retrospective. He found contrary declarations. He found that no other civil right or practice whatever was controlled by its having been acquired before the passing of the Act. All persons appointed to offices-the Mayors and officers of Corporations, elected or appointed prior to the Act, were at full liberty to take the oaths under the Act, instead of the old oath. No doubt existed of this, whether they acquired the place before or after A seat in that House was a civil right. Was it then consistent with the spirit was it consistent with the meaning of the Act, that it should in one instance be construed to have a retrospective effect, and not in others. The Act declared that Roman Catholics should give assurance of their loyalty and fidelity, by taking the oaths therein prescribed, and that all persons taking such oaths should be able to exercise all civil franchises why, then, should not a Member of that House, elected before the passing of the Act, and willing to take the oaths, be considered entitled to his seat? If this Act had been passed many years ago, he could not help construing it to extend to all classes of civil rights whatsoever. He must, however, say that the preamble of the Bill made a distinction between civil rights and the right of sitting and voting in Parliament. Notwithstanding, he could not conceive that the functions of Parliament did not constitute a civil right. He felt great difficulty in the case, and he was disposed to concur with those who would set the question at rest by another Act, including the case of the Member for Clare If there were any doubt, he should feel it his duty to give the most full and ample scope to the remedial part of the Act. It was a measure intended to remove all the disabilities existing under all former statutes whatever, and in any doubtful circumstances it ought to be construed largely.

Mr. Doherty said that any person aware of the relationship existing between him and Mr. O'Connell, might conceive that it would be painful for him to give a vote which should exclude him from the House. This, however, was a question on which a man could not vote according to his wishes—he felt it

necessary to vote strictly according to his judgment. The Bill was clear, and he felt coerced to give his vote in support of the motion of his Right Hon. Friend the Solicitor-General. The time was past for considering the expediency of the Act; and when it was in its passage through the House, it was then that Members ought to have proposed their views respecting admitting the Honourable Member for Clare, though even then he should have felt it his duty to negative such a proposition. In considering the case of Mr. O'Connell, the House ought not to lose sight of general principles. Suppose at the election for Clare Mr. O'Connell had not stood forward as a candidate, relying upon his own knowledge of his incapacity to be elected; let the House imagine that the present Bill had enabled whoever had stood the election to take his seat, would not Mr. O'Connell in that case have been the first to complain with his powerful talents of the injury done him? [The Honourable Member then went into some arguments upon the constructions of the Act.] In construing an Act of Parliament, it was necessary to ask what had been the intention of the law-giver in enacting it. If any Member argued that its meaning was doubtful, the question would naturally he put to him, "Why did you allow it to pass in this doubtful state?" Let not the House violate a law which they had just passed. This would throw an air of ridicule upon the Legislature. It would be expedient to admit the Member for Clare; but when the House was called upon to interpret the law, it ought not to be influenced by motives of expediency. It would be a burlesque to adopt a construction of the law, merely because it agreed with the feelings of any Members. Let the House adopt some other mode of accomplishing its desires, than that of giving a forced construction to an Act of Parliament. He would refer to an observation made one hundred and fifty years ago, by an eminent legal authority. said, "A new law might sit heavy upon some particular person, in some extraordinary case, let whatever care he taken in the passing of it. It is enough to commend a law, if it be beneficial to great numbers and for the public good. A mis

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chief was when a few men suffered by a law useful to the public; and an inconvenience was to have a public law mis.. obeyed. No man exercising a sound judgment could vote against a law so clear, to suit his inclination. He should be sorry if anything he said could tend to disturb the feelings of harmony now existing in Ireland. He certainly had heard some little doubts thrown out by the opponents of his Hon. Friend's Motion, and those, too, by some very able men on the other side of this House; but he felt satisfied that the positive argument was decidedly the other way, and he should therefore vote in favour of the Motion of his Hon. and Learned Friend, the Solicitor-General.

Mr. Brougham was ready to admit that his Hon. and Learned Friend, who had just sat down, had discussed the question in a calm, temperate, and dispassionate manner, but he could not agree with him in thinking that there had been urged only some little doubts on the part of those who opposed the Motion, while all the positive arguments and facts were on the other side. He called upon the House to consider the doubts--the grave and serious doubts which did exist upon the question-doubts which were not lightly raised for the purpose of catching votes, but doubts of a full, fair, and candid description as to the proper construction of a statute which, it was contended, excluded the Honourable Member for Clare from taking his seat in that House. Now, he (Mr. Brougham) was of opinion, that if there did exist a doubt (and it was admitted on all hands that there did), the Hon. Member for Clare was entitled to the benefit of it; and this at once settled the question. He would humbly take upon himself to presume to say that there was not a Member in that House--no matter how long his standing-no matter how intimate with its forms and regulations-no matter how great his knowledge, learning, and sagacity-who need be ashamed to acknowledge that he entertained doubt and difficulty upon this question after the arguments which had been heard in the course of that evening's discussion. He had indeed heard it indirectly

stated that there were in the House some Hon. Members who were above entertaining a doubt upon the question, and who were ready to vote upon it; and God knows who were the men by whom the strongest doubts were expressed upon it. His Hon. and Learned Friend, the Member for Peterborough, who had spent years, he might say a whole life, in dealing with questions of doubt and difficulty-a man who was confessedly, and by general consent, at the very head of a professión, the business of which was to solve doubt, and reconcile and explain difficulties that Hon. and Learned Gentleman had told them (and it was not assertion merely, for he had stated how and why) that his mind laboured under such a difficulty upon the question, that he feared coming to such a discussion at all. His Right Hon Friend introduced argument after argument in order to shew the difficulty of the question; he quoted points, which though contradictory in themselves, still when brought together, and weighed as a whole, would, he feared, lead him to a decision which he should much regret. An Honourable Member who has been in the habit of weighing and nicely discriminating all Parliamentary questions, told them that he entertained doubts upon it; as he feared the difficulty on the one hand, would lead to greater difficulty on the other, he was prepared to vote in favour of the admission of Mr. O'Connell. He doubting as he did, felt those facts and arguments which ought to induce them to pause, and not come to a hasty decision against that Gentleman. He admitted the weight of the arguments used by Honourable and Learned Gentlemen on the other side, but he confessed that the two Solicitors-General opposite, did not in his view of the case, succeed in removing the difficulties raised by his Honourable Friend behind him. Let them inquire how the case stood. And first, he would observe, that the main argument upon which Mr. O'Connell mainly relied was left wholly untouched; it was passed over with a single word, as if it was a quibbleas if it was unworthy of an answer and yet he was declared incapable of taking his seat. The argument was this; that by

the Act of Union it was provided that no persons should sit in Parliament without taking the usual oaths, until Parliament provided other regulations on the subject. There was no question of pains and penalties. This part of the question had been so triumphantly settled by his Honourable and Learned Friend, the Member for Peterborough, that he should feel ashamed to trouble the House with a single observation upon it. But the question for their consideration was, had Parliament come to any other regulation by which persons sat in Parliament without taking the oaths contained in the Act of Union? He contended that it had. The late Act provided certain other oaths and forms, particularly as to declarations, which enabled persons before excluded to sit under the new law. From the passing of that Act all was changed--all was new; and those who could not take their seats before might take them now. The contrary, however, was contended; and the objection was confined to one individual, although he was entitled to his seat under the Act of Union coupled with the late Act. If this were not so, what was the meaning of the oaths prescribed by the Act of Union, "until Parliament provided some other regulation?" They had all heard the able and manly, though modest and unobstrusive manner in which Mr. O'Connell had urged his claims at the Bar. That argument, he (Mr. Brougham) contended, had not been touched. His Hon. and Learned Friend over the way appeared to have mistaken the argument. He contended that the Act was altogether prospective; if this were so, many of his (Mr. Brougham's) doubts and difficulties would be removed; but such, he contended, was not the fact. The Hon. Member for Weymouth, who had argued this question with such ingenuity, would find considerable difficulty in reconciling the differences in certain Acts to which he alluded. It was quite natural that the Hon. and Learned Gentleman should wish to do so if he could he might try to do it, and he might think he had done so; but he should remember he had another party to satisfy, namely, the Legislature by whom these Acts were framed. They all knew-and he was sorry to make the admission, but