which
his royal highness had declared his adherence, from an honest conviction
that such concessions to the Roman Catholics were inconsistent with the
coronation oath, and fraught with danger to the cause of Protestantism.

The bill was carried up to the lords, and read a first time on the 11th
of May; and on the 17th Lord Donoughmore moved the second reading.
He was supported by Lords Camden, Darnley, Lansdowne. Harrowby, and
Fitzwilliam, and the Bishop of Norwich; and opposed by Lords Colchester,
Longford, and Liverpool, and the Bishop of Chester, and the lord
chancellor. The debate presented little novelty; on the one side the
right of the Catholics to political equality was insisted upon, together
with the innoxiousness of their religious creed, &c.; while, on the
other hand, it was contended that, with respect both to the nature of
the religion in its political consequences, and to the inconsistency of
admitting Catholic elements of power into a Protestant constitution, the
reasons for excluding Catholics ought to be as operative now as at any
other period. The most remarkable circumstance in the debate, was the
vehemence with which Lord Liverpool opposed the measure. In allusion
to the grand argument in favour of the bill, that of conciliation, he
remarked:--"I cannot bring myself to view this measure as one of peace
and conciliation. Whatever it might do in this respect in the first
instance, its natural and final tendency will be to increase dissensions
and to create discord, even where discord did not previously exist. I
entreat your lordships to consider the aspect of the times. The people
are taught to consider Queen Mary as having been a wise and virtuous
queen, and that the world had gained nothing whatever by the
Reformation. Nay, more than this: it was now promulgated that James the
Second was a wise and virtuous prince, and that he fell in the glorious
cause of toleration. Could the house be aware of these facts, and not
see that a great and powerful engine was at work to effect the object of
re-establishing the Catholic religion throughout these kingdoms? And if
once established should we not revert to a state of ignorance, with all
its barbarous and direful consequences? Let the house consider what
had been the result of those laws, what had been the effects of that
fundamental principle of the British constitution which they were now
called upon to alter with such an unsparing hand. For the last hundr