posterity would remember with becoming | were fellow-subjects; that their blood was honour, the legislators who had wisely placed such guards, not round the church, but round its overseers. Let not the House however be impeded by the smaller obstacles any more than by those which are now removed: let it not, in its full march to the liberation of five millions of fellow-subjects, be stopped at the top of the hill, and turned back by his right hon. friend and his churchwarden [Hear! and laughter]. mingled in marriages; that it had often been mingled in the field; that the Catholic had gone before the Protestant in resistance to foreign dominion; that together they had framed and supported the constitution, and together they ought to enjoy it [Hear hear!]. The time was now come when public feeling was decidedly in favour of the concession, provided it were temperately carried, and provided those whom it was intended to relieve, did not hear, hear!]. For the temper of parliament he could answer; but for the temper of the Catholic clergy he could not be a guarantee. If, however, they had a spark of patriotism, or if they felt that love for their flocks which they pretended, they would not impede the progress of legislation by hopeless and interminable agitation! [Continued cheering]. Referring now to some general consi-dash the cup from their lips [Hear, derations, the right hon. gentleman expressed his decided opinion that the provision for the Catholic clergy ought to be made a matter of subsequent consideration. He desired the House to contemplate the Catholics in their real character, maintaining that, à priori, a church-of-England man would be more ready to admit to equal privileges one who disagreed merely on such a specula- The right hon. gentleman concluded a tive matter as the doctrine of transubstan- very argumentative and eloquent speech, tiation, than one who denied the great which we lament our inability to report fundamental doctrines of the Trinity, the at any length, from the late hour at which Atonement, and the Divinity of the Sa-he rose, by conjuring the House to pass viour. Yet every day dissenters were admitted to take the oath at the table, and to share the honours and labours of legislation. There were more points of agreement between the Church-of-England man and the Catholic, than between the Church-of-England man and many of the Dissenters. If the House went back to times of dangers and of terrors, was there more dread to be apprehended of the renewal of the fires of Smithfield as in the reign of Mary, than was to be feared of a repetition of the Acts of the Covenanters in the reign of Charles 1st? The character of the modern Roman Catholics was not to be sought from the preambles of the acts of Elizabeth, James 1st, or Charles 2nd, but from the Preambles of the Acts which had passed both in the English and Irish parliaments since 1778. Let not the House, then, dwell only on points of difference, without adverting also to those of resemblance: let it recollect that Catholics and Protestants were fellow-christians; that they this bill, regardless of those angry squabbles without doors and petty difficulties within, which must encompass every measure of such magnitude. He conjured them not to stop short from any feelings of false pride,-not to incur the responsibility of having taught a people to seek for general peace at their hands, and of then forcing them to retire back upon themselves. Let us rather, in the language of both Liturgies, exclaim Sursum Corda! let us raise our hearts to the Dispenser of all good, and with that elevation of soul, let us proceed in that great work which we have begun; and which, sooner or later, will find its own way to the final consummation, so devoutly to be wished by all good men. [The conclusion of the right hon. gentleman's speech was loudly and ardently cheered.] The House divided: Ayes, 216; Noes, 197: Majority for the third reading of the bill, 19. The bill was then read a third time, and passed. |