sovereign from the throne of his inheritance, it could scarcely be allowed that the councils of a Protestant king should be directed by Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics, it was argued, would not be fit persons to sit in Parliament, so long as they refused to take the oath of supremacy, which merely renounced foreign dominion and jurisdiction. In Ireland, their admission would increase the influence of the priesthood in elections, and array the property of the country on one side, and its religion and numbers on the other. The Duke of Cumberland opposed the prayer of the petition, as fatal to all the principles upon which the House of Hanover had been called to the throne. Every apprehension and prejudice which could be appealed to, in opposition to the claims of the Roman Catholics, was exerted in this debate. The pope, their master, was the slave and tool of Napoleon. If intrusted with power, they would resist the payment of tithes, and overthrow the established church. Nay, Catholic families would reclaim their forfeited estates, which for five generations had been in the possession of Protestants or had since been repurchased by Catholics. After two nights' debate, Lord Grenville's motion was negatived by a majority of 129.1

Mr. Fox's

Commons,

1805.

Mr. Fox also offered a similar motion to the Commons, founded upon a petition addressed to that House. The people whose cause he was advocating, motion in the amounted, he said, to between a fourth and a May 13th, fifth of the entire population of the United Kingdom. So large a portion of his fellow-subjects had been excluded from civil rights, not on account of their religion, but for political causes which no longer existed. Queen Elizabeth had not viewed them as loyal subjects of a Protestant queen. The character and conduct of the Stuarts had made the people distrustful of the Catholics. At the time of the Revolution "it was not a Catholic, but a Jacobite, you wished to restrain." In Ireland, again, the restrictions upon

1 Contents, 49; Non-contents, 178. Hans. Deb., 1st Ser., iv. 843.

Catholics were political and not religious. In the civil war which had raged there, the Catholics were the supporters of James, and as Jacobites were discouraged and restrained. The Test Act of Charles II. was passed because the sovereign himself was suspected; and Catholic officers were excluded, lest they should assist him in his endeavors to subvert the constitution. There was no fear, now, of a Protestant king being unduly influenced by Catholic ministers. The danger of admitting Catholics to Parliament was chimerical. Did any one believe that twenty Catholic members would be returned from the whole of Ireland? 1 In reply to this question, Dr. Duigenan asserted that Ireland would return upwards of eighty Catholic members, and the English boroughs twenty more, thus forming a compact confederacy of 100 members, banded together for the subversion of all our institutions in church and state.

He was answered eloquently and in a liberal spirit by Mr. Grattan, in the first speech addressed by him to the Imperial Parliament. The general discussion was not distinguished, on either side, by much novelty.

The speech of Mr. Pitt serves as a landmark, denoting the position of the question at that time. He frankly admitted that he retained his opinion, formed at the time of the Union, that Catholics might be admitted to the united Parliament, "under proper guards and conditions," without "any danger to the established church or the Protestant constitution." But the circumstances which had then prevented him from proposing such a measure "had made so deep, so lasting an impression upon his mind, that so long as those circumstances continued to operate, he should feel it a duty imposed upon him, not only not to bring forward, but not in any manner to be a party in bringing forward or in agitating this question." At the same time he deprecated its agitation by others under circumstances most unfavorable to its settlement. Such a measure would be generally repugnant to

1 Hans. Deb., 1st Ser., iv. 834-854.

1

members of the established church; to the nobility, gentry, and middle classes, both in England and Ireland; assuredly to the House of Lords, which had just declared its opinion; 1 and, as he believed, to the great majority of the House of Commons. To urge forward a measure, in opposition to obstacles so insuperable, could not advance the cause; while it encouraged delusive hopes, and fostered religious and political animosities.2

Mr. Windham denied that the general sentiment was against such a measure; and scouted the advice that it should be postponed until there was a general concurrence in its favor. "If no measure," he said, "is ever to pass in Parliament which has not the unanimous sense of the country in its favor, prejudice and passion may forever triumph over reason and sound policy." After a masterly reply by Mr. Fox, which closed a debate of two nights, the House proceeded to a division, when his motion was lost by a decisive majority of one hundred and twelve.3

lics.

The present temper of Parliament was obviously unfavorable to the Catholic cause. The hopes of the The Whig Catholics, however, were again raised by the death ministry of 1806, and of Mr. Pitt and the formation of the Whig Min- the Cathoistry of 1806. The cabinet comprised Lord Grenville, Mr. Fox, and other statesmen who had advocated Catholic relief in 1801, and in the recent debates of 1805; and the Catholics of Ireland did not fail to press upon them the justice of renewing the consideration of their claims. This pressure was a serious embarrassment to ministers. After the events of 1801, they needed no warning of the difficulty of their position, which otherwise was far from secure. No measure satisfactory to the Catholics could be submitted to the king; and the bare mention of the subject was not

1 The debate had been adjourned till the day after the decision in the Lords.

2 Hans. Deb., 1st Ser., iv. 1013.

8 Ayes, 124; Noes, 236. Hans. Deb., 1st Ser., iv. 1060; Grattan's Life, v. 253-264.

without danger. They were too conscious not only of His Majesty's inflexible opinions, but of his repugnance to themselves. Mr. Fox perceived so clearly the impossibility of approaching the king, that he persuaded the Catholic leaders to forbear their claims for the present. They had recently been rejected, by large majorities, in both Houses; and to repeat them now would merely embarrass their friends, and offer another easy triumph to their enemies.1 But it is hard for the victims of wrong to appreciate the difficulties of statesmen; and the Catholics murmured at the apparent desertion of their friends. For a time they were pacified by the liberal administration of the Duke of Bedford in Ireland; but after Mr. Fox's death, and the dissolution of Parliament in 1806, they again became impatient.2

Army and

Bill, 1807.

At length Lord Grenville, hoping to avert further pressure on the general question, resolved to redress a Navy Service grievance which pressed heavily in time of war, not upon Catholics only, but upon the public service. By the Irish Act of 1793, Catholics were allowed to hold any commission in the army in Ireland, up to the rank of colonel: but were excluded from the higher staff appointments of commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the staff. As this Act had not been extended to Great Britain, a Catholic officer in the king's service, on leaving Ireland, became liable to the penalties of the English laws. To remove this obvious anomaly, the government at first proposed to assimilate the laws of both countries by two clauses in the Mutiny Act; and to this proposal the king reluctantly gave his consent. On further consideration, however, this simple provision appeared inadequate. The Irish Act applied to Catholics only, as dissenters had been admitted by a previous Act to serve in civil and military offices; and it was confined to the army, as Ire

1 Lord Sidmouth's Life, ii. 436; Ann. Reg., 1806, p. 25; Lord Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, i. 213, et seq.; Butler's Hist. Mem., iv. 184-187. 2 Butler's Hist. Mem., iv. 188; Grattan's Life, v. 282-296, 334.

by Lord

That promise

was Howick,

March 5th, 1807.

land had no navy. The exceptions in the Irish Act were considered unnecessary; and it was further thought just to grant indulgence to soldiers in the exercise of their religion. As these questions arose, from time to time, ministers communicated to the king their correspondence with the lordlieutenant, and explained the variations of their proposed measure from that of the Irish Act, with the grounds upon which they were recommended. Throughout these communications His Majesty did not conceal his general dislike and disapprobation of the measure; but was understood to give his reluctant assent to its introduction as a separate bill.1 In this form the bill was introduced by Lord Howick. He explained that when the Irish Act of 1793 Bill had been passed, a similar measure had been brought in promised for Great Britain. at length to be fulfilled; but as it would be unreasonable to confine the measure to Catholics, it was proposed to embrace dissenters in its provisions. The Act of 1793 had applied to the army only; but it was then distinctly stated that the navy should be included in the Act of the British Parliament. If Catholics were admitted to one branch of the service, what possible objection could there be to their admission to the other? He did not propose, however, to continue the restrictions of the Irish Act, which disqualified a Catholic from the offices of commander-in-chief, mastergeneral of the ordnance, or general on the staff. Such restrictions were at once unnecessary and injurious. The appointment to these high offices was vested in the crown, which would be under no obligation to appoint Roman Catholics; and it was an injury to the public service to exclude by law a man "who might be called by the voice of the army and the people" to fill an office, for which he had

1 Explanations of Lord Grenville and Lord Howick, March 26th, 1807; Hans. Deb., 1st Ser., ix. 231, 261-279; Lord Castlereagh Corr., iv. 374; Lord Sidmouth's Life, ii. 436; Lord Grenville's Letter, Feb. 10th, 1807; Court and Cabinets of Geo. III., iv. 117; Lord Holland's Mem., ii. 159–199, App. 270; Lord Malmesbury's Corr., p. 365.