olics. If there should be but one or two Protestant
ministers I cannot see how they can maintain their opinions; and perhaps
on the maintenance of their opinion might depend the maintenance of the
Protestant constitution. In conclusion, Lord Eldon said, that he should
have preferred that a proposition had been made by the noble duke for
going into a committee to examine the reasons for originating such a
bill, because it would have been but right that, in a matter of so
much importance, your lordships should have known something more of the
grounds of that expediency upon which you are called to legislate. Lord
Plunkett said that he had reserved himself for the purpose of hearing
the unanswerable arguments against the bill which Lord Eldon had
threatened to produce when the measure came fairly before the house. As
that noble and learned lord, however, had brought forth nothing but
the _ipse dixit_ of his own authority, unsustained either by ingenious
argument, by historical deduction, or by appeal to public and
authenticated documents, he felt himself so far absolved from the
necessity of refuting anticipated arguments, that he would apply his
observations more particularly to the position, that the bill was
calculated to subvert the Protestant constitution. In the course of his
remarks on this vital point of the question, his lordship observed, that
he had been asked whether this was a Protestant kingdom? and whether
this was not a Protestant government, and a Protestant parliament?
In one sense he admitted it was a Protestant kingdom, but it did not
exclude papists. He admitted, also, that the parliament was essentially
and predominantly Protestant; and in that sense, but in no other, the
parliament was Protestant. He concluded by saying that the present bill
did not give the Roman Catholics any benefit without an oath; an oath
too which combined in its language every possible security that such
a form could afford. Earl Grey spoke at great length, repeating the
argument that an exclusion of Catholics had not originally formed
any part of the Protestant government, since they had been found in
parliament from the reign of Elizabeth down to that of Charles II.;
that the exclusion was adopted to guard against political dangers of
a temporary nature, which had long disappeared; that it formed no
essential part of the Revolution settlement, or of the bill of rights;
and that the coronation oath was never intended to restrai