fully to conceal
or disguise. They also denounced the folly of legislating upon the
principle that men would lay down their mischievous designs whenever
they obtained the means of putting them in execution. The enemies of
Protestantism knew better; and it was remarkable, the Bishop of Durham
observed, how strange a combination of persons hailed the dawn of the
new policy. It had united in its favour the acclamations of Catholics
and of all classes of liberals, down to the lowest grade of Socinians.
When men, he added, whose opinions led them to keep down the ascendancy
of any church, and others whose conscience bound them to labour against
the ascendancy of the Protestant church, so acted, he could not help
thinking that the consequences of the measure would be anything but
friendly to that ascendancy.

Of the temporal peers the defence of the bill was principally undertaken
by the lord-chancellor, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Viscount God
erich, the Earl of Westmoreland, Earl Grey, and Lord Plunkett. The
lord-chancellor had a difficult task to perform. He was among those
who up to this period had earnestly refuted all the pleas of concession
which were now brought forward, and he had now to confute all these
refutations. As late as last year he had declared his conviction, that
emancipation, though accompanied by weighty securities, was pregnant
with danger to the constitution and establishment; and he now declared
his equally conscientious conviction, that emancipation, without any
securities at all, would be conducive to the safety and prosperity of
that constitution and establishment. This change of opinion might be
fair and honest; but, unfortunately, Lord Lyndhurst denied the change
which had taken place in his mind on this subject. He said that he had
always held that if concession could be granted consistently with the
security of the Protestant established church, and the great interests
of the empire, it was the duty of parliament to give it. This was a
bold assertion, and one which the public generally was not disposed to
believe, since they knew that he had opposed concession with all the
force of his learning and eloquence. The world might be wrong in saying
that Lord Lyndhurst adopted his new creed by compulsion; but it was
undoubtedly right in saying that it was a new creed. Having, however,
defended his consistency in the best manner he could, or as he thought
most proper, Lord Lyndhurst passed on to the me