p his mind to believe that it would have any such
effect. If the friends of emancipation proposed, after having carried
their point, to make the religion of the great majority, the religion
of the state of Ireland, and open to them all its high offices, he could
understand how such a line of policy might appease and tranquillize the
Catholics. But this they disavowed. Yet if they proposed to maintain the
Protestant establishment as that of the state, there would still be a
barrier which the Catholics would endeavour to remove. After passing a
censure on the Catholic priesthood for the undue interference exercised
at the late elections, and making some observations on the neglect
shown by their prelates in restraining such interference, and on the
extraordinary asperity of Dr. Doyle's publications, Mr. Peel concluded
thus:--"I have now discharged a most painful duty, the opposing the
resolution before the house. I have felt that I had no choice but to
state with firmness, but I trust without asperity, the principles
which my reason dictates, and which honour and conscience compel me
to maintain. The influence or some great names, of some great men, has
lately been lost to the cause which I support; but I never adopted
my opinions upon it from deference either to high station or to high
ability. Keen as the feelings of regret must be, with which the loss of
these associates is recollected, it is still a matter of consolation to
me, that, in the absence of these individuals I have now an opportunity
of showing my adherence to those tenets which I formerly espoused; of
showing that, if my opinions be unpopular, I stand by them still, when
the influence and authority that may have given them currency are gone;
and when it is impossible, I believe, that, in the mind of any human
being, I can stand suspected of pursuing them with any view to favour
or personal aggrandisement." The motion was also opposed by Sir
John Copley, master of the rolls, in a long, learned, eloquent, and
argumentative speech. In his opinion the whole question was one of
expediency, and if the concessions demanded could be granted with safety
to the civil liberties and to the religious faith of the Protestant
community, he admitted that the Catholics were intitled to them. He
denied, however, that any such securities had been or could be offered,
A blank and bare proposal of concession, he remarked, which neither
acknowledged the necessity, nor contained e