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self by the composition of such a bill. He refused to draw it up. The folly and the contradictions be upon the heads of those who drew it. They might have turned him out of office; but he would not be made such a dirty tool as to draw that bill. Let who would, he would not defile pen, or waste paper, by such an act of folly, and forfeit his character for common sense and honesty. He had, therefore, declined to have anything to do with it.

(Annual Register, for 1829, vol. 71, p. 55.)

212. Speech of Lord Plunkett for the Emancipation Bill

Annual Register

The speeches made in favour of the Emancipation Bill are in general far more dignified and logical than those of its opponents. The supporters of the measure rested their cause upon the argument of the inalienable right of every man to citizenship and equality under the law; and they buttressed their case with historical as well as polemical arguments. The speech which follows is indicative of the general attitude of the friends of emancipation.

Lord Plunkett said, that he had reserved himself for the purpose of hearing the unanswerable arguments against the bill, which lord Eldon on former occasions had threatened he would produce when the measure was fairly before the House.

As that noble and learned lord, however, had brought forth nothing but the ipse dixit of his own authority, unsustained either by ingenious argument, by historical deduction, or by an appeal to public and authenticated documents, he felt himself so far absolved from the necessity of refuting anticipated arguments for which he had prepared himself, that he would address his observations more particularly to the position that the bill was calculated to subvert the Protestant constitution.

According to lord Eldon, the established principle of the Reformation had been to exclude Roman Catholics from Parliament and from offices; and therefore it was that the Oath of Supremacy was framed. Now the 5th of Elizabeth did not go so far as to exclude Roman Catholics from sitting in that House, and not only was there an exception as to the House of Peers, but the reason of the exception was stated. The reason was this because the queen was otherwise assured, not of the religion, but of the loyalty of such Roman Catholics as were peers of Parliament. Then the Oath of Supremacy was a test, not of religion, but of loyalty. The

members of the lower House were called upon to take the oath. It was the policy of Elizabeth to gain the Catholics; and for that purpose she changed the Articles and the Liturgy of the Church of England, as framed by Edward 6th, and adopted the communion service, to suit the Roman Catholics, and to enable them to join in communion with the Protestants. Passages, containing an expressed denial of the real presence, were expunged; and for thirteen years after the Reformation did the Roman Catholics take the Oath of Supremacy, and join in communion with the Church of England. They continued to be admitted to all the offices of the state still towards the latter end of the reign of the Stuarts. The Roman Catholics then became suspected, not on account of their religion, but owing to their supposed adherence to the designs of the throne. The throne became first disaffected to the liberties of the subject; and from the reign of Charles 1st the Roman Catholics came to be considered as enemies to the state through their adherence to the king. In a subsequent reign the king himself was a Catholic; and, the throne being thus a convert to their religion, and making inroads upon the public liberty, the Roman Catholics became more and more suspected; and, in point of fact, though not of law, they were very generally excluded from Parliament in the reign of Charles 2nd because the people were prejudiced against them. Till the 25th Charles 2nd, the Roman Catholics had contrived occasionally to get into Parliament; and how did the Protestant leaders get them out of the House of Commons, as they took the Oath and Declaration? Why, they brought into operation the law against recusancy, which prohibited persons convicted of recusancy from coming within ten miles of the cities of London and Westminster, and thus effectually prevented them from doing duty in Parliament. They therefore got a conviction of recusancy, and then called for a new writ. This was a decisive proof that, before the 30th of Charles 2nd, there was nothing to prevent the Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament. That statute itself contained two enactments, the first, that Roman Catholics should not sit in Parliament without making the Declaration, and the second that persons not making the Declaration should be excluded from access to the king. There was a third enactment, which banished such persons ten miles from the cities of London and Westminster. This was a law of the land; and what had become of that law? That member of it, which

related to the penalties against recusancy, was gone; for all the laws relating to recusancy had been repealed. Then the enactment as to access to the king, that had also been repealed. So here was a limb of this immortal law lopped off; leaving only the mutilated bust of Titus Oates to represent this immortal statute, till the act of William 3rd. He would not pretend that there might not be good reason for enacting it, or that the Catholics might not be dangerous, or that they ought not to have been excluded from office owing to their adherence to the dangerous designs of the Crown. But what was meant by saying that that law was consummated at the Revolution? Was that act of 30th Charles 2nd incorporated in the Bill of Rights? No such thing. Did the Bill of Rights trouble itself with all the trumpery of the invocation of saints and transubstantiation? No such thing. The framers of that bill thought only of settling the principles of the constitution so far as they had been invaded, and they had not room in their heads for the consideration of such things as these. They scouted such trash and trumpery, whilst they were intent upon securing the rights and liberties of their fellow-subjects which had been invaded by the Crown. These wise and great men were no system-mongers, no grinders of theories or dogmas, but sound and practical statesmen; and no light toil had they incurred. There were thirteen particulars stated. The Bill of Rights did not say, upon abstract principle, that the Church and State are necessarily Protestants, but it stated—"Whereas it has been found by experience that it is necessary to the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom that the throne should be unalterably Protestant" and it then goes on to enact, that, should the king become a Papist, or marry a Papist, he should thereby forfeit his title to the throne, it being found by experience that such a security was necessary for this Protestant kingdom. He had been asked, whether this was a Protestant kingdom; he had been asked triumphantly, was this not a Protestant government, a Protestant Parliament? In one sense he admitted it was a Protestant kingdom, but did not exclude Papists. So he admitted that the Parliament was essentially and predominantly Protestant, and in that sense, but in no other, the Parliament was Protestant. The act of Ist of William 3rd forbade Papists to carry arms; this was considered as necessary to the security of this Protestant state. The principle of that act was transferred to the Bill of Rights, which recognized the claim of the Protestants to

carry arms, but did not refer to the right of the Roman Catholics to carry arms. Those, who argued by inference, took advantage of this; but it so happened that throughout the Bill of Rights this was the only passage the construction of which was hostile to the Roman Catholics; and this was the only passage in it which had been repealed. It had been repealed by an act of George 2nd, which also repealed the law by which Roman Catholics were forbidden access to the throne. By the law previous to 30th Charles 2nd, no person could be admitted into the army unless he had previously taken the Oath of the Declaration; but by that act, he could take the oath subsequent to taking the commission. Then came the act of William, saying that that provision was not a sufficient security, and that the oath must be taken previously. Then the present law precisely and practically repealed the act of William, for it restored the mattter to the state it was in at the period of the 25th Charles 2nd; and the act, for which lord Eldon had told their lordships he was responsible, had taken greater liberties with the Bill of Rights than the noble duke had done. Their lordships probably had not been apprised, when the act of 1817 passed, that they were repealing the act of king William. The act recited, "Whereas by certain laws now in existence, there were sundry embarrassments in respect to the oaths taken by the army and navy," and, in order to clear up doubts, and to assimilate one to the other, it enacted that the oaths prescribed by the former act need not be taken. Thus was there an utter abandonment of the act of William, and that too without providing any oath or security in its stead. The present bill did not give the Roman Catholics any benefit without an oath, an oath too, which combined in its language every possible security that such a form could afford; but under the act of the noble and learned lord, the provisions of king William's act were done away, and not even an oath was substituted in their stead.

(Annual Register for 1829, vol. 71, p. 92.)

213. The Duke of Wellington on Emancipation

Annual Register

The attitude of the Ministry was set forth in a brief speech by the duke of Wellington at the close of the debate. While there is little in the utterance beyond a personal explanation of the secrecy maintained, it is inserted as being the final word on the great question which had for so many years troubled the heart of England.

The debate was closed by a brief reply from the duke of Wellington. The apprehended danger to the Irish Church from the admission of a few Catholics into Parliament, he treated as futile, considering that the throne would be filled by a Protestant. Moreover, a fundamental article of the Union between the two countries was the union of the two Churches; and it was impossible that any mischief could happen to the Irish branch of this united Church, without destroying the union of the two countries. "A different topic," said his grace, "to which I wish to advert, is a charge brought against several of my colleagues, and also against myself, by the noble earl on the cross-bench, of a want of consistency in our conduct. My lords, I admit that many of my colleagues, as well as myself, did on former occasions vote against a measure of a similar description with this; and, my lords, I must say, that my colleagues and myself felt, when we adopted this measure, that we should be sacrificing ourselves and our popularity to that which we felt to be our duty to our sovereign and our country. We knew very well, that if we put ourselves at the head of the Protestant cry of 'No Popery,' we should be much more popular even than those who had excited against us that very cry. But we felt that in so doing we should have left on the interests of the country a burthen which must end in bearing them down, and further that we should have deserved the hate and execration of our countrymen. Then I am accused, and by a noble and learned friend of mine, of having acted with great secrecy respecting this measure. Now I beg to tell him, that he has done that to me in the course of this discussion which he complains of others having done to him; - in other words, he has, in the language of a right hon. friend of his and mine, thrown a large paving-stone instead of throwing a small pebble. I say, that if he accuses me of acting with secrecy on this question, he does not deal with me altogether fairly. He knows as well as I do how the Cabinet was constructed on this question; and I ask him, had I any right to say a single word to any man whatsoever upon this measure, until the person most interested in the kingdom upon it had given his consent to my speaking out? Before he accused me of secrecy, and of improper secrecy too, he ought to have known the precise day upon which I received the permission of the highest personage in the country, and had leave to open my mouth upon this measure. There is another point also on which a noble earl accused me of misconduct; and

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