Star.
London, England, 1822-05-01 00:00:00

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I°t,k •411 1A014.4161 not .satfat. at .thatl isle iherel7-
Was aa, Imlilslat again* the fellgion and iihr
tlspea:tale :~rl!—.(Heari:kaar)., It could oe"
ethat opinion would agree on- the bee
L etet„. . .
tradition von, be &WM owillliwiwl
To Oboe, tia bob isool the win;
Sidevediag daps did colly eall,
Belintat nashing, air Wining an !
--Supposing that he (Mr. Peel) granted that datees
disaYeeiles were a tissue of lies, still there were cir-
cumstances ofdangerwhicb predisposed oar ancestors
to hearken to stories disadvantageous to the Catholics.
Charles 11. had endeavoured to relax the laws as re-
spected the Catholics, and to destroy the liberties of
the country. Let them recollect the Secret Treaty
with Louis XIV. This was proved from the papers
: of Coleman, who had been Secretary to the Date of
York. It was but right that the House should look
at all the bearings of this case. One of the articles
of the Secret Treaty was to assist Charles IL with
troops and money, to the amount of £200,000, in
order to enable hitt) to declare himself a Catholic,
The advisers of this Secret Treaty were three Catholic
Peers—Lords Arlington, Clifford, and Arundel of
Wardour. He, therefore, denied that the Exclusion
Act was passed through duress alone. The Acts of
that day were intended to settle the Protestant cha-
racter of the Constitution and Government of this
Empire; for they were all supported by Lord Somers
and the Whigs of the Revolution, at which time, too,
they were all of them confirmed. They were done to
prevent the danger of having an avowed Roman Cacho-
lac on the Throne. If it had been explained that the
Constitution of England was fund a mentally Protestant,
then the wonder would have ceased. He should have
hoped that his Right Honouratile Friend would not
have argued from the former concessions to the Ca-
tholics, that still further concessions should be made.
But he was firmly of opinion that the laws against
the Catholics should not be carried beyond the spirit
in which they were enacted. But the measure of his
Right Hon. Friend would . not correct the present
anomaly of the Catholic Peerage. How could an
Irish Catholic, like an Irish Protestant Peer, ever
be a candidate.for a seat in the House of Commons,
when he would be met by oaths which he could not,
upon his principles, take? Though, by the present
Bill, the Duke of Norfolk would be enabled to sit in
the House of Peers, he could accept no favour from
the Crown. He would therefore postpone the subject,
till it could be taten into consideration in all its bear-
ings, and embracing all classes of Catholic subjects.
He would ask of those who thought securities neces-
sary, whether it was wise to open one branch of the
Legislature without any securities at all? That omis-
sion would render the demand of securities highly
invidious, as the Members of the House of Commons
sat only for seven years, but the Peers for life.—(Loud
cheering)..—lt had been said that the Government of
Ireland was conducted on too narrow a basis, and
that her population should be admitted to all the pri-
vileges of the Constitution. He would ask such per-
sons if any object could be gained by the partial con-
cession to the Catholic Peers? If the time had arrived
for the admission of Catholic Peers to seats, yet the
consideration of their peculiar case should be post-
poned till the general question should be investigated,
and the requisite securities be propounded. He would
not move any previous question, but should give the
proposition a decided negative—(Loud cheering).
Lord F. GOWER was clear as to the justice of
the claims of the Catholic Peers. The House was
not to follow and to sanction the rash acts that had
been enacted under very different circumstances, and
in very different times. Could he believe that the
six Catholic Peers, whom he hoped the vote of the
House would aid in restoring to their rights, sere the
rankest bigots that ever issued from the Escurial,
still he could see no danger in their admission to the
privileges of their ancestors. Though he wished that
the prison-doors should be opened to all, he should
then confine himself to the view of the Right Hon.
Mover, to which he gave his cordial assent.
Lord NUGENT thought no constitutional grounds
could be adduced against the Catholic claims. He
was one of those who thought the claims of the Ca-
tholics to be claims of justice and right, and to which
nothing could be validly opposed, excepb'a -strong
case of State necessity, which had long ceased to
exist. From the very nature of the enactments at
was clear they were only temporary. One of the de-
clarations w ch Protestants were called on to make
against trans bstantiation was never allowed by
Is\l
Queen Elizabeth to be called in question; and in de-
'fence of which Martin Luther wrote—(Hear, hear).
Though the body whose rights the House was dis-
cussing was small, yet they consisted of the oldest
of the Nobility, and their titles were enrolled among
the heroic ages of England. To the particular mea-
sure he felt some objections, and should he vote for
it, it must be in the hope that the objectionable parts
of the Bill would be done away, upon the principle
of general concession—(Hear, hear).
Mr. WABRE said, he was an advocate for conci-
liation to the Catholics. The great Lord Chatham
bad well said, in answer to some objections which
were urged against the policy of employing the High-
landers, in consequence of their Jacobite principles,
that he had found in the Highlands a brave and gal-
lant race of men, against whom unjust prejudices
were entertained, that he hai taken- them under his
protection, that he had called them forth to fight the
battles of their country, and that his expectations had
not been disappointed—(Hear).—He (Mr. Warre)
doubted not, that if the disabilities under which our
Catholic brethren laboured were removed, there would
be found among them, on all occasions, some of the
most useful and valuable Members of the Legislature.
Mr. R. MARTIN said, that it was only from want
of time that the table of the House had not been
covered with Petitions in favour of the present mea-
sure. All who were in favour of Catholic emanci-
pation were bound to support the present measure.
Tithe Right Hon. Gentleman, the Member for Oxford,
bad failed, it was because he had to grapple with a
subject that could not be overcome. In answer to
objection of the Right Hon. Gentleman, he would
thes
say that the question was not what had been the con-
duct of Catholics centuries ago, but what was it at
present ?—(Hear, hear).—That objection cf the Right
Hon. Gentleman put him in mind of a story, in a
book which he might be justified in calling classic—
lie meant 4scip s Fables
,!—(A laugh),He found
there that a wolf .a a lamb went to drink. at ,the
same stream, " You muddy the water," said the wolf.
" How can hat be, Sir," said the lamb, " when 1

Almon •
Great Britain their hereditary honour* add Pgitfiltges
—some of which 'rights it ought to he recollected
were partly restored already—for they were, infect,
Councillors and advisers of the Crown—and the
object of his Right Hon. Friend's Bill was
.oisly to
bestow the right of giving that advice publicly, which
they were now able to give in private—(Hear, hear).
—This motion merely called upon Parliament to re-
verse an act of attainder, that had its origin in per-
jury and falsehood, an Act passed at a moment of
terror and delusion, occasioned by the most odious
and abominable plot that ever was set on foot against
the lives, the property, the honours, and privileges
of innocent men. The great object which the Legis-
la:ure at the time proposed to itself was to secure the
Protestantism of the Throne. The person who then
filled it was supposed to be a Roman Catholic, though
the proofs were not then so strong in support of such
a supposition, as those which had been since brought
to light. The presumptive heir was known to be a
Roman Catholic, and the consequence was that in the
auaiety to secure the Protestantism of the Throne, the
innocent branch of the Legislature was attainted on
account of the infirmity of the branch that was guilty.
The Right Hon. Gentleman, however, (Mr. Peel)
took a different view of the subject, and said, the
measure of excluding the Catholic Peers did not rest
either upon an apprehension of want of Protestantism
in the Crown or upon the plot of Titus Oates, but
upon another plot which it was well known the Ro-
man Catholics were carrying on at the time under
the sanction of the Duke of York, for the establish-
ment of their religion. He would admit that the
Roman Catholics at that period were not well af-
fected to the State; that they entertained designs
hostile to a Protestant succession, and • might have
been engaged in plots for -the re-establishment of
their religion, but they entertained such designs be-
cause they were well affected to the Throne, be-
lieving it to be Catholic. But admitting for a mo-
ment that the law for excluding the Peers had its
origin in this, was it a reason why the law should be
continued when the circumstances on which it was
grounded had long ceased to exist? Were the Ra-
man Catholics disaffected now ? Was there any appre-
hension of want of Protestantism in the Throne ?
His Right Hon. Friend had further attempted to for-
tify his argument by coming down to the Revolution;
but these -laws formed no part of the Revolution—
they formed no part of the Bill of Rights—(Hear).—
The Oath of Supremacy, indeed, was mentioned in
the Bill of Rights, but the reason was this :—Queen
Elizabeth had claimed to be the Supreme Head of
the Church ; that claim, in spiritual matters, was
subsequently given up, and it became necessary to
change the oath in that respect; but the oath was not
a fundamental principle or doctrine. He was at a
loss to know how the sacred name of the Revolution
could be brought to bear upon the Act of Charles 11.
What were the laws of the Revolution ? Was it
meant that all the laws existing against the Catholics
were to go by that designation ? If so, we had been
doing away the glorious Revolution for the last fifty
years—(Hear, Fear).—The Act of William the Third
against Recusants—an Act which prevented Catho-
lics from coming within five miles of London—that
'atrocious Act, which deprived them of education, of
property, and religion, was one of these, and upon
the same reasoning its repeal must be considered
as infringement of the principles of the Revolution.
What was the history of the odious Acts passed at this period ?
There existed at that time a party in this country, which was act-
ing in continual hostility to King William-•-a Monarch, whose
whole life was passed in a struggle against every specks of in-
tolerance. This party, constituting the Ultra-Protestants of that
day, introduced those Bills with a view that they might not be
passed, and merely for the purpose of embarrassing the Govern-
ment ; for they could hardly suppose that any Parliament would
'enact laws so odious and unjust, that the comments passed on
them by Bishop Burnett at the time, and afterivards by Mr.
Burke, could hardly aggravate their enormity. But the party
who introduced those laws were deceived with regard to the
supposed conduct of their opponents • for-the latter allowed them
to pass with all their enormities, ;hey well knowing that it
would be absolutely impossible to put them in force—(Hear).—
In this manner these insolent and profligate factions, as if they
were playing with balk and counters, made a sport of the fortunes
and the liberties of their fellow-creatures. Other sets of parsecs-
don have been acts of malice. This was a subversion of junks
from wantonness and petulance. The. whole of this Act had
been repealed. What then became of the glorious Revolution?
It was completely at an end if these Acts formed part of it. The
same argument might with equal justice have been urged against
the measure of 1791, as that now employed agaiust the motion
of his Right Hon. Friend (Mr. Canning), and the same unfounded
appeal might with equal propriety have been then made to party
prejudices In support of the laws of the glorious Revolution. It
was the happy mixture of deli and religious liberty that gave
our Constitution its highest claims to respect, and no man could
be a greater enemy to a Protestant Ding, or a Protestant Par-
liament, than he who would make them inconsistent with the
liberties of all, or dependent upon any system of exclusion
for their support. Mr. Burke had said, that if ever he could
be brought to believe that the interest of the Protestant Church
was necessarily opposed to the civil sights of the People, he
' would then tremble for the Protestant Religion—(Hear !).
. His only object in rising was to remove the possibility of in-
ferring from his silence that he did not approve of the motion of
his Right Hon. Friend (Mr. Canning), or would net be ready
' to give this great measure of policy and justice his support, in
' whatsoever shape, or in whatever portion it might be brought
forward. It was a debt of justice they owed their Catholic fel-
low-subjects, and whatever pan of the question might be suc-
cessful, he would hail only in proportion AS it was a payment of
' that debt to a greater or smaller amount—(ilear, hear). Every
hour they delayed it he should feel that they were 11994.::
themselves parties to an act of injustice. He could ventwa, to
say that the measure would be revered by the pro* of Ireland,
as one of grace and concession—that no Roman Catholic of that
country, whether Peer or Commoner, would consider it ie any
other light than as a measure of justice, conciliation, axed
However the success of the great general question
ferred, it would be important to find it advance e
towards completion. , On the merits and justice of
now proposed, not a single word had been said by
Honuursble Friend in opposition to it. lie confined
geneail observation an the policy and necessity of ti
when they were enacted, but said not a word against
pricty of repealing them now. It was a claim of rigi.

1

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, • . -- •
I 61.1.." "116-iie't6r.th 7.6 nor • iZybobtea-'
ri anallystb- ase as yearrago).dien," said the wolf ; .-- qt.:
NW net be ffibtlosdif oft Met zias difti,littie onlemsr .. . .
, beestaz Of act bOlo at tha dose you speak ec.i. tepW•
- IS Then some efyoor-aneestenididt and-t ...
',Anse, for* eat yotsurarreantioned ' - ').
. Mr. PI. said, be ' leatio,', *es.
arsatirot=t.
on da aiieatiott of the ouae.-iith
hat datees negative to the inspeessina which seemed so he gins-
re were cir- telly felt, that the present maser. was ilhelEto ak-
ar ancestors "dere with thOr.vierld clte• He filly,, in
e Catholics. it, not only nA.14e17 to advance tbe smesore,
laws as re. but as in itself an- essential net of *doe. v kationr„
liberties of when he (Mr. Plunkett) brbught forward' i lean,
cret Treaty some °lneacies Were thrown in the ivativ*liinri-
tile papers ties; but happily the present assasare would be di-
be Date of vested of all such difficulties. The propenaLof•his
should look Right -Hon. Friend went to restore to the Peers of
- . . -

1144.1 11l .10 a.,
ion, anti relief.
a might be de-
even one step
of Ow measure
I by his Right
Med himself to
of those laws
ping the pre.
ght and justice.