free? Has it made Ireland happy? How is the wealth of Ireland proved? Is it by the naked, idle, suffering savages, who are slumbering on the mud floor of their cabins? In what does the loyalty of Ireland consist? Is it in the eagerness with which they would range themselves under the hostile banner of any invader for your destruction and for your distress? Is it liberty when men breathe and move among the bayonets of English soldiers? Is their happiness and their history anything but such a tissue of murders, burnings, hanging, famine, and disease as never existed in the annals of the world? This is the system which, I am sure, with very different intentions and different views of its effects, you are met to uphold. These are the dreadful consequences which those laws your petition prays may be continued, have produced upon Ireland. trade law I have seen within these few weeks a degree of wisdom in Some of t our mercantile law, such superiority to vulgar prejudice, views exclusive so just and so profound, that it seemed to me as if I was read- have beer ing the works of a speculative economist rather than the im- recently provement of a practical politician, agreed to by a legislative repealed assembly, and upon the eve of being carried into execution for the benefit of a great people. I rejoice that I have lived to see such an improvement in English affairs; that the stubborn resistance to all improvement, the contempt of all scientific reasoning, and the frigid adhesion to every stupid error, which so long characterized the proceedings of this country, is fast giving way to better things, under better men, placed in better circumstances. I confess it is not without severe pain that in the midst of Religious all this expansion and improvement I perceive that in our pro- monopoly fession we are still calling for the same exclusion, still asking abolished that the same fetters may be riveted on our fellow-creatures, also still mistaking what constitutes the weakness and misfortune of the Church for that which contributes to its glory, its dignity, and its strength. Sir, there are two petitions at this moment in this House, against two of the wisest and best measures which 300. An favor of reli gious tests for civil officers (condensed) the bad passions of man. Of the Catholic Emancipation I shall say that it will be the foundation stone of a lasting ligious peace; that it will give to Ireland not all that it wa but what it most wants, and without which no other boon will be of any avail. The proposition to free Catholics and Dissenters fro the old restrictions of the law was warmly opposed the time by many eminent Englishmen, and especial by the Anglican clergy. One of the most temperate an reasonable statements of the Anglican party was mad by Sir Robert Inglis, a member of Parliament for th University of Oxford, in a speech made in the House of Commons against the proposal to remove the religious tests imposed on Dissenters. Some established opinions every government, in every age argument in and in every country, with one single and late exception, has recognized and enforced. Some established form of religion there has ever been in every other civilized State; all reason, all experience, all history, ancient and modern, the United States of America alone excepted, justify such a measure on the part of every government. Now the very idea of an authorized religion implies some preference. I cannot conceive how an establishment can exist without some special protection and preference. The question then follows, What preference of those belonging to that establishment, what exclusion of others, may be necessary to its preservation? I am very willing to admit that the least degree of exclusion, the lightest restraint, which can meet and satisfy that object ought to be imposed. But some exclusion, some restraint, is inseparable from the idea of the public and recognized establishment of a Church. No question The question, in the present case, is not let it ever be Church establishment inseparably connected with our State; and that establishment and that union we are bound to maintain. I am to consider, then, whether, in the view of preserving the Church, more grievous restraints. are imposed on those who dissent from it, than the necessity of the case requires. And here I cannot but remark the extraordinary fact, that for thirtysix or thirty-seven years there has hardly been uttered one complaint to Parliament on the subject of these restraints. The silence of the Dissenters may safely be considered as a proof that the grievances under the Test and Corporation Laws were not much felt; were not, in degree, so excessive as they are now described to be. sacram office I come, then, to the mode, the particular test, applied by Receivi these laws for the purpose of securing the Church. Receiving only an the Sacrament is not the qualification, but the evidence of eviden qualification, namely, the evidence of being a member of the fitness Church of England. The Church requires all her members to receive the Holy Communion three times every year; and the law requires only that you should give evidence of having done that which your own Church has already required you to do, whether you take office or not; the constitution assuming that you are a member of the Church, or, at least, not so hostile to it as to refuse communion with it. constit The original laws are kept in existence, to be enforced only The la when some great necessity shall arise; no one wishes to enforce protect them on the one side, and no great body of men, I should and the have thought, felt them a grievance on the other. They are at Church the same time the power which the constitution of England keeps in her own hand to protect the Church and herself, whenever such a combination of circumstances shall again arise as that which, two centuries ago, overthrew the altar and the throne, the Church and the State, in one common destruction. Against the recurrence of these dangers the laws in ques- The wi tion were framed. Something has been said by the noble lord, and still more by the honorable member who seconded the good er motion of our ancesto and something also by the honorable gentleman who for us The adoption of this reform will only lead to new demands indeed, the best, because it is the most frequent, joke of those who use it. Now, Sir, I am willing to admit that in physical science new and improved views are every day opening on mankind; but in moral science, and even in the arts of governing men, I am yet to learn that we are superior to our ancestors. The foundations of all moral truth were laid in a revelation not of yesterday. The principles of political government are to be found in the great authors of antiquity. Nowhere can you find more intimate knowledge of human nature in society than in the ten first books of Livy, in Tacitus, and in Thucydides; and in respect to the institutions of our own country, I am content with the principles of the constitution as established at the Revolution [of 1688]. . . . The Dissenters of the present day enjoy the fullest rights of conscience; and I am willing to admit that there is nothing in their overt acts from which I apprehend any danger. With some of them I am intimate, for many more I have the highest respect; but it is perfectly clear that the principles of Dissenters conscientiously opposed to the Church can never give the same undivided 'allegiance to the constitution in Church and State which a churchman does. The principles, if carried to the same extent as formerly, would produce the same results. The laws which restrain Dissenters are, and will ever be, left inoperative, so long as those principles slumber also; but I think that they should be retained. In fact, a richly endowed Church, with all its privileges and immunities, will always be an object of jealousy to those who differ from it; but, connected as it is with the constitution, the State is bound to protect it against any dangers from any quarters. Dangers will always exist; and if the present disabilities were removed, and Dissenters placed on the fullest equality as to power with the Church, some new question, perhaps of property, would immediately be started, on which new struggles and new dangers would arise. The question of tithes would probably come; and as we should have followed the example of America in giving no preference to any Church, we should be called upon to follow it further, and to enact that no man should pay anything to any pastor but his own [cries of hear! hear !]. Section 84. Humanitarian Legislation The English criminal law at the opening of the nineteenth century prescribed the death penalty for about two hundred and fifty different offenses, and it was only the humane spirit of the jurors which prevented hundreds of persons guilty of minor offenses from being hung. In other words, jurors would often declare guilty persons innocent of crime in order to save them from the gallows, and thus there was great uncertainty in the enforcement of the law, although at times it was carried out with shocking cruelty. As we have seen, Beccaria, the celebrated Italian publicist, protested in the eighteenth century against the barbarity of criminal law in Europe; his protest was taken up in England by many eminent reformers, who urged that the number of capital offenses should be reduced to one or two, that punishment should be meted out according to the nature of each crime, and that only those laws should be retained which could actually be enforced. Among these eminent reformers was Sir Samuel Romilly, who, in a speech made in favor of repealing some of the old laws, described the most objectionable features of the criminal code, including flogging in the army. Sir Samuel Romilly moved for leave to bring in bills to 301. Sir repeal the Acts 10 and 11, William III; 12 Anne; and Samuel Romilly 24 Geo. II (which make the crimes of stealing privately in a attacks the shop, goods of the value of five shillings; or in a dwelling cruel criminal house or on board a vessel in a navigable river, property of law of the value of forty shillings, capital felonies); and spoke to (condensed) the following effect: England There is probably no other country in the world in which Harsh laws so many and so great a variety of human actions are punish- not really able with loss of life as in England. These sanguinary statutes, executed |