The Sun.
London, England, 1841-03-05 00:00:00

LONDON :
FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1841.

The House of P,!.ers was almost exclusively oc-
cupied last night by the Bishop of EXETER, who
made a speech, which lasted two hours and a
half, on the sub:ects of San Sulpice and Canada,
and the growth of Popery. To give a succinct
and full analysis of such a lengthy oration, on
such a subject, is beyond our power. The Bishop
began by presenting a petition from certain inha-
bitants of Montreal, praying their Lordships to
address her MAJESTY not to give her as-
sent to the ordinance for settling the claims
which the Seminary of San Sulpice has
to the seignories of Montreal. The Rev.
Prelate asserted that the consent of the
Council of Canada to that ordinance had been
obtained by extraordinary means. He hinted at
bribery, and he affirmed intimidation. The
Governor-General, contrary to custom, in
a most extraordinary and unheard of manner,
had presided over the Council. The ordinance was
petitioned against by two-thirds of the British
Pfotestaots resident in Montreal, and it did what
it was contrary to the Constitution, contrary to the
duty of the Sovereign, and beyond the moral
power of Parliament. The Right Rev. Prelate
endeavoured to prove; by the history of
the Seminary, by the laws of the co-
lony, by the capitulation of Quebec, by the
Act of Constitution, by the Act of Union, by the
Crown having resigned all Its rights to the State
of Canada for a Civil List, that the Seminary
had no legal right whatever to the seignories,
and the Crown had no power to make, as was
done by the Governor-General, any ordinance
of the kind. The Right Rev. Prelate declared,
too, that if Ministers had meant to confer
the property on the Seminary, they might
have done so without constituting it into
a corporation and he instanced the Col-
lege of Maynooth but they had consti-
tuted it into a corporation, and had thereby
violated the fundamental principles and laws of
the Constitution, both as they existed before the
Reformation and since the Reformation. A
corporation was a perpetual body, and it was a
great offence for a Protestant Government to
create a perpetual Romish corporation. The
Rev. Prelate might have tolerated it for nine
hundred and ninety-nine years, but not for a per-
petuity; though in the market there is not a
fraction of difference in the value of property
held for only ninely-nine years, and perpetual
possession. The Right Rev. Prelate concluded
an elaborate speech, full of research, and by no
means destitute of bitterness, by calling on their
Lordships to stand between the country and the
danger to which it was exposed front the en-
croachments of Popery, which the Ministers
encouraged, which was everywhere making great
strides, and which the ordinance of the Go-
vernor-General was calculated and intended to
promote.

Viscount MELBOURNE defended the conduct
of the Governor-General, and stated that no
such measure was- ever passed without giving oc-
casion to such remarks as those made by the
Right Rev. Prelate. The Noble Viscount said,
as to the right of San Sulpice to the seignories,
it had been in undisturbed possession of them for
upwards of 70 years ; that successive Govern-
ments, successive Governors, successive Assem-
blies, had never questioned the right; and if their
lon,; pcssesiion, sanctioned by all that gave
Sec ar ity to property, did not confer a right, there
were no i ights which could be considered safe,
and nothing in the affairs of man which could be
considered stable and permanent. To the accu-
sation that the Romish Church was encroaching,
the Noble Viscount replied that the ecclesiastical
spirit was encroaching everywhere, and he in-
stanced the Non-intrusionists in Scotland, and the
arrogance of the priesthood in England, as proofs
that other Churches were as rapacious of power
as the priesthood of Rome. With respect to the
Ministers encouraging the Romish aggressions,
he could only give such an assertion an absolute
and peremptory uenial. He
entreated their
Lordships, as they valued justice and the eace
of Canada, not to support the Right P
Reverend
Prelate in opposing, an ordinance
which was the