to the question. Having, however, come to the honest
conviction that the time had arrived, when an amicable adjustment of
the disputed claims would be accompanied with less danger than any
other course that could be suggested, he was prepared to act on that
conviction, unchanged by the forfeiture of public confidence, or by the
heavy loss of private friendship. He had long felt, he said, that with a
house of commons favourable to emancipation, his position as a minister
opposed to it was untenable; and he showed that he had more than once
intimated his desire to resign office, and thus remove one obstacle to
a settlement of the question. He had done so on the present occasion,
though at the same time he notified to the Duke of Wellington, that
seeing how the current of public opinion lay, he was ready to support
the measure, provided it were undertaken on principles from which no
danger to the Protestant establishment need be apprehended. He was
aware, he said, that he was called on to make out a case for this change
of policy; and he was now about to submit to the house a statement which
proved to his own mind, with the force of demonstration that ministers
were imperatively called on to recommend the measure, however
inconsistent it might appear with their former tenets. The argument
by which the case was made out by Mr. Peel resolved itself into the
following propositions:--First, matters could not remain in their
present state, the evils of divided councils being so great, that
something must be done, and a government formed with a common opinion on
the subject. Secondly, a united government once constituted must do one
of two things--either grant further political rights to the Catholics,
or recall those which they already possess. Thirdly, to deprive them
of what they already have would be impossible; or at least would be
infinitely more mischievous than to grant them more: therefore, no case
remained to be adopted but that of concession. Having illustrated these
propositions at great length, and with much force of argument, Mr.
Peel proceeded to explain the nature of the measure which he and his
colleagues proposed as that which ought finally to settle and adjust the
question. The principle and basis of the measure was to be, he said, the
abolition of civil distinctions and the equality of political rights,
with a few exceptions only. Another pervading principle would be, in
fact and in word, the maintenance of the