jects. Nay, the Roman Catholics of Ireland had more license in the oath they were required to take than Protestant Dissenters in England; for the former were only required to swear allegiance to the King and his Family; but in England the oath was to the King and his Family,-being Protestants. The basis of the British Constitution was not founded upon the principle of equal rights to all men indiscriminately; but to all men conforming and complying with the tests which that Constitution demanded for its security. The Noble and Learned Lord argued at much length the danger that must arise to the Act of Settlement and the Bill of Rights, if a Protestant King in this country were to have a Catholic Cabinet; and he quoted the expressions of the celebrated Lord Sommers on the 11th and 12th of William and Mary, containing the Coronation Oath, that ought to be reverenced as the Magna Charta of the British Constitution. The Noble and Learned Lord alluded, in the course of his speech, to the observations made by Lord REDESDALE Upon the contumacious conduct of the Irish Catholic Bishops, in not only assuming, contrary to law, the high titular dignities, but all the ecclesiastical functions attached to that rank in the Established Church; and said it would have belonged to the character and firmness of his Noble and Learned Friend the moment he discovered those men assuming the titular dignities of the Established Episcopacy, or discharging their functions in ecclesiastical polity, in open rebellion against the laws, to have directly conveyed a formal complaint to his Majesty, and to have commenced legal proceedings against them.

* The Duke of NORFOLK.-" My Lords, notwithstanding what has been alleged by Noble Lords, that no pledge had been held out to the Catholics of Ireland at the period of the Union, to grant, as a condition of that measure, the final emancipation their Petition now claims, I have had

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very strong grounds to rely that at least such an understanding was forcibly entertained; and I am therefore for going into the Committee, if it were only to investigate the terms upon which the Union was negotiated, in order to discover the truth. The Noble Person, under whose Administration that measure was negotiated (Marquis Cornwallis) has rendered many signal and important services to the British Empire; and none more important than the acquisition of that measure. I have been very credibly informed, that under that Administration, as surances were held out to the Catholics of Ireland, from the highest authority, that their final claims should be ceded, as a condition for their acquiescence to that measure; for, otherwise, the Union could not have been carried. The refusal now will be to them, therefore, a bitter disappointment? they will conceive themselves the dupes of false promise and deception, and their minds will feel all the irritation natural to men of any sensibility under such circumstances. A Reverend Prelate has talked of toleration in the mild and beneficent prin ciple of the Church of England. In the spirit of that principle, therefore, I wish your Lordships to act on the present occasion, and not to persist in a principle of excluding British subjects from their natural and political rights, merely on account of their religious opinion. It is the Church of Rome which withholds from its votaries the right of exercising their own judgment upon religious topics, and to dictate to mens' minds the points of faith; from which it allows no man to hold a different opinion, even in a single iota. But to the energies of our ancestors we owe that resistance to such despotism over mens' minds and consciences which produced the Reformation, and with it the freedom of religious opinion. It becomes, therefore, the enlightened liberality of a British Senate, enjoying theinselves that freedom of opinion, to allow to all men the right of thinking as they please in matters of religion.

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ligion. How can a belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, or any other speculative tenet in religious faith, influence any man's conduct on põlitical subjects? or the difference between a belief of seven sacraments or two, render a man peculiarly fit or unfit for political confidence or Parliamentary Representation, who has the same education, is born and educated under the same Government, and holds the opinions in common with other subjects in this realm upon political topics? or, where is the ground of apprehension that men who have received all their opinions under a British Constitution, will, when they are admitted to participate in all the blessings of that Constitution, which they now anxiously pray, endeavour to excite anarchy for the purpose of subverting it, and of erecting in its place a foreign tyranny, and restoring the despotism of the Romish Church? If any thing could excite a disposition to anarchy, it would be the perpetual refusal of admitting the Catholics to the blessings of a Constitution, in which, once affiliated, every disposition to anarchy or even discontent must cease, and a real union of interests and attachınents follow. A Noble and Learned Lord on a former night (Lord Redesdale) has complained much of the influence of the Roman Catholic Bishops, and their contumacy in assuming episcopal functions; but in a religious point of view, I conceive them to be as much bishops, and to have as good a right to exereise episcopal functions for the spiritual direction of their own sect, as any Right Reverend Prelate on that Bench. If they abuse those functions by any tyrannical exertion of them, they are indeed highly reprehensible, and would really deserve punishment. But the Noble and Learned Lord, at the same time that he complained of the influence of the Catholic Hierarchy, the slow progress the Reformation had made in Ireland, and the unwillingness of Protestants to reside in some districts, owing to that influence, stated also another cause, to which I am much more inclined to attribute those circumstances, namely, the state of the Protestant Churches in Ireland, of which the Noble and Learned Lord had drawn so deplorable a picture. How is it reasonable to expect that Protestants, having any sense of their religion, would reside in parishes, above one thousand of which, and many of them good livings, the Noble and Learned Lord had stated there are in Ireland, where there is neither Protestant Church nor Protestant Clergyman, and which parishes, as he states, are anxiously sought for as sinecures by Protestant Clergymen, whose duty it is to preach the Gospel, and to propagate the Reformed Religion? or how can it be expected that Roman Catholics are to be converted to that religion in those extensive quarters of the country where it is never preached? I earnestly hope that this subject will seriously occupy the attention of Parliament, and that some means will be contrived to remedy so glaring an evil. But, my Lords, feeling no apprehension of the slightest danger from granting the prayer of this Petition, I shall vote for going into the Committee.

The Bishop of ST. ASAPH.-"My Lords, if Ishall feel it my duty to resist this night the Petition on your table, my vote will not be actuated by any principle of illiberality, of bigotry, or uncharitableness. My Lords, I trust I shall find credit with your Lordships, I shall find credit with the public, I shall find credit with the Roman Catholics themselves, that I do not resist their Petition from any principle of intolerance, or from prejudiced or bigotted motives; for to every measure of indulgence heretofore brought forward in this House for their civil happiness and toleration, I have uniformly voted; and as uniformly resisted every measure of an opposite tendency. My Lords, I do not hold that the Roman Catholic Religion is one which enjoins disloyalty; I do not hold the maxim, that from

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their scruples about the oath of supremacy, they are a disloyal people; I do not hold that they maintain any such belief as, that the Pope may depose Protestant Princes, or absolve Catholic subjects from allegiance to them; or that no faith is to be kept with Heretics, or persons of a different religious persuasion from themselves. I have heard the opinions this night quoted by the Noble Earl opposite to me (Earl of ALBEMARLE) from the faculties of the Universities of Paris, of Doway, of Louvain, of Alcala, of Valladolid, and of Salamanca. I am no stranger to those opinions, nor are they at all new to me. I know they have been declared by the most learned Catholic societies in Europe, who certainly are the best authorities extant as to what is or is not the faith of the religion they profess, My Lords, I think the Catholics of this country a loyal people, and as fully entitled to indulgence, much more so indeed than many of those sectaries who do us the honour to call us their Protestant brethren, but who are not so much assimilated to us either in faith or principles. My Lords, toleration I agree to grant to the Catholics in the fullest extent that the exercise of their religion and the protection of their properties and persons can require; but this Petition is for political power. It is for opening to Roman Catholics not only the Parliamentary Representation of the Empire, but for allowing them to fill the principal executive offices of the State. But though I am disposed to go the full length of toleration, I cannot consent to enlarge their political influence by extending to them such powers. They are relieved from all disabilities that were restrictive on their liberty, their happiness, and their civil rights. They are completely emancipated on those points; but I never can consent that this House shall go into a Committee, for the purpose of considering whether it is fit that a Roman Catholic may be every thing but KING in this country; for to that, in my plain understanding, the Petition on your table goes; and if it beso, all the power of my intellects