would be a violation of the act which prohibited any intercourse
with Rome. The removal of the disabilities required the repeal of one
act of Parliament; and, if the holding communications with Rome on the
subject of clerical appointments should be so construed as to require
the repeal of another, it would hardly seem that there could be any
greater violation of or departure from the principles of the
constitution in repealing two acts than in repealing one. As to the
second of Peel's objections, the English Dissenters could not possibly
be said to stand on the same ground as the Irish Roman Catholics, since
their ministers had certainly never been deprived by any act of the
state of any provision which they had previously enjoyed; but their
position as unendowed ministers was clearly one of their own making. The
possible inferiority in point of emolument of some of the Protestant
cures in Ireland to that which might be enjoyed by some of the Roman
Catholic clergy could hardly be regarded as the foundation of any
argument at all, since no law had ever undertaken, or ever could
undertake, to give at all times and under all circumstances equal
remuneration to equal labors. But the consideration last suggested was
exactly the one to influence such a mind as that of the Duke of
Wellington, generally contented to deal with a present difficulty. He
was determined to carry Emancipation, because he saw that the Clare
election had made it impossible to withhold or even to delay it; and,
being so determined, he was desirous to avoid encumbering it with any
addition which might increase the opposition to it. At the same time he
was far from being sanguine of its effect, "with whatever guards or
securities it might be accompanied, to pacify the country or to avert
rebellion,"[212] which, in his apprehension, was undoubtedly impending;
and, under the influence of these combined feelings, he eventually
withdrew that clause from the bill. It was accompanied by another bill,
disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. They were a
class of voters sunk in the deepest poverty, and such as certainly could
not well be supposed capable of forming, much less of exercising, an
independent judgment on political matters. Yet this bill is remarkable
as having been the only enactment passed since the Revolution to narrow
the franchise. It had no opposition to anticipate from English or Scotch
members, and was accepted by the Irish memb