t was true, no formidable
military force, but he had an army of a million of priests, and still
greater numbers of persons belonging to various religious orders, the
members of which were wholly devoted--mind, body, and estate--to his
behests. This reasoning produced considerable effect on the house, and
destroyed the effect of Mr. Roebuck's arguments for allowing the Roman
Catholic religion to develop itself in its own way. The bill met with
so much opposition in its later stages from Sir James Graham and the
Peelite party, that its progress was somewhat obstructed; but the
vehement demands out of doors for its enactment, lowered the tone of the
parliamentary opposition to it, and it was carried ultimately by a very
large majority. It was introduced, by Lord John Russell, as early as the
7th of February. In consequence of the opposition it encountered, the
cabinet divested it of several of the more stringent clauses, and on the
7th of March Sir George Grey reintroduced the bill, after a temporary
absence from office of the government. It was not until the close of
July that the bill received the royal assent.

Several cases were brought into courts of justice throughout the year,
which kept up the irritation thus excited. Among these was the case of
Miss Talbot, a Roman Catholic lady under the guardianship of the Earl
of Shrewsbury, a Roman Catholic peer. The lady had a fortune of L80,000.
She was advised by her guardians to enter a nunnery, and was placed
there to pass through the preliminary stages before finally taking the
veil. In that case, the whole of the vast property she possessed would
be made over to the Roman Catholic church. The Berkeley family brought
the matter into court, and such an exposure was made of the bigotry of
Lord Shrewsbury, and the schemes set on foot to deprive the young lady
of her property in favour of the church, as exasperated the already
intensely excited popular mind. The young lady married Lord Howard, son
of the Duke of Norfolk, and so settled the contest, at the same time
disproving the allegations and oaths of the ecclesiastical party, who
sought to victimize her, that she was about to take the veil in the
result of her own importunity for permission so to do.

The public indignation against the Church of Rome was much stimulated
by a remarkable law case, Metairie _versus_ Wiseman and others. The
co-defendants with the cardinal were several Roman Catholic priests, and
some laymen