CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL.
After the above bill had passed, Sir Francis Burdett brought forward a plan, in which the principal bill for the removal of Catholic civil disabilities was accompanied by two others: one to enact a state provision for the Roman Catholic clergy, and the other to raise the Irish franchise from forty shillings to ten pounds. The principal of these bills passed the commons with large majorities; but it was clearly foreseen that it would not in the lords. In the interval of the second and third readings the Duke of York, in presenting a petition to the upper house from the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, declared that the concession of Catholic claims was repugnant, not only to the king’s coronation, but to the principles of the constitution. He added:—“I will oppose them to the last moment of my life, whatever may be my situation, so help me God!” This declaration was extolled by those who opposed the claims, as the most manly, patriotic, and noble expression of sentiment that could be uttered at a critical moment; and it was printed in letters of gold, and became their watchword. On the other hand it gave rise to bitterness of feeling among that class of politicians who were in favour of the bill. Its effect on them was strongly displayed by an intemperate sally into which, on the very next night, Mr. Brougham broke out in the house of commons against the speech of the royal duke, in which he was several times called to order. The great bulk of the nation, however, concurred in the principles to which his royal highness had declared his adherence, from an honest conviction that such concessions to the Roman Catholics were inconsistent with the coronation oath, and fraught with danger to the cause of Protestantism.
The bill was carried up to the lords, and read a first time on the 11th of May; and on the 17th Lord Donoughmore moved the second reading. He was supported by Lords Camden, Darnley, Lansdowne. Harrowby, and Fitzwilliam, and the Bishop of Norwich; and opposed by Lords Colchester, Longford, and Liverpool, and the Bishop of Chester, and the lord chancellor. The debate presented little novelty; on the one side the right of the Catholics to political equality was insisted upon, together with the innoxiousness of their religious creed, &c.; while, on the other hand, it was contended that, with respect both to the nature of the religion in its political consequences, and to the inconsistency of admitting Catholic elements of power into a Protestant constitution, the reasons for excluding Catholics ought to be as operative now as at any other period. The most remarkable circumstance in the debate, was the vehemence with which Lord Liverpool opposed the measure. In allusion to the grand argument in favour of the bill, that of conciliation, he remarked:—“I cannot bring myself to view this measure as one of peace and conciliation. Whatever it might do in this respect in the first instance, its natural and final tendency will be to increase dissensions and to create discord, even where discord did not previously exist. I entreat your lordships to consider the aspect of the times. The people are taught to consider Queen Mary as having been a wise and virtuous queen, and that the world had gained nothing whatever by the Reformation. Nay, more than this: it was now promulgated that James the Second was a wise and virtuous prince, and that he fell in the glorious cause of toleration. Could the house be aware of these facts, and not see that a great and powerful engine was at work to effect the object of re-establishing the Catholic religion throughout these kingdoms? And if once established should we not revert to a state of ignorance, with all its barbarous and direful consequences? Let the house consider what had been the result of those laws, what had been the effects of that fundamental principle of the British constitution which they were now called upon to alter with such an unsparing hand. For the last hundred and thirty years the country had enjoyed a state of religions peace, a blessing that had arisen out of the wisdom of our laws. But what had been the state of the country for the hundred and thirty years immediately preceding that period? England had been the scene of the most sanguinary religious contentions. The blessings of the latter period were to be attributed solely to the nature of those laws which granted toleration to all creeds, at the same time that they maintained a just, a reasonable, and a moderate superiority in favour of the established church. Their lordships were now called upon to put Protestants and Catholics on the same footing; and if they consented to do this, certain he was, that the consequence would be religious dissension, and not religious peace.” Upon a division the bill was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and seventy-eight against one hundred and thirty. The two auxiliary bills, called, by way of derision, “the wings,” after this failure were of course abandoned, although they also would have passed the commons by large majorities.