demand for
opening the university-scholarships to Catholics, and making all masters
of arts voters, the Irish solicitor-general announced that the charter
did not allow it. At Oxford and Cambridge the charters gave the rights
to the masters, but at Dublin it was only given to the fellows and
scholars, and it was the principle of the bill to preserve vested rights
and settled institutions, as far as could be done consistently with an
efficient reform. Mr. Bankes, and Sir C. Wetherell, and Mr. Hardinge,
argued, that the giving of additional members to Ireland, as well
as Scotland, was unjust towards England, and inconsistent with the
fundamental principles of the two legislative unions. They also
complained of the effects which the bill would inevitably produce upon
the Protestants of Ireland. If the bill passed, it would be impossible,
they said, for an Irish Protestant to be returned to parliament, unless
two-thirds of the Catholic population chose to vote for him. It would
be a virtual exclusion of all Protestants from the representation of
Ireland; not one would be elected unless he became an agitator, pledged
himself to all that was demanded, and basely pandered to the passions
and views of the Catholic electors. The chancellor of the exchequer, in
reply to these objections, stated that the bill did not interfere with
the unions, any more than the union with Ireland had violated the union
with Scotland; and that as to the different circumstances in which Irish
Protestants might find themselves, he and his colleagues entertained
no apprehensions of their opponents being able successfully to raise
against them a no-popery cry; the public mind was too enlightened to be
affected by such idle clamours. The bill was allowed to be read a first
time; and the second reading was fixed for the 18th of April.

When the house met, on the 12th of April, after the Easter recess, Lord
John Eussell communicated certain alterations which it had been found
necessary to make in the schedules of boroughs to be disfranchised,
in consequence of inaccuracies discovered in the population returns of
1821, on which the whole plan had been founded. Lord John Russell
also declared that, although ministers had not changed their opinion
regarding the propriety of reducing the numbers of the house, and would
try to carry that clause in the bill, still "they were not prepared to
say that this was a question of such essential and vital importance,
t