among them as their equal on the morrow?"

Mr. Canning, after this appeal to the fancy of his hearers, returned to his former theme-the popish plot-endeavoured in a series of observations to identify or connect the law of exclusion with that monstrous instance of credulity and wickedness; and he then summed up the essence of his argument. "The questions," said he, "which I require to be answered are-1st-Were not Catholic peers first excluded from the House of Lords by the 30th of Charles II., after they had been expressly and anxiously retained there by queen Elizabeth, at the time when she imposed the Oath of Supremacy on the House of Commons?-Not that I think it by any means clear, that Elizabeth imposed that oath, even on the House of Commons, with a decided intention of excluding Roman Catholics from parliament. The oaths at different times administered to Catholics, have been of two sorts: some have been put to them bona fide as tests of their allegiance; while others have been framed as tests, not of loyalty, but of Catholicism; the framers of this latter sort of oath assuming Catholicism to be disloyalty. The Oath of Supremacy of Elizabeth was framed, I am inclined to believe, in the hope that Catholics might be brought to take it. Partially perhaps they did; generally speaking, they did not. But when that oath was subsequently imposed on the peers, together with the declaration against transubstantiation, those enactments were clearly and confessedly not intended as tests of allegiance, but were prescribed with a fore-knowledge that the Catholics would not take them

or rather with a pre-determination that they should be such as Catholics could not take.-2ndly :Wherefore were the Roman Catholic peers thus expelled from parliament? With the view of excluding the Duke of York from the throne? or in consequence of the Popish plot? If with a view to the exclusion of popery from the throne, that object is long ago attained; the throne is unalterably Protestant. If in consequence of the popish plot, then arise the further questions-Were the five Catholic peers justly or unjustly accused of participation in that plot? If justly, why were they not put upon their trial? One only of them was brought to trial: he, it is true, was condemned; but has not even his innocence been since established? - and even if upon that point there is any scepticism, what is the species of justice which condemns four accused persons upon the trial of one?—and which deduces from four charges and one trial the proscription of thrice the number not only innocent but unaccused, and not only in their own persons, but throughout all succeeding generations of their posterity?"

Mr. Peel met Mr. Canning's motion by a direct negative; dwelling in his reply more upon the extraneous topics which that gentleman had pressed into the service of his cloquence, than upon the essence of the argument. After some desultory remarks on the historical statements of Mr. Canning, he contended (undoubtedly with much truth), that, notwithstandstanding all the exaggerations of party and faction, the act of the 30th of Charles II. had been called for by the peculiar circumstances of those times. This, it is clear, was

altogether irrelevant to the argument; for the very ground which the mover had taken, was, that the law, which he wished to repeal, was originally occasioned by, and adapted to peculiar circumstances; and it was of little consequence, whether you agreed with him, or differed from him, as to the precise nature of the circumstances, provided you allowed, that the act in question was the result of special exigencies, and not of general principles. Mr. Peel subsequently employed weapons of better temper; insisting, first that the 30th of Charles II. had been adopted and sanctioned by the revolution, long after the passions and intrigues of 1678 had ceased to work, and secondly, that if Catholic peers were admitted into the House of Lords, without any securities or restraints, the doors of the House of Commons must also be thrown open to Catholics; without reference to any of those guarantees and precautions, which even the friends of emancipation had hitherto thought to be necessary.

Mr. Plunkett followed the same course of argument (we ought to say, of observation), which had been taken by the mover. Nothing, he said, could be more simple than the object of his right hon. friend; for he merely proposed to repeal a part of an act, which excluded a few Irish and British peers from their seats in the upper house. Those peers had been restored to the privilege of approaching their sovereign; and the intended measure would only enable them to defend in their places in parliament the advice which they had privately given. No objection had been stated to the justice or the expediency of the general measure

no apprehensions of danger had been

been

uttered no attempt had made to show, that it would be bestowed on the unworthy. It had been opposed only on points of etiquette, and the debate upon it had been turned to the discussion of disputed portions of history. It was said that the motion ought not to be agreed to, because the concession here made would only lay the ground for additional demand, and because this was a partial measure, preparatory to the general scheme. This was no objection to those who had brought forward and supported the general measure last year, and he would be glad, before it was again submitted to the House, where it had been then lost, to see those who sat in it, called upon as men, as gentlemen, and men of honour, to receive among them those peers who had originally been unjustly deprived of their privileges, or to state the grounds, in law and justice, of their continued exclusion. He hoped, that, when these peers knocked at the door for admission, they who opposed their entrance would be able to state the principle of right and justice on which they acted, and would not sanction rules which would place their own valued privileges and hereditary distinctions at the mercy of some Titus Oates of after times.

This measure of justice was to reverse an act of attainder pussed on the evidence of the most infamous of mankind, and in circumstances of alarm which had now for ever disappeared. The cause of the exclusion had not been, that the Catholic peers were dangerous counsellors, but because the House of Commons in the reign of Charles II., suspected the king of being a Catholic, and dreaded a Catholic successor to the throne. It

wascertain, that if a bill of exclusion against the latter could have passed, this bill of attainder against the peers would never have passed. But the innocent had been proscribed and punished, because an exclusion bill could not be carried. The guiltless had been attainted, because the proper object of attack could not be reached.

Mr. Wetherell argued the question on general grounds; and indeed was the only speaker in the debate, who did not deviate from the subject into mere desultory remark. The impatience of the House, however, prevented him from going fully into the discus

sion.

On a division, Mr. Cauning's motion was carried by a majority of 5; the Ayes being 249, and the Noes, 244.

On the motion for the second reading of the bill, which was made on the 10th of May, Mr. Wetherell spoke at great length and very elaborately against it. He considered that the present measure was incoherent and unjustifiable, unless regarded as a pledge and declaration, that every political disqualification on account of religion was to be abolished, without restriction or modification; so that it depended on a proposition, which could never be maintained, and, which, far from having been recognised by parliament, had never been advanced, even by the warmest advocates of Catholic emancipation.

Mr. Peel also continued his opposition, pursuing a line of argument somewhat more enlarged than on the former occasion. He did not, he said, resist the present measure because it was partial; for there were some partial measures to which he should not object, such,

for instance, as that of placing the English and Irish Roman Catholics on the same footing, or that of granting the distinction of a silk gown, and other privileges, short of the judicial functions, to Roman Catholic barristers. There was a great distinction between a specific and a partial measure; and his objection to the present measure was, that it was partial in its operation, while it was general in its principle. It had been argued, that there could be no danger in restoring a few noblemen of distinguished rank and excellent character, to the privileges which their ancestors enjoyed; but, could any man of common sense fail to see the sophistry of this argument? The question was not, whether half a dozen individuals should be restored to the privileges of their ancestors, but whether the disabilities affecting one branch of the legislature should be removed, while they continued to be imposed on the other-whether the Crown should have the power of creating an unlimited number of Roman Catholic peers, while the people had not the power of returning to the House of Commons a limited number of Roman Catholic representatives. It had been contended, that the disabilities affecting the peers ought to be removed first, because they were latest imposed upon them; but if there was any validity in that argument, it would go to prove that all restrictions should be first removed from the throne.--With regard to securities, that part of the subject had not been discussed in the last debate, and in his opinion it would have been better to pass it over in silence, than to allude to it in so ominous a manner as in the present discussion. They

were now told, that these securities were never necessary, that they had been adopted merely for the purpose of quieting some ridiculous and exaggerated fears of Protestant bigots, and that the best security was to be derived from the unqualified admission of our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects to the enjoyment of equal rights and privileges. If such was the language adopted now, and the present bill were to pass without any securities, what would be the arguments employed, with regard to securities, when the general question came to be discussed in the next session?

Lord Londonderry and Mr. Canning supported the argument for the bill. The ground they took was, that no danger could be apprehended from this specific mea

sure.

The question being put, the Ayes were 235, the Noes 223, which left a majority of 12 for the bill. No discussion or division occurred on the third reading.

The bill having gone through the previous stages in the House of Lords, the second reading of it was moved on the 22nd of June by the duke of Portland. Lord Colchester took the lead in the opposition to it, by a very concise, but very able speech, in which he expounded the general principles of the policy which ought to be pursued towards the Catholics, and illustrated and confirmed these principles by a reference to the actual state and spirit of the Catholic religion.

The lord chancellor followed on the same side, and spoke with unusual force and vehemence. Even the bill of last year, said he, the most amazing thing he had seen in the course of a long life,

and loaded as it was with nonsensical trash about bulls and dispensations; even that bill had proposed its securities; but here was concession made to the Catholics; concession great in form, and complete in substance; and not one syllable inserted with respect to securities to the Protestant church. It might be said that this was a particular measure, and had nothing to do with the general one. But that he would deny. When their lordships should have passed the bill now before them, it would be out of their power hereafter to deliberate as they ought on any further concession. On looking at the bill in its original shape, he was disposed to think that he had been misled by some foolish fellow of a printer, who had gotten hold of the wrong manuscript. The bill, to his great astonishment, proposed to repeal an act of Charles II. It was not a little extraordinary that the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Canning), whom he wished very well, whatever part of the world he might go to, assisted as he had been by the labours of many lawyers, should pretend to repeal an act which had been repealed a hundred years ago. This absurdity, however, had been got over; and its advocates went on to say, that the circumstances and causes which existed in the time of Charles II., were now removed, and, therefore, that the bill ought to be adopted, without ever considering whether the circumstances and causes, which had called forth repeated enactments since that period, had all disappeared with those that existed at the time of Charles II. In his opinion, if Titus Oates had never been born, the same enactments would have taken place. He could not forget

what Russell had said of popery, what Sidney had said of it. In looking to the spirit of the times, and the principle upon which those enactments rested, the question was, whether the measures taken by William, queen Anne, and George the I. and II., for the security of the Protestant establishment, should or should not be repealed? In all the indemnity acts that were passed, no allusion was made to the act of Charles II., but merely to those which he had just mentioned. He was anxious to provide for tomorrow as well as to-day; and not being able to foresee what might happen, he was desirous to retain the securities, which our ancestors, at the Revolution, considered to be necessary. He might be told, indeed, that no acts, not even those of the Revolution, could be considered fundamental; that the legislature of one day could not bind the legislature of another; but it accorded with the principles of legislation to say of certain acts, that posterity should be cautious how they disturbed them. The acts, to which he now alluded, were stated at the time to be fundamental, and binding for ever; which marked at least the importance attached to them by our ancestors. What was the language of king William in all his communications? He had stated repeatedly that some permanent settle ment should be made, in order, that the religion and liberties of the country might never again be put into danger. And what did our ancestors do? They, long after they had ceased to be frightened by Titus Oates, reenacted the disability of the Catholic peers to sit in parliament. They provided that the

Lords should be Protestant, the Commons Protestant, and the King Protestant also. They even took care to provide, that he should marry a Protestant; and, not content with all that, they added a coronation oath, by which the king bound himself to support the Protestant religion, as by law established. At the time of the Revolution they made the church and state Protestant, and the king could not take his seat on the throne without pledging himself to protect both church and state, under the obligation of an oath. They had determined, that the parlialiament should be Protestant as well as the king; and the Bill of Rights declared, that that should be the law for ever. He did not mean to say, that parliament had not the power to alter the law, if they should think proper; but he would say, that they ought to proceed with great caution in a question of such vast importance, and hesitate before they passed so great a censure upon those who effected the Revolution. If any other proof was wanting that the exclusion of Catholic peers was not a temporary occasional measure, but an essential part of the permanent constitutional policy of the country, as understood by our forefathers, it was to be found in the act of Union with Scotland, which most anxiously and expressly provided, that no man, who was not a Protestant should elect or be elected to a seat in either House.

The Lord Chancellor then proceeded to consider the acts passed in the reigns of Geo. I. & II., which ratified, or recognized, the exclusion of Catholic peers. Their being adopted without reference to the peculiar circumstances of the reign of Charles II., were so many in