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? Defore 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 looked so 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 was silent, because it is pain"ful to notice such things; but I "have always felt, that, if these im

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pressions on the king's mind should "remain, and I must say that

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.

THE

HE bill, which admitted Catholics to the Houses of Parliament, and to all offices of political power and trust, had been accompanied, throughout its whole progress, by another bill for disfranchising the whole body of fortyshilling freeholders in Ireland, and raising the qualification of an elector to 10l. The object in view in this regulation was, to free elections from that absolute control which late experience had shewn could always be exercised over them by the influence of the Catholic clergy on these miserable Catholic voters. In the alarm, which that control had excited, is to be found one main cause of emancipation having been made a government question. Irish members began to tremble for their seats; the right of voting seemed

to have been transferred to the priesthood and the Association; to mount the hustings, and refuse to pledge yourself to support the Catholic Question, was to ensure defeat in your election. Mr. Dawson, brother-in-law of Mr. Peel, was the first who sounded in Ireland the note of approaching concession; and members themselves could not but see, that unless some remedy were applied, they would have no power, however strong their

interest might be, in the Irish elections. The remedy which they sought, lay in diminishing the number, and increasing the respectability of the voters. The fortyshilling freeholders had been manufactured by the landlords themselves, for no other purpose than to create votes which should be at their absolute disposal. The instrument was a powerful one; but it had now passed into abler and more energetic hands; it was wielded against themselves by a power, to which, from its nature, they could oppose no successful resistance. They could not regain possession of the instrument: it was resolved, therefore, to destroy it. Ministers, however, believed that it would be ungracious to attempt, and impossible successfully to carry through, so important a change, as the depriving a great portion of the population of the highest political right which the constitution bestows, without giving a great political boon in return. They admitted, that to raise the qualification would be an efficient remedy, and that Parliament was competent to apply that remedy; but they would not ask Parliament to apply it, without providing a substitute, in the form of unlimited emancipation, for the political privilege which was to be

were to support each other. To one party it was to be said, emancipation is the only condition on which we will agree to disfranchise; and to the other, disfranchisement is the only condition on which we will agree to emancipate. Mr. Peel accordingly opened the intended measure, as part of the general plan which government had formed for the renovation of Ireland, in the same speech with which he introduced the Relief bill. A bill, he reminded the House, had been agreed to in 1825, which disfranchised all the forty-shilling freeholders, although it had failed in consequence of the failure of another measure with which it was connected; and since that time, most important events had occurred bearing on the same question. In 1825, the friends of Ireland had been convinced that the franchise stood upon grounds, and was exercised in a manner, which were open to the greatest objections. It was urged as an objection to the then and present low state of the qualification, that it admitted of too indiscriminate an addition to the voters-that it increased the natural disposition of Ireland, or rather of Irish landholders, to divide their land into minute portions-that, in point of fact, the franchise was a mere instrument with which the landed aristocracy exercised power and control over the elections-that the freeholders were made for that purpose that they were totally different in character from the freeholders of this country, and were considered in no other light than as a means by which landlords-and the landlords in Ireland were chiefly Protestants exercised

country. Since then it has been made matter of complaint, that the influence of the landlord has been paralyzed, and that that of the priests has stepped in, and diverted and taken from the landlord that influence and authority which he exercised over the electors," I will ask, whether the influence, which has superseded that of the landlord, is less objectionable than that which was found to be in 1825. It is in vain for any man, who looks to what has taken place in Louth, in Monaghan, and Clare, to deny the fact of that influence being now in the hands of the priesthood." Looking at the other circumstances of the country, the very number of the voters proved that they were not the fruit of any natural constitutional growth. In the year 1820, there were polled at contested elections in the county of Bedford, 4,000 voters; in Berkshire, 2,270; Devonshire, 6,298; Durham, about 3,800; Glamorganshire, 1,284; Middlesex, 10,000; Sussex, 5,500; and Westmoreland, about 4,370. In many of the Irish counties there were polled from 10,000 to 18,000. Never was such a concurrent body of testimony brought to bear upon one point, as was given before the committees of both Houses in 1825, respecting the evils arising from the state of the franchise in Ireland, by every man who was examined, Catholic or Protestant, layman or ecclesiastic. The general opinion of the witnesses so examined had been in favour of raising the franchise to 201.; but so great a rise he would consider too violent an alteration, and was inclined to be satisfied with 10l., as affording a reasonable presumption that the character of