Address from the Throne, his Majesty is made to say that he laments, that in that part of the United Kingdom (Ireland) an Association should still exist, which is dangerous to the public peace, and inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which keeps alive discord and ill-will amongst his Majesty's subjects, and which must, if permitted to continue, effectually obstruct every effort permanently to improve the condition of Ireland.

His Majesty further recommends, that when this essential object shall have been accomplished, you shall take into your deliberate consideration the whole condition of Ireland, and that you should revise the laws which impose civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects.

In pursuance of this recommendation contained in the King's Speech, Mr. Peel on the 10th of February obtained leave to bring in a Bill for putting an end to the existence of the Association. The Bill passed both Houses without opposition, for although its provisions were necessarily somewhat arbitrary in their nature, and called down the anathemas of Mr. O'Connell upon the heads of the Ministers, yet the friends of the Catholics voted in its favour as part of a system which was immediately to terminate in emancipation. They all declared, however, that if it had been introduced as a substantive measure, they would have resisted it, and that they now consented to suppress the Association, only on the understanding that those claims for the furtherance of which the Association had been created, were to be immediately conceded. In truth, to grant emancipation would put an end to the Association without any statute, to remove the disabilities would be the only effectual Act of suppression. O'Connell however told the Ministers, that the Association was not a corporeal being, capable of being grasped by the law. It was the people of Ireland, and he was at the head of that people. Its spirit was caused by the grievances of the nation, and 'ts seat was the bosom of seven millions of its population. It was impossible to deny, and Ministers confessed it, that the present flourishing prospect of the Catholic Cause, was mainly owing

to the gigantic efforts of Mr. O'Connell, who appeared to move the whole machinery of it with a sovereign power, unequalled by any, which a subject ever possessed before. In forwarding that cause, he had done good to both parts of the empire, however foolishly individual Members might have indulged in absurd proposals; and extravagant, and irritating language; and its suppression by enactments, which involved even the temporary exercise of arbitrary powers, could be justified only by regarding it as the price to be paid for the final and complete triumph of that object, for which alone it had existed.

In the course of the discussions, it was strongly pressed upon Ministers, why the suppression of this Association had not been sooner accomplished? You justly describe this Association, it was said to them, as a body, whose existence is incompatible with the due operation of the power of the regular government. You represent Ireland as being in a state of agitation which can be soothed only by granting all that the Catholics demand; and no man can doubt that the Catholic Association, which exists only for purpose of agitation, is the great fomenter of that dangerous and alarming spirit. You say that it must be put down; you ask extraordinary powers to put it down; by doing so, you grant that it may be put down. If so why has it been allowed to go on prosperous and unimpeded for years, till, having gained "a giant stature and a tyrant's strength," it brings you crouching to its feet, in trembling obedience to its mandates? In short, you acknowledge, that by a due use of power you might have prevented that state of things, in which, now that it has been allowed to grow up, you seek an apology for deserting the policy to which you have been so long pledged. Above all, you ask and obtained in 1825, an Act for suppressing this very Association Yet it is since that time that it has become so formidable. If the powers given by that Act were sufficient, why was it not enforced? If they were insufficient, why were more effective powers not demanded? for who would have

grudged any power necessary to put down an usurpation of the regular government of the country.

The Act passed: but the Association rendered it unnecessary to make use of the powers which it bestowed. Their parliamentary friends had pointed out to them, that, as matters stood, with the Government pledged to emancipation, their continuing together as a body, could only do mischief; and the Association, even before the Bill had completed its hasty progress, declared itself dissolved. It was plain, however, even from the explanation given by ministers themselves, that the Association had been allowed, to bully the Government into submission, and that the present act for its suppression, was a mere legislative mockery-the ridiculous assumption of a threatening gesture to cover and conceal its impotence. The Association had demanded emancipation, unqualified emancipation, and nothing else. It had said to the Government, give us emancipation, and we exist no more; refuse us what we ask, and we defy power, either to restrain or to resist us. The question between it and the Government had never been, whether it would be quiet, if the Government gave all it demanded-but whether or no, the Government could compel it to be quiet, even though it should get nothing. In such circumstances, when one hand held a Bill for suppressing the Association, while the other contained a Bill, granting all that the Association demanded, to speak of having suppressed the Association, was an abuse of words. It was, as if a man should boast of his victory over a highwayman, to whom he exclaims, when the pistol is at his breast, "down with your pistol, sir, for there are my purse and my watch." The robber would have the best of it, and so had the Association.

On the 5th of March, for which day a call of the House had been ordered, Mr. Peel moved, "that the House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of the laws imposing civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Ca tholic subjects."

The debate upon the motion for going into a committee, was continued by adjournment upon the 6th of March. The

principal supporters of the proposal, were found among ministers and their converted adherents. The Whigs satisfied with approving and leading the Ministry, did not take any leading share in the discussion. Lord Milton, Sir J. Newport, Mr. Brougham, and Sir F. Burdett spoke, but left the task of justification to the introducers of the measure, to whom it was much more difficult than to those, who, by their present vote. were only repeating opinions which they had long entertained, and often expressed.

On a division, the motion was carried by a majority of 188. the votes being 348 for the motion, and 160 against it. This preponderance was manifestly decisive of the ultimate fate of the question, at least in the House of Commons; and its extent betrayed an overwhelming weight of ministerial influence which could scarcely fail to be less successfully employed in the House of Peers.

The country did not desert itself. Though deprived of its accustomed leaders, at the very moment when their vigilance and energy were most required; the public voice announced itself in an expression of decided opposition; and if a judgement was to be formed from the number of petitions, which began, so soon as the intention of ministers was known, to crowd the tables of both Houses, the proposed measure was one to which the public mind of Britain was utterly averse. Ministers did not attempt to deny the fact, and hence their determination not to risk a new election. Hence too a determination, to treat the petitioners with as little respect as possible, to regard the petitions as impertinent and troublesome encroachments on the time of an assembly, whose resolutions had been already taken. Before the first reading of the Bill, there had been presented 957 petitions in its favour. The petitions were uniformly spoken of with pity, as containing expressions of well-meaning, but ignorant prejudices, or met with indignation, as the result of persecuting illiberality and knavish contrivance. It is quite true, that such modes of expressing opinion, always admits the expression of a great difference of opinion, which may be entitled to little weight,

but then the very same facilities exist on both sides; no induction is to be made from the one, which is not, on the same grounds, to be made from the other; and after all substractions, the fact remained. The measure, which was now to be forced upon the country, was odious to the great majority of its Protestant population. But in Parliament they were without leaders of weight and reputation; for all the talkers were on the other side; their orators and influential men had wheeled round at the word of their captain, and joined the ranks of the enemy. The changes which rushed upon the public eye were astounding. Those men, like Mr. Peel, were matter of melancholy seriousness, because destructive of all public confidence, and drawing with them a practical revolution in the system of government. The hurried wheelings of the subaltern performers, were the ordinary phenomena of official nature, and excited a smile at the awkwardness with which the evolution was sometimes performed.

But there were examples of change among men who ought to have stood aloof from the threats, as from the seductions of power. Sir Thomas Lethbridge, one of the members for Somersetshire, had attended a meeting of the county of Devon, held in the middle of January, to petition against farther concession to the Catholics. He had there been the organ of a most obstinate and enthusiastic resistance to their demands. On the 6th of February, after the royal speech, he had announced that his opinions were unchanged. In the beginning of March, he then read his recantation, and announced all at once, that the plan of Ministers was wise, patriotic, and excellent in all its parts. Announcements like these, were received with shouts of laughter by the House, and with utter loathing by the country.

The House having gone into a Committee, and agreed to certain resolutions, a Bill in conformity was directed to be prepared. It was brought in by Mr. Peel on the 10th of March, when it was read a first time. The opponents of the measure allowed the first reading to take place without oppo

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