reign of Charles 2nd because the people were prejudiced against them. Till the 25th Charles 2nd, the Roman Catholics had contrived occasionally to get into parliament; and how did the Protestant leaders get them out of the House of Commons, as they took the Oath and Declaration? Why they brought into operation the law against recusancy, which prohibited persons convicted of recusancy from coming within ten miles of the cities of London and Westminster, and thus effectually prevented them from doing duty in parliament. They therefore got a conviction of recusancy, and then called for a new writ. This was a decisive proof that, before the 30th of Charles 2nd, there was nothing to prevent the Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament. That statute itself contained two enactments, the first, that Roman Catholics should not sit in Parliament without making the Declaration, and the second that persons not making the Declaration should be excluded from access to the king. There was a third enactment, which banished such persons ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster. This was a law of the land; and what had become of that law? That member of it, which related to the penalties against recusancy, was gone; for all the laws relating to recusancy had been repealed. Then the enactment as to access to the king, that had also been repealed. So here was a limb of this immortal law lopped off; leaving only the mutilated bust of Titus Oates to represent this immortal statute, till the act of William 3rd. He would not pretend that there might not be good reason for enacting it, or that the

Catholics might not be dangerous, or that they ought not to have been excluded from office owing to their adherence to the dangerous designs of the Crown. But what was meant by saying that that law was consummated at the Revolution? Was that act of 30th Charles 2nd incorporated in the Bill of Rights? No such thing. Did the Bill of Rights trouble itself with all the trumpery of the invocation of saints and transubstantiation? No such thing. The framers of that bill thought only of settling the principles of the constitution so far as they had been invaded, and they had not room in their heads for the consideration of such things as these. They scouted such trash and trumpery, whilst they were intent upon securing the rights and liberties of their fellow-subjects, which had been invaded by the Crown. These wise and great men were no system-mongers, no grinders of theories or dogmas, but sound and practical statesmen; and no light toil had they incurred. There were thirteen particulars stated. The Bill of Rights did not say, upon abstract principle, that the Church and State are necessarily Protestant, but it stated-"Whereas it has been found by experience that it is necessary to the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom that the throne should be unalterably Protestant;" and it then goes on to enact, that, should the king become a Papist, or marry a Papist, he should thereby forfeit his title to the throne, it being found by experience that such a security was necessary for this Protestant kingdom. He had been asked, whether this wasa Protestant kingdom; he had been asked triumphantly, was this not a Protest

ant government, a Protestant Parliament? In one sense he admitted it was a Protestant kingdom, but it did not exclude Papists. So he admitted that the Parliament was essentially and predominantly Protestant, and in that sense, but in no other, the Parliament was Protestant. The act of 1st of William 3rd forbade Papists to carry arms; this was considered as necessary to the security of this Protestant state. The principle of that act was transferred to the Bill of Rights, which recognized the claim of the Protestants to carry arms, but did not refer to the right of the Roman Catholics to carry arms. Those, who argued by inference, took advantage of this; but it so happened that throughout the Bill of Rights this was the only passage the construction of which was hostile to the Roman Catholics; and this was the only passage in it which had been repealed. It had been repealed by an act of George 2nd, which also repealed the law by which Roman Catholics were forbidden access to the throne. By the law previous to 30th Charles 2nd, no person could be admitted into the army unless he had previously taken the Oath and the Declaration; but by that act, he could take the oath subsequent to taking the commission. Then came the act of William, saying that that provision was not a sufficient security, and that the oath must be taken previously. Then the present law precisely and practically repealed the act of William, for it restored the matter to the state it was in at the period of the 25th Charles 2nd; and the act, for which lord Eldon had told their lordships he was responsible, had taken greater liberties with the Bill of Rights than the noble

duke had done. Their lordships probably had not been apprised, when the act of 1817 passed, that they were repealing the act of king William. The act recited, "Whereas by certain laws now in existence, there were sundry embarrassments in respect to the oaths taken by the army and navy,"-and, in order to clear up doubts, and to assimilate one to the other, it enacted that the oaths prescribed by the former act need not be taken. Thus was there an utter abandonment of the act of William, and that too without providing any oath or security in its stead. The present bill did not give the Roman Catholics any benefit without an oath, an oath too, which combined in its language every possible security that such a form could afford; but under the act of the noble and learned lord, the provisions of king William's act were done away, and not even an oath was substituted in their stead.

The debate was closed by a brief reply from the duke of Wellington. The apprehended danger to the Irish Church, from the admission of a few Catholics into Parliament, he treated as futile, considering that the throne would be filled by a Protestant. Moreover, a fundamentalarticle of the Union between the two countries was the union of the two Churches; and it was impossible that any mischief could happen to the Irish branch of this united Church, without destroying the union of the two countries. "A different topic," said his grace, "to which I wish to advert, is a charge brought against several of my colleagues, and also against myself, by the noble earl on the cross-bench, of a want of consistency in our conduct. My lords, I admit that many of my colleagues,

as well as myself, did on former occasions vote against a measure of a similar description with this; and, my lords, I must say, that my colleagues and myself felt, when we adopted this measure, that we should be sacrificing ourselves and our popularity to that which we felt to be our duty to our sovereign and our country. We knew very well, that if we put ourselves at the head of the Protestant cry of "No Popery," we should be much more popular even than those who have excited against us that very cry. But we felt that in so doing we should have left on the interests of the country a burthen which must end in bearing them down, and further that we should have deserved the hate and execration of our countrymen. Then I am accused, and by a noble and learned friend of mine, of having acted with great secrecy respecting this measure. Now I beg to tell him, that he has done that to me in the course of this discussion which he complains of others having done to him;-in other words, he has, in the language of a right hon. friend of his and mine, thrown a large paving-stone instead of throwing a small pebble. I say, that if he accuses me of acting with secrecy on this question, he does not deal with me altogether fairly. He knows as well as I do how the Cabinet was constructed on this question; and I ask him, had I any right to say a single word to any man whatsoever upon this measure, until the person most interested in the kingdom upon it had given his consent to my speaking out? Before he accused me of secrecy, and of improper secrecy too, he ought to have known the precise day upon which I received the permission of

the highest personage in the country, and had leave to open my mouth upon this measure. There is another point also on which a noble earl accused me of misconduct; and that is, that I did not at once dissolve the Parliament. Now I must say that I think noble lords are mistaken in the notion of the benefits which they think that they would derive from a dissolution of Parliament at this crisis. I believe that many of them are not aware of the consequences and of the inconveniences of a dissolution of Parliament at any time. But when I know, as I did know, and as I do know, the state of the elective franchise in Ireland,when I recollected the number of men it took to watch one election which took place in Ireland in the course of last summer, when I knew the consequences which

a

dissolution would produce on the return to the House of Commons, to say nothing of the risks which must have been incurred at each election, of collisions that might have led to something little short of civil war, I say, that, knowing all these things, I should have been wanting in duty to my sovereign and to my country, if I had advised his majesty to dissolve his Parliament."

On the division, the same House of Peers, which, in the summer of 1828, had declared, by a majority of 45, that emancipation was too manifestly a breach of the constitution, and dangerous to the Protestant establishment, to be even discussed, now declared, in the spring of 1829, by a majority of 105, that it was altogether consistent with the constitution, and, if it did not do good, would, at least, do no harm, to the Protestant church. The numbers were for the second reading 217, against it 112; a majority much greater than the country had anticipated, and furnishing the best proof how actively and successfully the substantial influence of government had been directed.

On the 7th and 8th of April, the bill passed through a committee, in which, as in the Commons, many amendments were moved, but not one was carried. On the 10th of April it was read a third time, after another debate, which produced nothing new, and which terminated in the bill being passed by a majority of 104; 213 peers having voted for it, and 109 against it. On the 13th of April it received the Royal assent.

Ministers of course had assured themselves of that assent, and it was their duty to do so before bringing forward the measure; the difficulty of obtaining it, and the late period at which it was obtained, were always put forward by the duke of Wellington as the causes of that delay on the part of government in announcing their intentions, which like an arrangement to take the Protestant community by surprise. Besides the objections which his majesty was understood to have always entertained to the measure or principle, it appeared, from the communications between the ministers and the lord-lieutenant, subsequently made public, when the recal of the latter was mentioned in the House of Peers, that the king had felt strongly the indignities cast upon his government, by the proceedings of the agitators, and by the connivance, which allowed them to be continued with impunity. On the 11th of November (1828), the duke of Wellington, in a letter to

the lord-lieutenant, after referring to those measures of the viceroy which were considered to betray a friendly and encouraging inclination towards the Association, said "I cannot express to you adequately the extent of the difficulties which these and other occurrences in Ireland create, in all discussions with his majesty. He feels that in Ireland the public (peace is violated every day with impunity by those whose duty it is to preserve it, and that a formidable conspiracy exists, and that the supposed principal conspirators-those whose language and conduct point them out as the avowed principal agitators of the country-are admitted to the presence of his majesty's representative in Ireland, and equally well received with the king's most loyal subjects." His grace added, in a subsequent communication of the 19th November, "I might have, "at an earlier period, expressed the "pain I felt, at the attendance of "gentlemen of your household, "and even of your family, at the "Roman Catholic Association. I "could not but feel, that such at"tendance must expose your "government to misconstruction. "But I wassilent, because it is pain"ful to notice such things; but I "have always felt, that, if these im"pressions on the king's mind should "remain, and I must say that "recent transactions have given "fresh cause for them, I could not "avoid to mention them to you in

or speaks without being disturbed." Of the reluctance with which his majesty, therefore, was brought at length to consent to the introduction of the bill, no doubt could be entertained. The duke of Wellington admitted, that his efforts to obtain that consent had been continued during the summer and autumn; and it was pleaded as the excuse for the short notice, on which the measure was proposed, that that consent had been wrung from the king only a few days before Parliament met in February. His majesty's resistance, therefore, had been long and firm; it was not wonderful that he should at last have yielded to the representations daily urged by those in whom he most confided, that a continued refusal could have no other effect, than to keep one part of his empire in misery, and expose the whole to rebellion-it might be to dismemberment. No room was left for counteracting the views thus assiduously pressed upon the

royal mind; for the knowledge of what was going on was carefully confined to the operators themselves; nor was it ever made known to those who might have interfered, that interference was necessary, till it was found that his majesty's consent had already been extorted, and that interference came too late. That consent enabled ministers to bring forward their plan fortified by the approbation of the Crown; that approbation, and their own influence, enabled them to command the majorities by which they carried through a measure, acknowledged by themselves to be a sacrifice to what they thought expedient, of what they had ever held to be right and constitutional, and which they admitted to be so heartily disliked by the country, that they claimed merit for having given up to what they termed a sense of duty, not only all political connections, but even the approbation and esteem of the public.