whose doctrines he abhorred, and from whom he never demanded religious consolation? Did he (Mr. Canning) therefore say that the tithe should be withdrawn from the protestant clergyman? No such thing. To every thing which could ameliorate the system of collecting it, to every thing which tended to shift the burden of it from those who could not to those who could bear it, he was willing to give his consideration; but to any measure which went to invade the property of the Irish protestant church, and to alienate the funds which had been assigned by our ancestors for its support, he was not prepared to give even a momentary assent. Letting that point, however, pass for the present, he must remark, that when his hon. friend talked about the contingent hardship of taxing the protestant to pay the catholic clergyman, he seemed to have forgotton the existing hardship of taxing the catholic to pay the protestant clergyman. The regium donum to the presbyterian church was the very same measure in point of principle which it was now proposed to carry into execution with regard to the catholic. It was willingly paid by the country to the one; and he could see no good reason why it should not also be paid to the other. He had thought it fair to state the impression on his mind with regard to the disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders, and to the provision for the catholic clergy, because many of the gentlemen who had taken a share in this discussion had coupled their support of the present bill with that of those two measures. For the sake of their

support he should be anxious, if he could, to vote in favour of those measures; but in case they should not be carried, he would not say that he would withdraw his sup→ port from the present bill. He did not pretend to wed himself for life to either of those measures; but to the great question-that question which involved the future tranquillity of Ireland and the general welfare of the whole empire-he declared now, as he had declared before, that he was wedded for ever. There was one other subject on which he wished to say a few words before he concluded. He had already considered how far this question affected the internal situation of Ireland. The house ought to reflect, that in proportion as we became great and powerful, and as our resources outgrew the resources of other nations, it was not impossible,nay, it was rather probable,--that among nations, as frequently happened among individuals, an invidious feeling would rise up against our pre-eminence. Other nations would look for consolation in any weakness or defect they might observe, either in our form of government, or in the condition of our empire. And when they were engaged in such a task, where would they look more readily than to Ireland? They would fasten, as if by instinct, on the state in which we kept the catholic population of that country. They would say, "There is the weakness-there is the vulnerable point of England;" and the worst of it would be, that they would say this with great semblance of truth. Insensible as the house might think the country to attack, it was his duty to tell it, that it was cherishing

cherishing a wound which was seated so near to its most vital parts, that no great violence would be wanted to render it fatal. He advised the house to disappoint those who wished us ill, by rendering our power united in that quarter, where they expected to find it divided, by closing the wound which had long remained open and bleeding, and by taking care that before we were again called upon to vindicate the national honour, it was so far healed that not even a cicatrice was left behind it. Such a state of things was as possible as it was desirable; and his earnest prayer was, that they would adopt such measures as would tend to accelerate so blessed a consummation.

Mr. Peel. The house would, he was sure, believe him, when he stated that nothing could be more gratifying to himself individually, than to be spared the painful duty of addressing it upon this occasion.

The subject, though important in itself, was one on which he had so often obtained an indulgent hearing from the house, that he felt considerable reluctance in claiming it once more, and that reluctance was rather increased than diminished, when he recollected that he had not only to follow his right hon. friend, but also to state the grounds on which he differed from him in opinion. His right hon. friend knew with what cordiality he (Mr. Peel) agreed with him upon every other occasion; and would therefore readily give him credit for sincerity, when he declared that it gave him the utmost concern to differ from him

on the present. But if he saw greater danger and less benefit arising from this bill than his right

hon. friend did, if he thought that less evil would accrue to the country by adhering to the existing system, than by departing from it, he was sure that he should not lose the esteem of his right hon. friend in publicly stating the grounds on which he came to so different a conclusion. Before he noticed the various topics to which his right hon. friend had alluded, he would begin with that which appeared to form the chief feature in the present debate-he meant the conversion of several members who had formerly taken the same view of this question that he was now going to take. He had heard, and with the most perfect conviction of his sincerity, the avowal of the hon. member for Armagh, that he had changed his opinion upon it. If he (Mr. Peel) had changed his own opinion, he should have been most ready to avow it; but as he had not changed it, he trusted that his hon. friend would give him the same credit for purity of motive in retaining it that he gave to him (Mr. Brownlow) in abandoning it. On this question, he had always pursued a course which he considered a course of moderate opposition to the claims of the catholics. His opposition to them was decided, but unmixed, he trusted, with any feelings of ill-will or animosity. He never said that the number of petitions presented against them was an insuperable bar to conceding them; he had never encouraged the presentation of any petitions. If no petitions had been presented on the subject, he should have acted upon his own judginent, and should have opposed the claims, as he now intended to oppose them, just as he should have admitted that, had

the

the petitions been ten times as numerous as they now were, they formed no insuperable bar to the granting of the claims, supposing the house felt that the alarm which had given rise to them had no justifiable foundation. He therefore agreed with his right hon. friend, that though the number of petitions which had recently been presented was an indication that this measure, if carried into a law, would not give universal satisfaction, still it left the house in perfect liberty to grant the claims of the catholics, if it were of opinion that in point of equity and expediency they ought to be granted. To return, however, to the point from which he had unintentionally digressed. He had been noticing the conversion of his hon. friend the member for Armagh, and had been proceeding to offer a few remarks on the nature of it. His hon. friend had said, that in consequence of the attention he had given to the evidence which had been tendered before a recent committee, the ground on which he had formerly opposed emancipation had been entirely cut away from under him. If that were the case, he could only say that it convinced him that the grounds upon which his hon. friend had opposed it, had always been very different from those upon which he opposed it. His hon. friend declared that his opposition to the catholics had relaxed, because he had heard Dr. Doyle deny that it was a tenet of the catholic church that the pope had power to excommunicate princes and to depose them from their sovereignty-that faith should not be kept with heretics,--and that the temporal power of the pope was 1825.

not admitted in Ireland. Now this was not the first time that all these tenets had been solemnly disclaimed by the catholic church. Had his hon. friend been so long in the habit of opposing the catholic claims without hearing of the answers of the foreign universities to the queries propounded to them by Mr. Pitt? If he had at all examined into the point, he would have found that all the answers received by Mr. Pitt contained an express denial of the three tenets he had just mentioned; he would have found the same denial avouched in the oath which the catholics now took; he would have found that they had long abandoned, in word at least, the temporal authority of the pope; and therefore, if he was now satisfied, for the first time, upon these topics, he had not attended with sufficient care to the evidence which had already been collected and submitted to the notice of parliament. But, said his hon. friend, "matters cannot long stand as they now are; and therefore, in order to bring them to some better arrangement, I will vote for the second reading of this bill." His hon. friend, however, went on to add, that unless some other measures were attached to it in the committee, his assent would be recalled, and he should oppose it on the third reading. For his own part, he (Mr. Peel) must confess that he was somewhat surprised by the conduct of his hon. friend. His hon. friend said that he voted for the bill because he wished to have a better settlement of matters than now existed; and yet, if the measures to which he alluded were not carried, he was going to pursue that

vernment was, and where it was to be found explained. The doctrine of the church of England was to be found in what were called the Thirty-nine Articles. Amongst those articles he found one containing a protest against the establishment of the church of Rome. When, therefore, a clergyman of the church of England heard that measures were proposed in parliament for paying professors of that very religion against which he was bound in the discharge of his functions to protest, what was there in his religious creed to prevent him from petitioning firmly but respectfully against such a measure? In the articles of the church of England it was stated that the administration of the sacrament in a language which the vulgar could not understand, was contrary to the word of God that the adoration of saints, the worshipping of images, and the sacrifice of the mass were not sanctioned by the bible; and that the pope had no jurisdiction, either temporal or spiritual, within this realm. Now, when the clergyman of the church of England was told that the doctrine, discipline, and government of his church was "established permanently and inviolably," and yet saw that it was intended to erect a modified establishment for another church which held as articles of implicit faith those articles which it condemned as contrary to the bible, and as unsanctioned by the word of God, had he not reason for thinking that the time was at length come in which his duty compelled him to introduce into his petition matter which trenched closely upon

theological discussion? He must confess that he was himself somewhat surprised at the two first clauses in the preamble of the present bill. They were as follows:-" Whereas the protestant succession to the imperial crown of this united kingdom and its dependencies, is, by the act for the further limitation of the crown, and the better securing the liberties of the subject, established permanently and inviolably: and whereas the protestant episcopal church of England and Ireland, and the doctrine, discipline, and government thereof, and likewise the protestant presbyterian church of Scotland, and the doctrine, discipline, and government thereof, are, by the respective acts of union between England and Scotland, and between Great Britain and Ireland, therein severally established permanently and inviolably." Now, why were these two clauses introduced into this bill? There was no clause in it which provided for the permanent and inviolable security of the protestant establishment. These clauses had some connexion with the first bill that was introduced by the late Mr. Grattan; for they were there followed by a third clause to this effect:-"And whereas it would tend to promote the interest of the same, and strengthen our free constitution, of which they are an essential part, if the civil and military disqualifications under which his Majesty's Roman-catholic subjects now laboured were removed." That clause was omitted in the present bill; for to say that the privileges which it conferred upon the catholics were intended to promote the interest of the church of England, and to strengthen

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