no longer consisted entirely of a rude peasantry, but that education had polished the habits and improved the manners of the people, and that they were capable of enjoying the rights and performing the duties of the subjects of a free constitution; and with these considerations before you, you imparted to them the elective franchise. And why did you do this? Was it for the purpose of enabling the disaffected catholics more securely and more effectually to sap your religious establishment, and to overturn the government? No: you said, The people of Ireland are now capable of exercising the rights of freemen; with wealth, they have acquired attachment to the country and to the government; and therefore those privileges which at one time it might have been unsafe to grant, it would now be equally illiberal and impolitic to withhold. You went even further than that: you opened to the catholics all the professions, orlices, and honours, of the state. And on what principle you do this? because you supposed them to be the enemies both of church and state? No. It was because you thought they were capable of holding and worthy to aspire after them, and that they would discharge the duties of these several stations to the advantage, not to the detriment, of the. commonwealth. All I ask of you now is to pursue this system, and to be faithful to your own principles, to proceed in the course in which you have begun, and to persevere till you have finished it. The offices from which Roman catholics are excluded are so few in number, that it is usual for the opposers of the measure to ground an argument against their admission to them upon this very circumstance. It

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cannot, say they, be an object for which they can consider it worth contending. The offices are indeed. few in number, and may be granted with perfect safety: but it ought to be recollected that though they may be little for you to grant, they are not little for them to receive. The restriction is felt over the whole community, and every individual feels the oppression of being excluded from an office which, had it been open to all, he never might have attained. Think, my lords, of what would be the feelings of any one among you, if he were told that he might enter himself or bring up his son in any particular profession; but that whatever might be h's talents, whatever might be his industry, whatever might be his perseverance, the highest honours of the profession were for ever and irrevocably inaccessible to him; were he to be told that he might, indeed, encounter all the toil, expose himself to all the dangers, and undergo all the disgusts, incident to the line, but that to its highest preferments he never could aspire. By such a measure of exclusion, the danger against which you guard is nothing, but the mortification which it occasions to those who are affected by it is extreme. The principle upon which it proceeds is even more galling than the thing itself. They are told not only that they must despair of ever attaining those high situations, but must despair of attaining them because they are unworthy of being trusted with them. It offers a stigma upon them as a body, and sets them as marks for the hand of scorn to point at. Whatever may be the result of their present appli cation, I hope it will not have the effect of weakening their attachment either to the country or to the government; but if it shall prove

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ing too far to grant the prayer of the petition to its full extent, I hope that you will at least manifest a disposition to lend a favourable car to the petitioners, by going into a committee upon the subject. At all events, the discussion, if con ducted with temper, may be productive of benefit. I am most happy that the catholics of Ireland have applied for redress to the parliament of the united kingdom, and I trust they will coincide with me in the opinion which I confidently entertain, that the period is at no great distance when their application will be successful. It is no small satisfaction to observe, that the hostility which was formerly felt to their claims is in some quarters decaying; and the probability is, that ere long it will be altogether extinguished. What I am now about to add, it is unnecessary for me to address to the respectable characters whose names I see at the top of the list of subscribers to the petitions, but I wish I could be heard by the whole population of Ireland. I hope they will continue to look for the gratification of their wishes to the united parliament, secure that in the end they. will not be disappointed. For if they are foolish enough to turn their eyes to another quarter, and to look to France for relief, they may rest assured that not only will they eventually fail of attaining their object, but they will bring upon themselves a train of the heaviest calamities that any nation ever suffered. Let them view the states of the continent, crushed into one mass of oppression, subjected to one common yoke, and groaning under a tyranny far more merciless than the world ever witnessed, rendering the situation of each individual state ten times worse than that

unsuccessful, it is impossible but they must feel the disappointment, and feel it poignantly; if they did not they would not have the feelings of men, much less the feelings characteristic of freemen. My lords, you are now calling upon the people of Ireland for great sacrifices for a great object: you are calling upon them to risk their lives, and all they possess, to resist the invasion of a foreign enemy, to prevent our being numbered with the subjugated states of the continent, and to defend a constitution which is at once the source of our happiness and of our glory. The objects for which we are contending are sufficient to rouse the energies of every one who is sensible of their value. But can we expect that the catholics will make the sacrifices for which we call upon them, unless they are cordially attached to the constitution, unless this attach ment is founded upon an equal participation of its benefits, and unless they are alive to those feelings of pride which arise from every man's being equal in the face of the law? These are the grounds on which I propose that the obnoxious restrictions shall be removed. I hope that I have not argued the case with any improper velemence, and that I have not departed from that tone of temperance and moderation which I proposed to observe in setting out, and with which it is my wish that the present question may on both sides be discussed. Should your lordships concur in the motion which I shall have the honour to submit to you, I am convinced that you will conribute much to the safety of the empire, by uniting and knitting together the hearts of all descrip tions of people. If it is your lordships' opinion that it would be go

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of the worst-governed country in Europe previously to the French revolution; and let them reflect, that there is not one of these nations whose sufferings are not light as a feather in comparison with those which would be inflicted upon them, were they once to fall into the power of France. Religious persecution, commercial ruin, and political degradation, would be accumulated upon them; their hopes would be extinguished, and their prospects shut up for ever. In order to save the country from these calamities, union is of all things to be recommended. This union it is certainly the duty of the legislature to promote: but it may be promoted still more effectually by a conviction that every individual, however low his rank, and however obscure his situation in society, is as much interested in the safety of the whole as the opulent and powerful; and therefore, whatever may be the decision of this evening, I hope it will have no effect in discouraging any class of men from employing their utmost exertions to defeat the purposes and resist the attacks of the common enemy. "I shall now conclude, my lords, with moving, That your lordships may go into a committee to take into consideration the petitions of the Roman catholics of Ireland.""

Viscount Sidmouth spoke decidedly against the motion.

The earl of Moira said, he was as much attached to the church as any noble lord, and he did think, with his noble friend who spoke last, that the church was so rooted in the state, that it was impossible to affect the one without injuring the other; but with respect to the penal code, he could not agree with his noble friend, that the principles

1808.

which gave rise to that code were the result of religious differences. He had always looked upon them rather as the effect of political precaution. He severely deprecated the language of his noble friend, which, though not intended to be so, might be attended with mischievous effects. The present was not a time to alienate the hearts or damp the spirits of four millions of people willing to share our danger and our fate, and only wishing in return to share the common privi leges of Britons. The crisis had been represented as an awful one: it was truly so, perhaps not to be parallelled in the history of the civilized world; and in the prevalent indifference, the smoothness of our passage, he feared, was owing to the rapidity of our descent; and at the first fatal shock our fears would be lost in our despair. Therefore he thought we should rouse, awaken from our lethargy, and apply the remedy before it was too late. An hour should not be lost in acceding to the just, equitable, and unanswerable claims of our catholic brethren. If it be objected to him, why, such being his sentiments, did he, upon a former occasion, express his regret that the petition had been at the present period introduced; he was ready to answer, that his regret then arose not from any disapprobation of the time of presenting the petition, nor still less of the prayer of that petition, but because he thought that at the present period there was not only no hope, but on the other hand a certainty, that their claims would be rejected: and his regret arose from his dread of the exasperation produced by such rejection; for it was not in the nature of men to be disappointed, and not manfully to feel that disappointment. At the

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same time he was satisfied, that if the catholics had seen in his majesty's present government any wish to accommodate, any disposition to conciliate them, they would have waited more patiently; but from the ill-judged policy that had so recently been evinced towards that body, they were compelled to appeal to the constitutional organ for a legitim..e object. In the late government, of which he had been a humble member, they had brought in a bill which, if its object had been literally translated into its title, might have been called A bill to prevent 100,000 men of his majesty's subjects from joining the French. This bill certainly was not meant to embrace any of the great objects had in view by the catholics: it was rather meant as a peace-offering, as a forerunner of better times; and might be said to have been sent forth as the dove with the olive-branch, to tell the persecuted catholics that the waters had subsided, and that the rising day would soon restore her original beauties to the face of Nature. He was grieved to find that such had not been the policy of the present government; nothing to allay, soothe, er reconcile, but every thing to incite and exasperate. Why was this? At any time, such conduct would have been impolitic; but, at the present crisis, it was such an union of folly and madness as never had been equalled. When the powers of Europe were wielded against us by one man, the most formidable, and at the same time the most inveterate foe England ever had to cope with, was it imMaterial in such a contest, whether the people of Ireland were fired with all their native ardour in our cause, or sunk by our injustice into alistless dejection and a cold-blood

ed neutrality? With what face could the noble viscount ask the

Irish catholic to brave every danger, to expose himself to the hazards of battle, for the mere purpose of se curing to the Englishman what he refuses to share with him? The noble viscount could not make so selfish a proposal; and if he did, it would be met with merited indignation, He concluded with conjuring the house to think well of the fair and just claim that was made upon their justice, and to answer it in that manner that best became their character and the interests of the empire.

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Bishop of Norwich. "I rise, for the first time in my life, to address your lordships, and I rise with unaffected reluctance; not because I entertain the smallest doubt respecting either the expediency, policy, or the justice, of the measure under consideration, but be cause, to a person in my situation, it must be exceedingly painful (however firmly persuaded he may be in its own mind) to find himself impelled, by a sense of duty, to maintain an opinion, directly the reverse of which is supported by so many wise and good men, who belong to the same profession, and who sit upon the same bench with him. Important occasions, however, sometimes arise, on which an individual may be called upon to avow his own sentiments, explicitly and unequivocally, without any undue deference to the judgement of others. Such an occasion I con ceive the present to be, and shall without further apology trouble your lordships with a few remarks. I have considered, with all the care and attention of which I am capable, the various arguments which are urged against the petition in favour of the catholics of Ireland,

which has this day for the second time been presented and supported by the noble baron on the other side of the house, with his usual abilities, and at the same time with that well-known regard for the real interest of the established church, for its peace, its security, its honour, and its prosperity, which forms, and has always formed, so distinguished a part in the character of that noble lord. These objections, my lords, numerous as they are said to be, may all of them I think be reduced under four heads. In the first place, it is asserted, or rather strongly insinuated, that the religious tenets of the catholics are of such a nature, as, per se, to exclude those who hold them from the civil and Gilitary situations to which they aspire. It is next said, that if this were not the case, these situations are matters of favour, not of right, and therefore the catholics have no just cause to complain that they are excluded from them. In the third place, we are told, that if it were admitted that the measure was, abstractedly considered, just and right, it would be highly inexpedient to repeal statutes which were passed with much deliberation, and are considered by many as the bulwarks of the constitution in church and state. And, lastly, there are some who contend, that if there were no other objection, the words of the coronation oath present an insuperable bar to the claims of the catholics. I shall not detain your lordships long in the examination of these objections, because they have been repeatedly discussed; and, as it appears to me, very satisfactorily refuted, by far abler men, both in this house and out of it. With respect to the religious tenets of the catholics of the present day, it is not a little singu

lar, my lords, that we will not allow them to know what their own religious tenets really are. We call upon them for their creed upon some very important points, and they give it us without reserve; but, instead of believing what they say, we refer them, with an air of controversial triumph, to the councils of Constance or Thoulouse, to the fourth Lateran council, orto the council of Trent. In vain they most explicitly and most solemnly aver, that they hold no tenet whatsoever, incompatible with their duties either as men or as subjects, or in any other way hurtful to the government under which they live. In vain they publish declaration upon declaration, in all of which they most unequivocally disavow those highly exceptionable tenet which are imputed to them, and not only do they disavow, but they express their abhorrence of them. In vain ey confirm these decla-, rations by an oath; an oath, my lords, framed by ourselves, drawn with all possible care and cantion, and couched in terms as strong as language affords. In addition to these ample securities for the principles and practice of this numerous and loyal class of our fellow-subjects and fellow-christians, a great statesman, now unhappily no more, caused to be transmitted a string of very important queries to the prin cipal catholic universities abroad, for the purpose of ascertaining, with precision, the sentiments of the catholic clergy, respecting the real nature and extent of the papal power, and some other weighty points. The answers returned to these queries, by those learned bodies, appeared to me, at the time, as they do now, perfectly satisfactory, and in the same light they were considered by most dispassionate

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