uced the bill, were
actuated by a sense of their duty, though he lamented their conduct. At
the same time he could not acquit the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel
of wilfully deceiving the people, and bringing them into a state of
apathy, by leading them into a persuasion that no measure of the kind
would be brought forward at least this session. On Lord Lyndhurst,
however, the ex-chancellor was more severe; that noble lord having
endeavoured to excuse his own frailty by fixing a similar charge of
inconsistency on Lord Eldon. As regards the measure itself, Lord Eldon
said that he must say, once for all, that he did not mean to rest
any part of his opposition to it on the terms of the coronation-oath;
neither would he contend that to alter any of the laws enacted at the
Revolution was beyond the competence of parliament. This, however,
(looking at the 13th, 25th, and 30th of Charles II., that the exclusion
from parliament produced by the last of those statutes,) was in
conformity with the true construction of the acts of 1688, and with the
act of union between England and Scotland in the reign of Queen Anne.
These he contended were meant to be the ruling and governing principles
of the constitution, until a strong necessity for altering it should
be made apparent. His lordship then went on to show the futility of
the securities demanded, and of the measure itself, as it regarded the
tranquillization of Ireland. The securities tendered, he said, were of
two kinds: first, those which belonged to the change as it might operate
upon the minds of the Roman Catholics; secondly, those which were
connected with the bill itself, and the other measure by which it
was attended. First, they had passed a law to put down the Catholic
Association; but although that was due to the dignity of Parliament,
as a security against the dangers which he apprehended, neither that
measure nor the precautionary clauses of the one then before the house
were, in his mind, anything else than a mere nullity. But it was said,
that only six or seven Roman Catholics could be admitted into that
house, and only some thirty or forty into the commons. I ask, said his
lordship, whether there is no other mode of obtaining seats in that
house but by the suffrage of freeholders? The bill itself is one to
which I feel the strongest objection. It provides in no shape for that
advice which may be given by the ministers of the crown, who may all but
one, be Roman Cath