Moira, must carry with it great weight, he thought that an impression ought not to be suffered to remain on the public mind, that either the Princess or her advisers were ever afraid that her honour would have been in danger from any evidence Kenny might have given. There was another paragraph, which Lord Moira, and none but he, could explain. When it was stated in the letter, that Par tridge, Lord Eardley's porter, was known to be entirely devoted to the Princess, he thought it ought to be explained, what was meant by the devotion of one of Lord Eardley's menial servants to the Princess of Wales? How, or from what reason, it could be supposed that a person in that station of life would communicate to the Princess any examination which he might have undergone, was a matter capable of explanation only by the noble earl, and if not explained by him, how it was possible for any other person to explain it he knew not. Finding that this part of the noble earl's letter, as well as that to which he had first directed the attention of the House, had been commented upon in a public print, and surprise expressed equal to that which he himself felt, he could not be content to suffer the matter to pass without making some observations, or without pointing out the expediency, as well as the absolute necessity, of requiring a full and satisfactory explanation from the noble earl, before he quitted Great Britain. When the exalted rank of the Earl of Moira was considered, and when it was known that every thing which came from him would be received by the country with that degree of weight to which his lordship's opinions and remarks were entitled, he apprehended that a feeling of justice, as well towards the Earl of Moira himself, as towards the Princess of Wales, called for an explicit declaration of the real meaning of the words in the noble lord's letter. He was sure the House would feel a pleasure in putting the noble lord in a situation most congenial to his own heart, that of explaining unequivocally and clearly, a matter which was at present involved in doubt, and which might lead to conclusions and inferences which the noble earl would himself be the first to lament. He had hoped from time to time, that this most heart rending subject would have been set at rest. New matter, however, seemed daily to be brought before the public, and he now almost despaired that the subject would ever be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, unless some decided act of recognition was either advised by his majesty's ministers to be adopted, or that the House would place their seal upon the matter, and close it for ever. How this was to be done, could best be pointed out at the proper season. He most sincerely wished, however, that the question might be concluded by any other means than through the medium of that House, and anxiously hoped, that without considerable de lay, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent's ministers would advise him to give to her Royal Highness an establishment out of his civil list, ade. quate to the elevated situation which she held in this country. Some mode or other, he was satisfied, must ere long be had recourse to for the purpose of dissipating all conflicting opinions, and he trusted it would be such as to place her Royal Highness in a sphere adequate to her merits. For the present he should content himself by moving, That a message be sent. to the Lords, requesting their lordships to grant permission to the Earl of Moira to attend at the bar of this House, for the purpose of being examined as to his knowledge of certain circumstances connected with the conduct of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.' The Speaker having observed that this motion was unprecedented, Lord Castlereagh said, he thought the House must feel, that, according to the custom of parliament, the present motion could not be received, and that it would be very improper to take the step proposed by the hon. gentleman. He should, however, not confine himself merely to the forms of the House, but would say upon the substance of it, that he was surprised that the hon. gentleman should (after six times that the subject had been brought forward in different shapes, and the feeling of the House was well known upon it,) think it necessary again to revive the controversy. He could conceive no other purpose which this could answer but to agitate the public mind, and wound the delicacy of the House, This was merely a collateral point of a subject into which the hon. gentleman well knew that the House did not wish to enter. He was also surprised, that at the close of his speech, instead of calling upon them to pronounce upon the question of guilt or innocence, he should merely have suggested an increase of the establishment of her Royal Highness. If no question of form had rendered the motion inadmissible, he should have opposed it in its substance, as he was convinced that no possible good could result from the interference of parliament; and he thought that on the contrary, it might in every quarter prove injurious. In his opinion the hon. gentleman, by his motion, had departed from those principles upon which parliament was bound to act, and he was satisfied that the whole of his conduct was likely to do no public good, but, on the contrary, to do great public mischief."-Mr Canning said, "that having been in the House but a few minutes, he believed at first that this was only one of those irregular conversations which had too frequently of late been introduced, and was not at the beginning aware that there was a motion regularly submitted to the House. If that had been the case, he should not have said a single word upon the subject; but now, feeling it to be a question of some importance, he was anxious to state the grounds on which he should vote for passing to the order of the day. An hon. baronet (Sir Francis Burdett) had referred to that understanding, by which the House had shewn its wish that there should be no further discussions upon this unhappy subject. He believed, that the last debate on the subject ended with the understanding, that no possible good could result from the discussion. He believed, that the House, and every member of it, had felt the most anxious wish that they should not be called upon for any determination on the subject, unless it should come to such an extremity that parliament was obliged to take some step. As he did not think that such an extremity had now arrived, he could not coincide in the expediency of these renewed discussions. He did not imagine that the present proceeding was at all necessary; and although he admitted it was possible that a case might arise, in which the House and the country would find it necessary to come to some substantial conclusion upon this subject, yet he trusted his majesty's ministers would avoid being driven to such an extremity. He admitted, that where the possibility existed of having occasion to recur to such a measure, it was proper to be prepared for the worst; but if he was called upon to state whether such a necessity existed now, he would have no hesitation in answering in the negative. There was another impression, as he believed, upon the mind of the House as to this subject. They thought that the abstaining from discussions upon it, was the most likely way to bring about that happy termination of it, to which every one anxiously looked. While they abstained from discussion, they conceived that there was one chance left for that species of termination which all good men and all good subjects wished to see.-He believed that those men betrayed a very imperfect knowledge of human nature and human feelings, who could suppose that the continuance or revival of such discussions was the most likely means of procuring that termination which was so much desired. He conceived that if those discussions were revived, the whole period between the first discussion and the last might be considered as so much time lost in the accomplishment of the object in question. It was from these feelings that he, and, as he believed, many other members, deprecated these discussions." Thus terminated those unhappy controversies, which had so long gratified the malice of faction, fed the vulgar appetite for slander, and disturbed the repose of the country. On an affair of this kind we have been anxious to abstain from minute detail, and have preferred laying before our readers a compendious, but impartial account of the proceedings in parliament, to any other form in which the subject could have been explained. There can be no necessity for reverting to the proceedings of 1806, or for staining our pages with the depositions of the witnesses examined before the commissioners, or the reflections to which such evidence may have given rise. It has been confessed on all hands, that the Princess stands acquitted of criminality; but against the charge of levity, it may seem more difficult wholly to defend her. Such, however, was not the question agitated, in consequence of her letter of January, 1813. From that letter it appears her advisers intended, that she should be enabled to interfere with the unquestionable powers of the Prince Regent, as the natural guardian of his daughter, and the actual chief magistrate of these realms. This attempt, as might have been expected, proved altogether abortive; and the merit, or demerit, as well as the influence and authority of her Royal Highness, remained, after all the tedious and vain discussionsall the ebullitions of party zeal, and all the offensive disclosures which were unfortunately made, precisely as they had been placed before by two successive cabinets-that of Lord Grenville in 1806, and that of the Duke of Portland in 1807. With the unfortu nate differences which had occasioned so many painful scenes, neither the legislature nor the country, it would seem, can ever prudently interfere. CHAP. V. Affairs of Ireland.-Discussion of the Catholic Question in Parliament.- THIS year seemed to open better prospects to the catholics of Ireland than any which preceded it. The ministers were divided in opinion as to the merits of the catholic question; they had ceased to interest themselves with zeal in the result; and the inclinations of the Prince Regent were understood to be favourable to the claims of the petitioners. The protestants, however, were seized with alarm; petitions against the claims of the Roman catholics were poured in from all quarters, and a respectable association was formed, with the avowed intention of opposing further concessions. But the friends of the catholics were determined to persevere; and on the 25th of February, Mr Grattan moved that the House should resolve itself into a committee, to prepare a bill for the relief of the Irish catholics. The arguments in support of the motion were power fully and ably stated, upon this occasion, by many distinguished speakers. tion of the protestant interest. Much has been said of the question of right. This appears, however, to be a very unnecessary metaphysical discussion, and one which cannot have any practical application in the present instance. In the same sense in which religious toleration is a right, a due share of political power is a right; both must yield to the paramount interests of society, if such interests require it ; neither can be justifiably withheld, unless their inconsistency with the public interest is clearly established. But in the present case, the question does not, in any respect, arise; for we have already admitted the Roman catholics to substantial power, and what we seek to exclude them from is honour. The privileges which are withheld are impotent, as protections to the state, but most galling and provoking to the party which is excluded. No candid mind can hesitate to admit, that the exclusions must be severely felt, as a The motion, it was said, proposed grievance of the most insulting kind. to remove the civil disabilities which That the man of the first eminence at affect a great portion of our fellow the bar should be prevented from actsubjects, on account of their religion; ing as one of his majesty's counsel, offering, at the same time, to accom- or from sitting on the bench of justice; pany the measure with every security that the gallant officer, who has diswhich may be required, for the protectinguished himself in the battles of his country, when his heart is beating high with the love of honourable fame, should be stopped in his career, and see his companions in arms raised above him, to lead his countrymen to victory and glory, must be felt as deeply humiliating! Does it require argument to shew, that exclusion from parlia ment must be considered as a privation and indignity? Why are men so desirous of this distinction? From the honest ambition of serving their country, from the pride of abiding by honourable engagements, or from motives, perhaps, of a less elevated description? Whatever they may be, honourable and dignified, or otherwise, they subsist in the minds of the catholics as much as in those of other men; and, though the elective franchise, which has been granted to the Irish catholic, gives him a substantial representation, yet the exclusion from parliament is calculated to operate as a severe and humiliating disability; and the more humiliating, because it is a mark of inferiority put on the catholic, merely for the purpose of marking that inferiority. The topic, that toleration is one thing, and political power another, has little application to this case, even if it were just; for in this instance it seems to be contended that rank, and station, and honour, are not the proper appendages of wealth, and knowledge, and education, and of every thing which constitutes political and moral strength. In every system of human policy, the few must govern the many, but putting military force out of the case, legitimate government must arise from their superiority in wealth and knowledge; if, therefore, you exclude the wealthy and the educated from the government of the state, you throw into the scale of the many, the only weight which could have preserved the balance of the state itself. This is universally true; but when you reject VOL. VI. PART I. the opulent and the educated, on account of a condition which they have in common with the many, you add the attraction of politics and party to the operations of general and moral causes; and, if the principle of exclusion be a religious one, you organize, not merely the principles of revolution, but of revolution furious and interminable. But by the policy of separating political rank from property and education in any intermediate degree, the conclusion is equally true, that the attempt so to separate establishes a princíple, not of government, but of the dissolution of government. So sensible of this truth were our ancestors, that, when they saw, or thought they saw, a necessity for dishonouring the Roman catholic, they adopted, as a necessary consequence, the policy of impoverishing and barbarizing him: When they degraded him, they felt that their only safety was to keep him in poverty and ignorance; their policy, good or bad, was consistent-the means had a diabolical fitness for their end. Is it not a perfect corollary to this proposition, is it not the legitimate converse of this truth, that if you re-admit them to wealth and to knowledge, you must restore them to ambition and to honour? What have we done? We have trod back our steps; we have rescued the catholics from the code, which formed at once their servitude and our safety, and we fancy we can continue the exclusion, from civil station, which superinduced that code. Their's was a necessity, real or fancied, but a consistent system; we pretend no necessity; we have voluntarily abdicated the means of safety, and we wilfully and uselessly continue the causes of danger. The time to have paused was before we heaved, from those sons of earth, the mountains, which the wisdom or the terrors of our ancestors had heaped upon them; but |