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ant government, a Protestant Parliament? In one sense he admitted it was a Protestant kingdom, but it did not exclude Papists. So he admitted that the Parliament was essentially and predominantly Protestant, and in that sense, but in no other, the Parliament was Protestant. The act of 1st of William 3rd forbade Papists to carry arms; this was considered as necessary to the security of this Protestant state. The principle of that act was transferred to the Bill of Rights, which recognized the claim of the Protestants to carry arms, but did not refer to the right of the Roman Catholics to carry arms. Those, who argued by inference, took advantage of this; but it so happened that throughout the Bill of Rights this was the only passage the construction of which was hostile to the Roman Catholics; and this was the only passage in it which had been repealed. It had been repealed by an act of George 2nd, which also repealed the law by which Roman Catholics were forbidden access to the throne. By the law previous to 30th Charles 2nd, no person could be admitted into the army unless he had previously taken the Oath and the Declaration; but by that act, he could take the oath subsequent to taking the commission. Then came the act of William, saying that that provision was not a sufficient security, and that the oath must be taken previously. Then the present law precisely and practically repealed the act of William, for it restored the matter to the state it was in at the period of the 25th Charles 2nd; and the act, for which lord Eldon had told their lordships he was responsible, had taken greater liberties with the Bill of Rights than the noble

duke had done. Their lordships probably had not been apprised, when the act of 1817 passed, that they were repealing the act of king William. The act recited, "Whereas by certain laws now in existence, there were sundry embarrassments in respect to the oaths taken by the army and navy," and, in order to clear up doubts, and to assimilate one to the other, it enacted that the oaths prescribed by the former act need not be taken. Thus was there an utter abandonment of the act of William, and that too without providing any oath or security in its stead. The present bill did not give the Roman Catholics any benefit without an oath, an oath too, which combined in its language every possible security that such a form could afford; but under the act of the noble and learned lord, the provisions of king William's act were done away, and not even an oath was substituted in their stead.

The debate was closed by a brief reply from the duke of Wellington. The apprehended danger to the Irish Church, from the admission of a few Catholics into Parliament, he treated as futile, considering that the throne would be filled by a Protestant. Moreover, a fundamental article of the Union between the two countries was the union of the two Churches; and it was impossible that any mischief could happen to the Irish branch of this united Church, without destroying the union of the two countries. "A different topic," said his grace,

to which I wish to advert, is a charge brought against several of my colleagues, and also against myself, by the noble earl on the cross-bench, of a want of consistency in our conduct. My lords, I admit that many of my colleagues,

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 ery. 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 l ́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? Before 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

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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,

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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.

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CHAP. V.

Bill for the Disfranchisement of the Forty Shilling Freeholders in Ireland-Mr. O'Connell claims to sit under the new Act-He refuses to take the Oath of Supremacy, and is heard at the Bar-The House resolves, that he must take the Oath of Supremacy, and orders a new Writ for the County of Clare-The Marquis of Blandford moves Resolutions in favour of Parliamentary Reform.

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

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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

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