nature, are hardly below his unsurpassed strategic superiority, was then first lord of the treasury. He had said in parliament, that he would give the catholic question full consideration. Hitherto he had viewed it under a sense of individual responsibility. He should now view it as responsible for the chief direction of public affairs. Nevertheless, his vote contributed to the majority of forty-five, by which the measure was lost in the House of Lords, in the session of 1828, and his speech deprecated concession. It was, therefore, considered by such as approved of the Romish disabilities, that he was one of the last men to surrender this long-contested question, and that his announcement of an intention to give it a statesmanlike consideration, merely expressed the honest purpose of a comprehensive mind to search carefully for some plan, whereby moderate Romanists might be shamed out of agitation, and protestant apprehensions might be effectively allayed. His principal coadjutor, too, in the ministry, Mr. Peel, afterwards on his father's death Sir Robert Peel, a statesman whose future eminence was clearly foreseen by the best judges when a youth at college, and whose whole subsequent life had been an unbroken course of judicious application, senatorial distinction, and moral propriety, had invariably been an uncompromising opponent of the Romish claims. It was, consequently, supposed in most quarters that unqualified concession was never to be expected from him any more than from his illustrious chief. When, however, parliament was opened by commission on the 5th of February, 1829, the king's speech, delivered by the lord chancellor, after adverting to the Catholic Association and requiring powers for its suppression, went on to say, "His majesty recommends, that when this essential object shall have been accomplished, you should take into your deliberate consideration the whole state of Ireland, and that you should review the laws which impose civil disabilities on his majesty's Roman catholic subjects. You will consider whether the removal of those disabilities can be effected consistently with the full and perfect security of our establishments in Church and State, with the maintenance of the reformed religion established by law, and of the rights and privileges of the bishops and of the clergy of this realm, and of the churches committed to their charge. These are institutions which must ever be held sacred in this protestant kingdom, and which it is the duty and the determination of his majesty to pre

serve inviolate." It was late and reluctantly that George IV. gave his consent to this announcement, and even after the measure became law, he showed marked displeasure towards some individuals who followed his own example in giving way. To the people generally, this paragraph in the royal speech occasioned extreme surprise. The great majority disapproved it highly, and petitions against the proposed concession poured into the two houses of parliament in torrents. It must not,

however, be supposed, that even such as disliked Whig politics were unanimous in objecting to the ministerial proposition. On the contrary, the superior sections of the middle classes had long been becoming more and more either careless of the question, or willing to give it up for the sake of peace. Hence the House of Commons had latterly been always found ready for a surrender: a disposition of which Mr. Peel very reasonably complained, saying that a people bent upon the continuance of exclusion should be careful to return representatives steady to that object. But notwithstanding that public feeling bore politically with a weight greatly diminished upon the maintenance of Romish disabilities, it really was adverse as a whole to the complete repeal of them. The clergy and others of the more enlightened advocates for their continuance, looked upon Romish anxiety for legislative powers as chiefly created by a desire to seize upon the religious endowments in Ireland, perhaps also to recover the forfeited estates there, or at all events, by a sectarian antipathy to the protestant establishment. Hence the clamour was thought more likely to be continued by concession than extinguished, its real objects extending far beyond its present demands. Among the more ignorant enemies to concession there was, undoubtedly, a large infusion of mere prejudice. People fancied that Romanists, unless excluded from all hope of power, were likely to gain the ascendancy even in England, and to renew the horrors of Mary's reign. Thus, there was a general feeling against concession, and if popular petitions could have averted it, the year 1829 would have seen it once more refused. Mr. Peel, in recommending the measure, attributed most of the evils afflicting Ireland to an indisposition towards the settlement of this question. Although his own opinions, therefore, upon its abstract merits, continued unchanged, yet he thought a longer denial of concession highly inexpedient. He did not, however, consider it desirable that Romanists should exercise

legislative powers without binding themselves by oath to abstain from abusing them for any of their own sectarian purposes. Nor did he mean to make Romanists eligible to the offices of commander-in-chief, or of lord chancellor, or of lord lieutenant of Ireland; or to any situation in the church, or in the institutions connected with it. He wished also to abridge the power so offensively used by the Romish priests of Ireland, in influencing parliamentary elections. He therefore proposed to abolish the forty-shilling franchise in that country, and allow no freeholders to vote with a qualification under ten pounds. By this alteration it was considered, that men under the coercion of priestly menace and artifice, would be generally excluded from the poll. He meant also to restrict Romanists elected to corporate offices, from taking the ensigns of their dignity to any other place of worship than one connected with the established church. He wished likewise to prevent members of the Romish hierarchy from assuming those titles of ecclesiastical dignity which it had been so much their practice to assume, even with offensive claims of an exclusive right to them 2; and

two

Dr. Doyle pronounced the archbishop of Dublin no more entitled to that see than to the dukedom of Leeds. He himself published pamphlets under the signature of J. K. L., i. e. James Kildare and Leighlin, the last names being those of the united sees which he filled as Romish chief pastor. It is notoriously the usage among Irish Romanists to address their titular archbishops as your Grace, and their titular bishops as my Lord. These titular prelacies were, however, for many years, of foreign and hostile appointment. "The right of presenting to all sees in Ireland was vested by usage or by law, I do not know which, in the Stuart family, previous to their being expelled from these countries; and whilst a descendant of that family resided at Rome, he was accustomed to recommend to the Irish catholic sees; from the death of the late pretender to the present time, the right of appointment to bishoprics in Ireland has vested solely and exclusively in the pope; but from that period until the present, he has not in any one instance that has come to my knowledge (and I have made very diligent inquiries upon the subject,) appointed any person, unless such as had been pre

viously recommended to him by some person or persons in this country. The persons who so recommend generally are the chapter, and where there is no chapter existing, the parochial clergy of the diocese, and the metropolitan, or suffragan bishops of the province where the see happens to be vacant." (Evidence of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Doyle, March 16, 1825, ut supra, 320.) Thus the persons really thought among Romanists entitled to the Irish sees, were long nominated by the pretender, and latterly by certain societies or individuals at home, unknown to the law in any corporate capacity; such persons ultimately founding their pretensions upon the act of an Italian bishop usurping an interference in British affairs, for which he can establish no valid claim whatever, and which is directly contrary to the statutes of the realm. This interference too contradicts a maxim of the canon law, which forbids the appointment of another bishop to a see already provided with one. The Irish sees, however, are so provided by the law of the land. But this law is to be treated as a nullity, and an individual beneficed by it is to be treated as no more entitled to his preferment than he is to any particular

as objections against Jesuits were extensively entertained, he contemplated their gradual removal, and proposed that all members of that order should at once be under the necessity of registering their names. The duke of Wellington, in recommending concession to the upper house, dwelt chiefly upon the prospect of civil war involved in refusal, and of the miseries which his own experience, above that of most men, enabled him to say, any appeal to arms must bring upon the country. Other speakers considered concession as the only way to annihilate that defiance of constituted authorities which then prevailed in Ireland, and one of the surest protections for her established church. On the other hand, it was contended, that such unqualified concession was quite inconsistent with a government essentially protestant, and most unlikely to tranquillize Ireland, while it would probably seal the ruin of her protestant establishments. Arguments, however, against the proposition, though strenuously and ably urged, from many quarters highly worthy of attention, proved wholly unavailing. In the House of Commons, the measure passed by a majority of 178; in the House of Lords by a majority of 104. It received the royal assent on the 13th of April, 1829, and on the 28th of that month, three Romish peers took their seats in the upper house. The bill for disfranchising the Irish forty-shilling freeholders passed without a division in either house, although in the earlier stages, objections to it had been urged both by lords and

commoners.

§ 13. The great measure, by which Britain abandoned her long-cherished principle of excluding Romanists from legislative privileges, treated them as any other class of dissenters, except in such cases as they were decidedly separated from the general body by religious peculiarities bearing directly upon the national institutions. Hence no notice was taken of a veto upon appointments to their prelacies, which had been so often keenly

English peerage. As public attention had been recently called to these facts, the Catholic Relief Bill could hardly fail of making some provision for them.

Of

3 There were then eight Romish peers in England, and fourteen baronets. Romish gentry, there were above 300 families, generally very ancient, and often very opulent. In Scotland, there were two Romish earls, and in the High

lands, at the beginning of the last century, there were more than 60,000 Roman catholics. But the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745, by breaking up the feudal system, made great alterations there, and among them was an extensive diffusion of protestantism, in quarters that had hitherto rejected it. Gent. Mag. March, 1829.

contested during the thirty years' discussion upon the catholic question. All such matters of internal regulation were passed over in silence as nothing else than the private concerns of a sect in the empire, with which the state had no right or reason to interfere, so long as they did not act upon its established policy. Upon the principle of providing against such interference, where it might fairly be apprehended, Romanists were required to take a particular oath on entering parliament. This binds them to the Act of Settlement, it being obviously more agreeable to their prejudices, that representatives of the Stuarts, professing their own religion, especially as they stand higher in the scale of descent, should occupy the throne in preference to protestant representatives. It binds them also to the rejection of those anti-social pretensions, by which unquestionably the court of Rome, whatever may be said of the church, has repeatedly compromised its character. It binds them likewise to the existing institutions of the country, and restricts them from any use of their legislative privileges to the injury of the church establishment, or of the protestant religion. They are obviously open to temptation in these respects, from the prevalence of a notion that the church establishment was originally founded for the diffusion of their own opinions, and from a belief that protestants are fatally misled by doctrines no older than Luther. Still further to take away from Romanists

The following is the oath prescribed by the act: "I, A. B., do sincerely promise and swear, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his majesty

and will defend him to the utmost of my power against all conspiracies and attempts whatever which shall be made against his person, crown, or dignity; and I will do my utmost endeavour to disclose and make known to his majesty, his heirs, and successors, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which may be formed against him or them: and I do faithfully promise to maintain, support, and defend, to the utmost of my power, the succession of the crown, which succession, by an act intituled An Act for the further Limitation of the Crown, and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, is and stands limited to the princess Sophia, electress of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being protestants; hereby utterly renouncing and abjuring any

obedience or allegiance unto any other person claiming or pretending a right to the crown of this realm: and I do further declare that it is not an article of my faith, and that I do renounce, reject, and abjure the opinion, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the pope, or any other authority of the see of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or by any person whatsoever; and I do declare, that I do not believe that the pope of Rome, or any other foreign prince, prelate, person, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm. I do swear, that I will defend to the utmost of my power the settlement of property within this realm, as established by the laws: and I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present church establishment, as settled by law within this realm: and