition to the claims of the Catholics, that we have restored the pope! It is true we have restored him to his temporal dominions, but in doing so we have rendered him no more formidable to ourselves than his neighbours, to the south or the north, king of Naples, or the grand duke of Tuscany. It is not in mortal power to restore that spiritual command, that mystic influence, which made him once so formidable to the greatest and most powerful. An attempt to hurl again the thunders of the Vatican, would shake to its foundation the tottering fabric, and bury in its crumbling ruins the empty symbols of departed power. Collateral reasons, now equally obsolete, tended for a great length of time to the suspicious distrust of the Catholics. It was asserted, that their opinions of the royal prerogative were too arbitrary to be consistent with the safety of a free government; this argument can hardly be successfully urged at present; it is contradicted not merely by their own statements and conducts, but by the support derived to their cause from the exertions of the most distinguished friends of freedom. But to those who oppose this question, I will own, that at the period immediately preceding the enactment of some of those statutes which we now wish to repeal, at that period, the Catholics were distinguished for their loyalty;-not that loyalty which is nursed alone in the smiles of a court and the beams of favour; but flourishing in the winter of adversity, and prevailing against the storm of re bellion. Then, the life and safety of Charles 2nd were trusted almost exclusively to about ninety Catholic gentlemen.No temptation of certain reward-no fear of impending punishment which would have followed detection with aggravated violence on their devoted heads, shake their faith, or stagger their loyalty. Yet the restoration was followed by some could of the harshest enactments against the Catholics! They were, as has been stated by the right hon. gentleman, the monstrous offspring of a parliament, whose appetite was pampered by the vilest conspiracy that ever glutted a greedy and infuriated populace; whose thirst was only quenched with the pure and guiltless blood of the most venerable and respected nobleman of his day. Such was the proud origin of the Test and Corporation acts, and the exclusion of Catholics from parliament. So that we have the incontrovertible answer of the experience of a century, to those arguments founded on the incompatibility of a Catholic member of the legislature, with a Protestant establish ment. been such, as to merit the favourable consideration of the House; it has been mild yet firm, steady in the pursuit of their rights, yet loyal in the means by which they have sought to obtain them. There are some who believe that if the Roman Catholics were made eligible to offices of high trust and importance, that in a short time, those offices would be filled only by them. If so, it would be a strong argument in their favour, for the tide of popular opinion must be strong indeed on their side, if such a consequence could reasonably be expected. For my own part, I entertain no such expectation; I believe that it would be an invaluable act of grace and justice to them without at all affecting the interests, Again, to trace the continuance of the or touching the ascendancy of any set of exclusive system to the present day, men in the community. during the greater part of the last century, But we have been told that the Cathothe otherwise fading prejudices against lics are never content; that having obthe Catholics were retouched and revived tained minor concessions, they still by their supposed attachment to the cause desired greater; that if they obtained of the Pretender. If I were disposed to these, they would be anxious for more. waste the time of the House, by pursuing Of all the modes in which the present that argument, it would, I should think question has been resisted, I conceive admit of doubt, whether religious feeling this to be at once the most cruel, and was the predominant motive in those the most unjust; it undervalues the boon abortive rebellions; whether a mistaken it refuses to concede, and treats lightly spirit of chivalry did not throughout the disabilities it continues to inflict; direct the conduct of those ill-fated attempts. Whatever the cause may have been, the result has long been final, and previous to the birth of a large proportion of that assembly, which I am now addressing, the pretensions of the last of the Stuarts were confined to the harmless vanity of an epitaph, or the unattractive pomp of a sepulchire. I confess, when in examining all the causes in which this system originated, I find them not only in substance obsolete, but even in recollection obliterated from the minds of the present day, I am at a loss to account for the feelings of those who still undertake the ungracious task of exclusion; I can hardly believe, that the speech which we have this night heard from the hon. gentleman, is that of a representative chosen at this period of the 19th century; I am willing to put the whole question at issue upon the conduct of the Catholics themselves, though I should be ill-disposed to allow that the conduct of any set of men belonging to that body, could be regarded as a ground for continuing the disabilities which extend to all. But I have no hesitation in saying, that their recent conduct has affecting a sort of innocent astonishment that the Catholics should not be perfectly satisfied to remain a depressed and obscured cast in the midst of liberty the most buoyant, and privileges the most unbounded; that they should repine when they see the benignant rays of the British constitution all around them, gilding talents the most humble, and merit the most obscure, but at one glance, blighting all their budding hopes, and withering their most seasonable expectations; that there should be any peculiar hardship in the anomalous situation of the representatives of some of the first families in the country, possessing the mockery of privilege without the reality,-rank without power, wealth without interest or influence. The lineal descendants of those who fought and conquered at Cressy or at Agincourt, doomed to an ignominious life of listless inactivity. The bare recollection, the mere recital of the heroic exploits of their illustrious ancestry, possessing infinitely more of substance and reality, more of an embodied form, than the shadowy and fleeting existence of their proscribed posterity. Who can refuse to pity the wounded feelings of |