Star.
London, England, 1813-03-02 00:00:00

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as good a right its Weaves to all
State, provided they can give
edherenee to its interests ; so that
right—(Hearasor.) Sir, a Right
'tleman on the other side of the ”
entire the legitimate claim of a
bla Gentleman who owed - 17 ie
most appropriately termed use oracle of the -Catholic
body. He stated in his speech on a former night
01 this debate that he would not wish the restrictions
tube removed from the Catholics without some sem-,
aity being afforded to the established religion. I was
extremely pleased, Sir, to hear this from the Right
Honourable Gentleman, drawing, as I do, from
it, a most agreeable presage, that the day of mutual
concession and consequent concord is fast approach..
ing. It is difficult td say what may be the natant of
the measures which would be recommended by a
Committee with respect to this momentous question.
but in.its present state we have every reason to sup-
pose that they would be satisfactory to all parties,
and that agreeable hypothesis would hAve been
strengthened if their deliberations were to be carried
on beneath the lights which might have been thrown
-on it, by a well-matured plan, which might have
been arranged in the Cabinet, in the coarse of the
summer. But let us, Sir, for a moment contem-
plate the probable result of the present motion being
refused in England—indeed I am not prepared to
sa7 what it may be, but I know very 'well what it
will be in Ireland. Sir, the two great officers of the
'lrish Government are completely opposed in opinion
on this great question. The Chancellor of the Irish
Exchequer, in _a very eloquent speech, has informed
the-House, that it is unsafe to keep the Catholics
'ln their present state—while, on the other hand, the
Right Hon. Secretary is of opiniont that it would be
dangerous to acquiesce in their claims. Now, Sir,
when these Gentlemen return to the performance of
their respective duties in Ireland, what a singular state•
ofthings must be the consequence of this discrepancy
in their views! We will suppose that disturbances
take place in the county of Tipperary, and the
advice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is asked
as to the best means of quelling them, what will be
the answer of the Right Hon. Gentleman ? Why,
certainly, he will exclaim, " I foretold all this, what
else could you look for after rejecting the wholesome
admonitions you have received upon the subject r'
The Right Hon. Secretary, on the contrary, will per.
haps, recommend a Special Commission. It will
then be a question, who is to be sent down to con-
duct the prosecutions ? The Attorney. General, in
all probability, will be engaged in avocations which
will not admit of his attendance, and the Solicitor-
General, Mr. Buslie, must be applied to—what will
be his answer to such an application ? He will natu-
rally say, " I am surprised that you should require
my co-operation in such a husinesss as this; But what
does not at all surprise me, is the state of things that
has produced the application. .Did not I assert that
it must be the result of your obitinate adherence to
an erroneous and dangerous system ?"—(ilersts of
laughter and loud crier o f Hear, Hear.) In this state of
Mr. Bushe's feelings, the Right Hon. Gentleman at
the head of the Irish Government will, at whatever
inconvenience, be obliged to avail himself of the ser-
vices of Mr. Sanrin, the Attorney-General—in him,
indeed, he will rind a man after his own* heart.—
(Loud /atighrer.)• I really do not seek to elicit the
mirth of the House ; a division in the Cabinet may
be ludicrous ; but it we contemplate its probable et.
fects, they are calculated to produce nought but grief
and dismay. I have described in the future Cabinet,
dissentions which I have contemplated in the spirit
of the Duke of Richmond's Administration ; there
is no brands of the public service which that Noble-
man has not attempted to reform, whether necessary
or not, and infinite vexation has been the conse-
quence. Sir, I must again express my inability to con-
ceive how the Right Honourable Secretary and the
Right Honourable Chancellor of the Exchequer will
arrange on their return to Ireland.—(Hear, hear.)—
Sure I am that they will not be long in that country
before they find that the present system must be aban-
doned. Since I have given up the offices I held un-
der the Government, a great alteration has taken
place in the aspect of affiirs. ( Hear, and laughter.)
I, Sir, am not the only person who have changed my
opinion or. this subject. My Noble Friend who is
still acting in the Cabinet has also changed his.—i
(Hear, hear.) While I remained in office, I did net
think it expedient to bring forward the measure of
which lam now the advocate. (Hear, hear.) But I
was of the same opinion as my colleagues in office ;
we thought the time had not arrived when it would
be expedient to bring it forward, and we were unani-
mous in thinking so. We did not exhibit the spectacle
of a Cabinet distracted by jarring Counsel, such as
that of which the Right Hon. the Chancellor of the
Irish Exchequer is a member. I have nothing, Sir,
to add, but that if the Claims of the Catholics go to
a Committee I shall use every assistance in my power
to promote the views of my Right Hon. Friend, in
deducing such measures as shall at once tend to the
conciliation of all classes of his Majesty's subjects,
and to the providing effectual security for tke Pro-
testant Church as by law established. 1

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER
for Ireland (Mr. Fitzgerald) explained, observing,
that if the Right Hon. Gentleman supposed that he
was averse to any communication with the Catholic
body, he must have adopted such a notion from some
very vague and indistinct report of the speech he had
delivered in the course of the present debate, which
he was satisfied he could not have heard. Far from
entertaining the opinion imputed to him, he concei-
ved that constant, confidential, and affectionate com-
munication with the Catholics was necessary to pro-
mote a beneficial adjustment•of the present question.
The Right Hon. Gentleman had reasoned not from
what he had said, but from whet he had not said, by
the cheer which had drawn forth some of the Right
Hon. Gentleman's remarki. He did not mean to
impute to him any dereliction of principles i but he
could not help now saying, that however great the
dissonance of opinion between him and his Right
Hon. Colleague, upon which he (Mr. Pole) had ob-
served so freely, it was perfect concord, when com-
pared to the manner in which the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman differed from himself—(heM., 4wr.) •
Mr. PEELE....." The Right Hon. Gentllman,
Sir, in the very extraordinary parallel which he has
drawn between himself on the one hand and me, to-
gether with my Right HOn. Friend, on the other, is
at least correct in one peitit of similittide3 which wa4

ire eranot, fa-
in discrepancy
present way of
on. Friend.that
The Right Hon.
his having acted,
cooling* _ the views of the
Cabinet of which he was a member ; and has contras,
'ted the unanimity of that Cabinet with the disunion
of the present, in which men act finis the impulse of
their own sentiments. I differed in opinion, says the
Right Hon. Gentleman, from the Duke of Richmond,
but I acted in obedience to his commands, and sa-
crificedtnyivate judgment. Now, Sir, that this
self-congratulation is built upon just grounds, is
what I can by no means allow. It would, in my
opinion, have been the more natural mode of pro-
ceeding, if, when he found that he could not hold his
situation in the Cabinet without the sacrifice of which
he has boasted be had relinquished it—( hear, bear.)--
But, Sir, it will be recollected, that the opinions
which were delivered in this House by the Right
Hon. Gentleman, were not expressed in that 'tacit.
lating manner which would give rise to the notion
that they were borrowed from a superior, and not the
genuine emanation of his own mind. He loudly af-
firmed, that no mode of reconciliqg the Catholics pre-
sented itself to his mind, and that to extend to them
the privileges they claimed was impossible. I wish
from my soul I had the speech to produce in which
these opipions are recorded.—(Hear !)—Now, Sir,
with respect to the dissolution of the body which the
Right Hon. Gentleman has called the Catholic Con-
vention, and the dissolution of which he has attribut—
ed to measures adopted by the Government while he
was in office I must observe, that this body is cone
sternly re-elected by an ag meeting of the Ca-
tholics, who, skulking befrilarlie law, are enabled
to re-elect them in consequence of that acquiescence
of the Government to which the Right Hon. Gentle-
man attributes such good effects, Among these ef-
fects as viewed by the Right Hon. Gentleman, by
no means the least singular, is the favourable dispo,
sition which he alleges is calculated towards the Ca-
tholics by the Protestants of Ireland ; but this is ob-
viously a misconception, the Petitions of the Pro-
testants have, without doubt, originated from the Re-
solution of the House of Commons to take the claims
of the Catholics into consideration. The purport of
that resolution, it will be recollected, nos, that the
House would go into a Committee with a view to
such a final adjustment of the question as would sa-
tisfy the Protestants, and conciliate all classes of his
Majesty's subjects. Now, Sir, let me ask what pro-
bability is there of the ends being obtained if a simi-
lar resolution was to be adopted by the existing House
of Commons ? If the present motion is agreed to, will
it be an easy task to secure the established religion,
and shall we satisfy all classes of his Majesty's sub-
jects ? Sir, I will read a Resolution of the Catholics,
which will have the effect, I am convinced, of ren-
dering that very problematical in the mind of every
unprejudiced person who hears it. [The Right Hon.
Secretary here read the resolution ; it stated, that the
Catholics had beard with surprise and indignation,'
that certain persona had preferred petitions to the Le-'•
gislature, praying that their claims might be refused,
unless they would give some pledge for the security
of the church, as by law established ; that they were
determined to resist every such measure as the peti-
tioners contemplated, considering the proposing of it
to be an insult to their religion and to their pride, and
to appeal from the decision of a small and insignifi-
cant faction.] —This resolution," continued the Right
Hon. Gentleman, was passed at a meeting of the
Catholics in Kilkenny, and the body which it brands
with the title of an insignificant faction will be found,
I trust, to include a majority of this House. Now,
Sir, a Right Hon. Gentleman. opposite has stated,
that he has a plan in contemplation which shall de-
stroy all distinctions between the different sects into
which the inhabitants of these countries are divided ;
hut when he is asked what securities can be given for
the maintenance of the Established Church, he has
nothing .to reply. The Right Hon. Gentleman
would have all that part of the Bill of Rights re.
pealed which goes to exclude Catholics from the high
offices of the State, but would retain that part oUit
which excludes them from the Throne. Sir, we do
not want to have this act, venerated as it is by those
of whose liberties it has been the safeguard, new mo-
delled. We do not want to see a clause introduced into
it, recognizing the Protestant establishment.We do not
want to see any change in it which shall entitle it to
the appellation of Mr. Grattan's Act, passed in the
53d year of his Majesty King George 111. But it
seems that we Protestants are henceforward to be
designated as sectaries-Hear, hear, from the Oppo-
sition Benches)—actu by the invidious spirit of
sectaries.—(Hear, hear.)—You, says the Right Ho.
nourable Gentleman, addressing the Protestants, are
sticklers for a sect.—(Hear, hear.)—The Catholics
are petitioners for law..—(Hear, hear.)—Sir, it is not
the fact, they are petitioners for the abolition of the
law, which we wish to preserve in its integrity. lam
not disposed to deny that there are excrescences in
the present system, which might be lopped off with
advantage to the whole ; but the system itself it is
very desirable to retain.—Sir, from the eloquence and
ability displayed by the Right Hon. Gentleman who
spoke at an early period of the present debate, and
who received so much and such well-merited ap-
plause, I derived much gratification; but whatever
tribute of praise I may be disposed to pay him on the
score of talent, I would more willingly do justice to
his sincerity; Sir, I know if he had acted a different
part from what he has done, he might have been
more popular than he is. I know that if he had ap-
proved of the Catholic claims without restrictions—if ,
he had approved of the violence of the Catholics, he '
might have enjoyed the sorry pm-eminence to which
others have aspired. I know he Might have been
conveyed from Back-lane to the Castle with all the
honours of a Procession, if he had had as strong a
desire for popularity as the Bishop of Norwich.—
(Hear, hear, from the Opposition.)—l can tell the
House, moreover, that he disdained the honours con.
ferred at the orgies of the Black Abbey, where the
health of the Prelate whom I have already mentioned
was drank ; and what, Sir, were the toasts which ac-
companied it; 64 The Marquis of Wellington, and
may he cease to be an instrument by his Victories to
continue the degradation of Irishmen."—(No, es,
from the Opposition.)—" Mr. Cobbett and an inde-
pendent Press."—(No, sin, again. )—I protest, Sir,
that I have made a faithful Raiment, accerslini to I

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Ido -41111a14411:-. •1s hie 4eadeso46.
re see2.llll697hia: Ihpersqral softy. 1
at the loth Um a ase dop(df kagh.) 'Ha y
ht HonowiablskOW • gis that of say Rik.bt Hon.
House, who saving k Ka. has formless is mine. Tbf
another Right Ho- Gentleman, Sit. has boasted of his
1 the debate, may be whilst its office, in coafermivf-with thi