Lord ELLENBOROUGH.-" The anxiety and alarm which, during the long suspended agitation of this important question, have been excited in my mind, as to its probable effect on the peace and tranquillity of the country, have from various indications of the public sentiment respecting it, in a great measure subsided, before the immediate discussion of the question in this House; and, from the circumstances immediately attending the discussion itself, which (except during a short and painful interval in the course of this evening) has been uniformly temperate and decorous, and such as became the wisdom and gravity of Parliament, my alarm and anxiety have now wholly ceased. And I am convinced that the debates on this momentous subject will, when known, be as satisfactory in the result to those whose rights and interests are the object of these debates, as they are honourable to those by whom they were conducted.

"If the question was to be brought forward at all, which I once regretted, but now rejoice has been the case, I am happy that the claims of the Roman Catholics have been put under the protection of the eminent person by whom they have been so ably and strenuously contended for in this House. The Roman Catholics must be convinced that they have had a sincere and zealous, as the House is witness that they have had a most powerful and consummate, advocate in the person of the Noble Lord. With a view to the quieting of the question at present, and the preventing its recurrence at any future period, it was well that the defence of the Roman Catholic claims had been entrusted upon this occasion to no feebler arm: what has failed now is not likely to be ad vanced with equal energy and effect, or with better hopes of success at any future period. My Lords, in the vote I am about to give upon this question now under consideration, and in the reasons I am about to offer to your Lordships for that vote, I trust that no person will be so uncandid as to suppose that I am either an enemy to the full and free toleration of the religious opinions and worship of my Roman Catholic brethren in Ireland, in the most extended sense of that word, or averse to those indulgences in respect of civil rights, which have in a large and liberal measure been afforded them by Parliament during the last twenty or twentyfive years of the present reign, -although, perhaps, I might at the time have paused a little upon the prudence and expediency of granting some of the particulars that have been granted; viz. the elective franchise, and a capacity of being included in the commission of the peace. But I do not repine however at any thing which has been hitherto done in their favour, much less wish that any part should now be recalled or withdrawn. I believe, indeed, my Lords, that no such wish exists in the minds of any of your Lordships. I am sure it does not in the minds of my noble friends against whom an insinuation of this kind was directed in the heat and eagerness of debate on a former night. What our Roman Catholic brethren have acquired by the liberal grant of a bestowing and confiding Parliament, let them, under the solemn faith of Parliament pledged to them for its continuance, still enjoy. I will not anticipate a possibility that a breach of the implied condition which is annexed to every legislative provision for the benefit of individuals, should draw the expediency of its allowed continuance into question at any the remotest period of our future history. The question now before us on this Petition, is not a question of Toleration in the enjoyment and exercise of civil and religious rights, but of the Grant of Political Power. All that toleration can require, in respect to civil and religious immunity, has been long ago satisfied in its most enlarged extent. At the commencement of the gracious and beneficent reign of his present Majesty, the Roman Catholics of both parts of the united kingdom, especially of Ireland, were encumbered and weighed down down by the grievous pressure of many rigorous restraints, penalties, and disabilities. It became the generosity, it became the wisdom of Parliament (for on such subjects generosity and wisdom are the same) to emancipate them from these burthens; and by several successive statutes, in the space of about fifteen years, they have been accordingly so emancipated. They are, in respect of property, capable of inheriting and taking by devise for their own benefit, and of alienating and disposing of property in all such ways as it is competent to any other of his Majesty's subjects to take and dispose of the same. The education of their children, and the choice of their marriages, are equally unrestrained to them. The enjoyment of their religious worship is equally free and public. The avenues to emolument and eminence in the practice and profession of the law, are equally open to them with their Protestant fellow-subjects. The right of serving on grand and petit juries, and upon all inquests civil and criminal, is the same to them as to others. The right of voting in counties for Members of Parliament has been conferred on them; a capacity to become Justices of the Peace is capable of being communicated to them by his Majesty's Commission of the Peace, in the same manner as it is to other subjects; that is of course, under the check and control of a sound discretion to be exercised on the part of the person holding the great seal, as to the objects to which it should be granted. All military and naval commissions, except those of principal command, and all offices, except a very few of the great offices of state, and the higher judicial offices, are attainable by them.

If, in the beginning of the year 1778, any person had ventured to predict to them, that such would in the course of a very few years be the condition of a people then labouring under the restraints, penalties, and disabilities I have alluded to, he would have been regarded as a rash and hardy utter

U

er

er of a vain prophecy, which had not the remotest chance of ever being accomplished. However, in the compass of fifteen years, by the gradual removal of civil and religious, and of some political restraints, they have attained the accomplishment of all which, in their relative situation to the establishments of the country, they can consistently ask, or we can, with due regard to our situation as trustees for them and others, consistently bestow. Their emancipation from civil and religious restraint as affecting themselves, and the rights to be enjoyed by them individually, is entire and complete; if it be not so, let it be shewn wherein it is in any instance defective, that the defect may be, if practicable, instantly supplied and remedied. Of the condition of the Catholics as his Majesty found it at the commencement of his reign, loaded with the penal restraints and disabilities which the sufferings and the fears of former times had cast upon them, and as he will hand it over to succeeding times, it may be truly said, Lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit.

Catholic Emancipation, as it is improperly called, if that term is meant to denote and designate any slavish subjection as still subsisting on their part either in respect of person, property, or the profession of religious faith, or the exercise of religious worship, has been fully attained. The only remaining emancipation which they are capable of receiving, must be acquired by an act of their own, by redeeming themselves from the foreign bondage and thraldom under which they and their ancestors have long unworthily groaned, and from which the state, as it has neither imposed nor continued it, has no adequate means of relieving them consistently with the duty of self-preservation which it owes to itself. Every state claiming and exercising independent powers of sovereignty, has incidentally belonging to it as such, the power of binding its subjects by laws of its own, not only paramount to, but exclusive of any any authority or control to be exercised by any other state whatsoever. In so far as any other state or person is allowed to exercise an authority breaking in upon this exclusive and independent power of legislation and enforcement of authority in one state, to that extent such state so intrenched upon is not sovereign and independent, but admits itself to be subordinate to and dependent upon the other. The declaration contained in the oath of supremacy, which expresses a denial and renunciation of the existence of any power and authority in respect of ecclesiastical and spiritual matters in any foreign state, potentate, or person whatsoever, is but the affirmance of a proposition which is logically and politically true as an essential principle of independent sovereignty, applicable not to this government only, but to every other government under the sun which claims to possess and exercise the powers of independent sovereignty.

It is not only true as a maxim of government, but essentially necessary to be insisted and acted upon also, in all cases in which obedience may become questionable, in order to give the State that assurance and test which it has a right to require and receive from its subjects, of their entire submission and fidelity in all matters to which the power and authority of the State can extend. But, it is said, that what is prayed by this Petition is not a matter which opugns the authority of the State in matters to which its authority extends. That the reserve made by our Roman Catholic brethren is only in favour of matters which concern God and their own consciences; matters of mere abstract faith and mental persuasion. That, however, is not so; the Pope, in virtue of his general spiritual authority, claims authority in matters of morals (i. e. of moral conduct, and which extends to all the acts of man) as well as in matters of mere faith; he claims and habitually exercises on some subjects a power of dispensing with oaths, and in that respect of nullifying

U2

all