or members of similar religious orders, with a
saving clause for those already resident and duly registered. Two other
safeguards, often proposed, were deliberately omitted from the bill.
There was no provision for a state endowment of catholic priests, or for
a veto of the crown on the appointment of catholic bishops. These
omissions, whether justifiable or not, were pregnant with serious
consequences.

The debates in both houses on Peel's bill, as it was rightly considered,
are chiefly interesting as throwing light on contemporary opinion. The
arguments for and against it had been fairly exhausted in previous
years, and would carry no great weight in a later age. The
constitutional objections to it, which seemed vital to Eldon, and
weighty to every statesman of his time, were at a later date put aside,
when they were pleaded against the dissolution of the Irish church,
directly guaranteed by the act of union. The criticisms on the personal
consistency of Wellington and Peel belong to biography rather than to
history. But no one can read the speeches of leading men on either side
without recognising the superior foresight, at least, of those who
opposed the bill, and distrusted the efficacy of the safeguards embodied
in it. Two assumptions underlay the whole discussion, and were treated
as axioms by nearly all the speakers. The one was that catholic
emancipation must be judged by its effect on the future peace of
Ireland; the other, that it could not be justified, unless it would
strengthen, rather than weaken, protestant ascendency, then regarded as
a bulwark of the constitution. Posterity may contemplate it from a
different and perhaps higher point of view; but it is certain that, if
its consequences had been foreseen by those who voted upon it, the bill
would have been rejected. It is no less certain that its adoption was a
victory of the educated classes, represented by nomination-boroughs,
over the unrepresented masses of the people.

The actual result in the division lists was all that its promoters could
have desired. Though the secret had been so well kept by the government
that few of its supporters knew what to expect, and though piles of
petitions showed the preponderance of protestant sentiment outside
parliament, that sentiment was not reflected in the division lists. The
first reading of the bill in the house of commons was carried by a
majority of 348 to 160; the second reading by a majority of 353 to 1