ment, and when her majesty assured the assembled senators
that she was determined to preserve "the rights of her crown, and the
independence of the nation," her elocution was at once so precise,
emphatic, and animated, as to cause an unusual sensation among
her hearers; and when the passage was read by the general public,
accompanied by the fervent panegyrics of the press, the public zeal
against the papal brief was, if possible, intensified.

The general conduct of the Roman Catholic body, hierarchy, and press,
was provocative of popular anger, and calculated to create an illiberal
feeling towards Roman Catholics. Various pretensions were asserted in
a highhanded manner by the Roman Catholic bishops in their epistolary
communications; and their literary organs spared the Protestants of
England no bitterness of invective, to which the most exasperating
polemics could give expression.

The public irritation on this controversy was kept up during the whole
year, for the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy were not moderated,
and in Ireland the chief bishops of the Roman Catholic church openly
derided and defied the power of the government and people of England
to put any law against their assumptions into practical effect. It is
probable that these magnates had good information that Lord John and
his government merely intended to carry a bill which might be held _in
terrorem_--a mode of legislating against the church of Rome, which an
experienced politician must have known was futile.

The bill brought into parliament by Lord John, to vindicate the rights
of his royal mistress and the independence of England, was called "the
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill," and may be described in a single sentence
as providing penalties, in the shape of a moderate fine of L100, against
every Romish ecclesiastic assuming a territorial title belonging to the
Protestant hierarchy. The Roman Catholic members of the commons opposed
it with a vituperative eloquence, neither creditable to their religion,
country, nor the especial cause of their advocacy. The whig ministry,
and their supporters on both sides of the house, justified the bill
on narrow and inconsistent grounds. The Protestant abettors of "the
aggression" treated the hubbub raised as unworthy the greatness of
England--the pope being a poor prince of very little power. Disraeli,
with even more than his usual ability, supported the measure of the
government, urging that the pope had, i