NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE chief burden of the discussion, which may be said to form the single one for which the Parliament has either tongue or ears, has lain this week in the House of Lords. The actual business per- formed there consists in forwarding, almost to its final stage, the Suppression Bill, which the Commons had passed on the tenth night of the Session; and in receiving the petitions which the last four months' agitations ha've produced—we refer again to our Diary for the number, noting as we pass, that on Friday evening, for the first time, the majority of petitions appeared on the side of the Catholics. • Of the Suppression Bill, Lord ELDON predicted that it would be found altogether futile, when it shall please the Association to awake after some brief and unquiet slumber : his facetious illustra- tion was, " that a coach and six might be driven through it, all the horses abreast." The Earl of LONGFORD was displeased that Brunswick Clubs, as well as Catholic, should be included in the operation of the enactment. In regard to the other and greater measure that lies beyond, the Ministers maintain an impenetrable reserve. Lord CALTHORPE wished the Duke of Wellington to answer questions as to the nature of the measure, the time it would be introduced, and in which Muse? The Duke of WELLINGTON only repeated, that the measure would he brought in on the " responsibility" of Ministers. The Duke of NEWCASTLE felt offended at this hauteur : he would tell the Premier, that . . . the country was not prepared, and would not submit either to absolute poWer or military rule ; it was therefore to be hoped that the ulterior views of Ministers would be soon made public as a guide to the expressions of public feeling. He could not attach much weight to the 'alleged difficulties of the noble duke in managing a Cabinet divided on the Catholic question ; for he knew the noble duke was perfectly absolute in the Cabinet, and that he had only to say Sic col°, sic jubeo, stet pro ration voluntas, and his will was implicitly obeyed.
Lords CALTHORPE and FALMOUTH ascribed the Ministerial measures to fear, apprehension, intimidation. The Duke of WEL- LINGTON said there was no ground for fear, either at home or abroad. (In the other House, Mr. PEEL expressed the same senti- ment in stronger language, when he said that, as regarded fo- reign powers, at no period within the last four hundred years had England been in so favourable a situation for settling the Catholic question.) Earl DARNLEY said, the only intimidation was that attempted on the other side against Ministers, to frighten them from their duty. If the people of this day were not more enlightened than their an- cestors of 1780, London might now be burning, in consequence of the inflammatory appeals made to the worst prejudices. Lord COLCHESTER pronounced an opinion that the admission of Catholics to Parliament would destroy the Protestant Constitution as settled at the Revolution. He added—" If Catholics be ad- mitted to political power, the House of Savoy, as the descendants of James the Second, may be preferred to the House of Hanover." This doctrine was, eagerly taken up by the Earl of ELDON. It was vigorously combated at the time by Lord HOLLAND and Earl GREY; and afterwards alluded to with expressions of wonder, by the Duke of SUSSEX. His Royal Highness, in presenting . a petition from Bristol, delivered a persuasive to moderation, winch he well exemplified in the mild propriety of his own man- ner.
The Duke of CUMBERLAND, who had arrived in England, as if for the occasion—and of whose conversion from his former tenets on this question many reports had been current for some days past—put them to silence on Friday, in the following terms :- " Nothing but the duty which I feel I owe to your Lordships, to the country, and to myself, could have made me stand up on the present oc- casion. But, my Lords, I have always been willing to speak out on this Subject, and ever shall be; for I think it a duty I owe to the country to
let it know what my feelings are. It shall no longer be said that I am this thing or that, but it shall be distinctly known what I am. It is pain-
ful, believe me, my Lords, to differ from my noble friend (the Duke of Wellington), with whom I have so long been united in the bond of pri- vate friendship. But I cannot change an opinion which I conscientiously think to be right ; and more especially, my Lords, when the question is, as it undoubtedly is in the present case, neither more nor less than this— Is England to be a Protestant or a Popish country ? (Loud cheers.) For, my Lords, the very moment we admit one Roman Catholic into this House or into the other House of Parliament, I maintain that this be- comes not a Protestant Parliament. I have carefully and attentively viewed this question every way in the world in which it has been con- sidered; and the result is, that I never will give my consent either to a Roman Catholic Peer sitting in this House, or to a Roman Catholic Member sitting in the other House, or to any Roman Catholic being a Minister of the Crown, or to a Roman Catholic Lord Lieutenant of Ire- land, or to any Roman Catholic holding any office that may give him power to injure the Established Church. In stating my opinions, I mean to show no hostility to his Majesty's Government. No man can respect the noble duke more than I do; and I am quite convinced that in doing what he is going to do, it will cost him a great deal of painful feeling ; but as an honest man I feel it my duty to state openly my opinions, and I trust that your Lordships will excuse me for detaining you while I re- pelled the insinuations which it was necessary I should no longer suffer to go unnoticed." (Cheers.) Lord PLUNKETT delivered an elaborate argument on the Pro- testantism of the Constitution.
" When I find that resistance is to be made to the claims on the ground that the concession is contrary to the principles that placed the House of Brunswick on the Throne ;—when I hear it asserted and re-asserted, in a variety of assertion, but with no variety of argument certainly,--when I hear it asserted on the one band, and refuted onthe other, that the principles established at the Revolution are in danger, I cannot help ask- ing your Lordships, by whom are the glorious principles of the Revo- lution now sought to be impugned? (cheers.) I undertake to shoW, by the distinct proofs of history:by, reference to the records of Parliament, that no principles of the kind asserted by the noble and learned Lord Eldon, or in any degree resembling them in analogy, were established at that time ; and that the only principle then established was, that there should be a Protestant King always on the Throne of these realms. That was the only principle, I maintain, established at the Revolution; and there was nothing then done, as the noble and learned Lord thinks, to exclude Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament, or from holding high offices. It was not the presence of Roman Catholics in this House, or in the other, that was the cause of the Revolution, but the prevalence of bad men and had measures. (Cheers.) The Act for excluding Roman Catholics was passed in the reign of Charles the Second; it was the off- spring of falsehood, and directed to a different purpose ; it was the work of Titus Oates, and not of the Revolution ; it was brought in and founded expressly on the now repudiated and rejected fabrication of that infamous man regarding the Popish Plot. So much for the origin of that Act, which it is a disgrace to the Revolution to say is one of the laws of the Revo- lution. I will say further, with respect to the Brunswick clubs—a most improper name, I must remark by the way, as it seems to me highly in- decorous to connect the name of the reigning family with any purposes of faction—that if the beginners of these Clubs had known what they were doing they ought to have called them Titus Oates Clubs. So much, my Lords, for the origin of these sacred laws which we have so often been told were passed at the Revolution to secure the Protestantism of the Constitution. What then, my Lords, let us inquire, was the nature or ob- ject of that Act, and what were the mischiefs to be remedied ? There was then an apprehension of a Popish successor, and the person on the Throne was suspected to be a Papist, which, in .fact he was, in the most odious sense of the word. That Act would not have been passed, if the Bill of ExclUsion against the Duke of York could have been carried ; but as it was known that that Bill would never be passed, the other was substituted, as the right and perfect remedy could not be applied. That was the origin of the exclusion of the Roman Catholics. It was because the Parliament of that day could not trust the King in possession of the Throne, that they, by that Act, secured that no laws could be passed without perfect safety to the Constitution, and that nobody could be called to the House of Peers, or elected to the House of Commons holding the religious prin- ciples of the King, and therefore disposed to forward his views. Not able to attack the power of the Throne, in order to effect their purpose, they took the circuitous course of infringing on the liberties of the people. When the Revolution came, what did the great men concerned in that transaction do ? Did they say the laws of Charles the Second against the Roman Catholics should be eternal and immutable ? No ; but they did say,l with the same view with which they had before passed those laws, when they could carry nothing more effectual, that the possessor of the Throne should unalterably be a Protestant. The true and essen- tial principle of the Revolution was the same by which, from the begin - ning of the Constitution, its supporters were always animated, and which had giventhe same tincture to every act done to uphold it. The Govern- ment and Constitution of this country are, and have always been, essen- tially representative ; and the people of every description, have a full and free right to be represented, unless they are incapacitated by some ne- cessity. Where is the passage in the Bill of Rights which says, that the laws against the admission of Roman Catholics into Parliament shall be perpetual, and that the oaths and declarations shall still subsist? It declares the possession of the Throne to belong perpetually and unalterably to a Protestant King; but it nowhere says, that the oaths and declarations enacted to exclude the Roman Catholics shall be continued. I am not to be told, then, that these measures will go to shake the foundations of the Constitution. I do hope that his Majesty's Ministers, who have us their wisdom resolved to do justice to the Roman Catholics, 110**o:in their intentions, the mere announcement of which WS --hldthe effect of so disarming the angry feelings that existed- in Ireland; -and of inducing the Roman Catholics at ace to retire fronktlitOillies more,
readily by one single act of justice and tenderness, than by all the severity of the penal code, if it were again revived."
The Earl of ELDON promised to overthrow this arpment Lord and Lord LYNDHURST (the Chancellor) undertook to refute Lord Eldon. The Duke of Sussex static's engaged to break a spear with the Bishop of Bristol.
The Earl of ELDON has further undertaken to settle a doubtful point which much concerns the ladies. One petition against the Catholics had been forwarded to him, signed by a great many ladies, which he was mightily puzzled how to treat, He was not aware that there was any precedent to exclude the ladies from their Lordships' House ; but he would look into the journals and see whether there existed any precedent to prevent the ladies from for- warding their remonstrances to that House against measures which they considered injurious to the Constitution. Lord KING inquired whether the petition expressed the sentiments of young or old ladies 11 (A laugh.) The Earl of ELDON could not answer the noble lord as to that point : but of this he was sure, that there were many ladies who possessed more knowledge of the Constitution, and more common sense, than the de- scendants of Chancellors. (Laughter.) Lord KING was, sure that the sentiments expressed in the petition were those of all the old women in England. (A laugh.) The House of Commons sat in Committee, on the Army Esti- mates, on Friday. Mr. MASERLt and other Members extolled the advantageous labours of the Finance Committee of last year, with a view to its reappointment. The CHANCELLOR of the Ex- CHEQUER acquiesced in all that was said; but he neither promised nor denied a similar Committee,—making the pressing business in which Government was engaged an excuse for avoiding all argu- ment at present. The number of the Army for the year, including the Colonial corps, and Veteran battalions, is 109,442 ; and the expense 6,339,2311. There is an admitted increase in the military esta- blishment of upwards of 9000 men more than in the establishment of 1822. Mr. Hums contended that the increase was 20,000 men ; and Mr. MABERLY fired it at 14,000. It appears from the state- ment of Sir H. Halinme, that a good many small savings had been effected in various departments, and that some of more importance are in progress. Colonel DAVIS anticipated re- ductions in the army in Ireland ; and Mr. HUME thought they could be immediately made in the .Colonies. The policy. of the State towards the Colonies was vindicated on various grounds by the official gentlemen; and called forth a remark by Mr. MONCR, that this country, with six hundred and fifty guardians of the public purse, instead of having the most economical Ministry, had the most extravagant one in the world. No amendment was moved, and the vote was carried. Many other votes for the various departments of the service were proposed. To the amount of some of them Mr. HUME obejcted ; though he did not make any specific motion to reduce them. All were carried, —being justified on the plea of necessity, or being already reduced sufficiently low. Mr. Hum has renewed his labours to obtain an amendment of the laws which sanction Imprisonment for Debt. Mr. WORTLEY is to attempt a reform of the Game-laws.
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