stood by many of those who call themselves our Protestant brethren, in what

plain characters the injunction of the unreserved submission of the individual to the government under which he is born is written in the divine law of the gospel.

66

My Lords, with all this charity for Roman Catholics, with these sentiments

of the inexpediency of the penal laws, I must still disapprove of the bill which is now offered for a second reading. Your Lordships must perceive, that, consistently with the sentiments which I avow, I cannot quarrel with the bill for the relief it gives: No, my Lords, the noble lord* who moved the second reading has himself opened the grounds of my objections. My Lords, I object to the bill that it is insufficient to its own purpose; my Lords, I

* Lord RAWDON, now Lord MOIRA,

quarrel with the bill for the partiality of its operation.

"With the indulgence of your Lordships, I will endeavour to explain from what circumstances in the fabric of the bill this defect arises; I will set forth the importance of the objection; and then I will trouble your Lordships with the reasons of my apprehension that this objection is not likely to be done away by any amendments which we can give the bill in the committee.

"My Lords, this bill is to relieve Roman Catholics from the penal laws, under the condition that they take an oath of allegiance, abjuration, and declaration; the terms of which oath the bill prescribes. The bill therefore will relieve such Roman Catholics as take this oath, and none else. my Lords, it is, I believe, a well-known fact, that a very great number-I believe I should be correct if I were to say a very

Now,

great majority of the Roman Catholics scruple the terms in which this oath is unfortunately drawn, and declare they cannot bring themselves to take it. With the permission of the House, I will enter a little into the detail of their objections. Not that I mean to go at present into a discussion upon all the imperfections of the oath: I concur in every one of the objections made by the most reverend Metropolitan *; but I shall not touch upon these objections, because they have been ably stated, and because they are not to the purpose of my argument: It is my point to state the objections of scrupulous Roman Catholics.

My Lords, the majority of the Roman Catholics who scruple this oath are not Papists in the opprobrious sense of the word, -they are not the Pope's courtiers, more

* Archbishop MOORE.

than the gentlemen of the Roman Catholic Committee, who are ready to accept the oath. My Lords, the more scrupulous Roman Catholics, who object to the terms of this oath, are ready to swear allegiance to the King, they are ready to abjure the Pretender,—to renounce the Pope's autho rity in civil and temporal matters,-they are ready to renounce the doctrine that faith is not to be kept with heretics, and that persons may be murdered under the pretence that they are heretics, as impious and unchristian,-they are ready to renounce, as impious and unchristian, the doctrine that princes excommunicated by the See of Rome may be murdered by their subjects, they are ready to renounce the doctrine that princes excommunicated by the See of Rome may be deposed by their subjects; but to this deposing doctrine they scruple to apply the epithets of

Some

impious, unchristian, and damnable: My Lords, they think that this doctrine is rather to be called false than impious-traitorous than unchristian; they say that the language of an oath should not be adorned, figured, and amplified, but plain, simple, and precise. But in truth, my Lords, this scruple is founded on a tender regard for the memory of their progenitors. two centuries since, this error, however absurd and malignant, was, like other absurd and malignant errors, universal. Yet, my Lords, there lived in those times many men of distinguished piety and virtue, who acquiesced in this error as a speculative doctrine, though they never acted upon it. My Lords, the more scrupulous of the Roman Catholics think it hard that men of probity and virtue, entertaining a speculative error sanctioned by its universality, upon which they never acted, should, for that error in