lief of the innocence of the Queen. With him (Mr. Wilberforce) the innocence or guilt of her majesty weighed not a feather. Independently of any feeling upon that point, he would vote for the motion, because he thought that its success would go to tranquillize the country. Upon a division, the Ayes were 178, the Noes 298, leaving a majority of 120 against Mr. Smith's motion.

This may be regarded as the last great effort made by the Opposition in behalf of her majesty; and as the result showed, that their whole strength had been mustered on lord Tavistock's motion, the subject, though often alluded to on discussion, was not again made the formal topic of debate, except on one particular point of legal technicality, relating to a supposed infringement of the privileges of the Church of Scotland. On the 15th of February, lord Arch. Hamilton brought this matter forward. He stated, that upon the death of the late king an order in council, precisely similar to that issued in England, had been sent down to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The order referred to two acts of parliament, on which it purported to proceed the 10th of Anne, and the 32nd of George III.-by neither of which could it be authorized: inasmuch as the former merely commanded the clergy of Scotland to pray for queen Anne and the princess Sophia, while the latter related solely to the episcopalians of Scotland. The order, the noble lord contended, was therefore illegal, being an arbitrary assumption of authority in the religious worship of Scotland, over which the crown

had no controul: and accordingly it had been generally and universally disregarded. Two instances were then mentioned by him, in which this order had given rise to proceedings which merited animadversion. The first took place at a meeting of the Kirk session of Kirkcudbright, at which the sheriff of the county, his son, a colonel of yeomanry, and the clergyman were present. At that meeting, the sheriff and his son, agreed, that in compliance with the order in council, they should prevent the Queen from being prayed for. The clergyman, however, dissented from their opinion, and refused to omit the prayer for her majesty's name. The matter was then referred to the presbytery, who approved of the conduct of the clergyman, disapproved of the order in council, ordered the minute of the sheriff's approval to be erased, the parties to appear before them for reprimand, and the whole decision to be read in the church. The second case was that of another sheriff of a Scotch county, who was also a colonel of yeomanry. The colonel (Gordon) asked Mr. Gillespie, the clergyman of his district, whether he was a party to any agreement not to omit the prayer for the Queen in the church service. The clergyman replied, that he would act in obedience to the law of the land; and at the end of a sermon which he preached (remarkable for nothing but the propriety of its language and sentiments), after praying for the king, he said,

and bless likewise the Queen." For that conclusion the clergyman was on the same Sunday put under arrest; not indeed under ac

tual personal restraint; but he was desired to consider himself as arrested, and the arrest was continued for some time. This latter transaction had led to a correspondence between colonel Gordon and lord Sidmouth. The noble lord concluded by moving for a copy of the order in council, of the 20th of February, 1820, transmitted to the moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland; and also for a copy of the letter written by lord Sidmouth to colonel Gordon of the Kirkcudbright yeomanry, or to the lord lieutenant of the county, during the year 1820, relative to placing the Rev. Wm. Gillespie, officiating chaplain of the said corps, under military arrest.

The Lord Advocate contended, that the privy council had a right to issue the order in question to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, on the ground, that the 10th of Anne, chap. 7, sec. 10, was not confined to queen Anne and the electress Sophia, but extended to every future sovereign and heir apparent; and as a proof that it had been so construed, he produced decisions of the court of session, by which persons had been convicted and punished for not praying for Geo. I. This, it ought to be observed, would prove only that the privy council had the right to command the king to be prayed for; but would not give them any power to restrain the clergy of Scotland from praying for the Queen too; and this the lord advocate candidly admitted. He admitted further, that the 32nd of his late majesty was applicable merely to the episcopalian clergy; but as to

this admission, lord Castlereagh differed from him. With respect to the particular instances mentioned, without defending the rashness which had been displayed in both of them, he maintained that there was no necessity for the interference of the House. The first had been long since terminated by the measures, which the presbytery had pursued. As to the arrest of Mr. Gillespie, the commanding officer had communicated it to the lord lieutenant of the county; and he, without either approving or disapproving what had been done, communicated it to the secretary for the home-department. Government refused to interfere: it was immediately intimated to Mr. Gillespie, that his arrest was at an end; and the parties were left to settle the affair between them. selves. The clergyman had at first threatened to bring an action against colonel Gordon; but, at the suggestion of his friends, he had thought that it would be better to make it the subject of reference, and had finally left it to the award of the lord advocate himself, who, after endeavouring to decline the task, had at last been obliged to undertake it. Under such circumstances, there was no ground for bringing either transaction before parliament.— Sir James Macintosh and lord Castlereagh took a share in the debate; but Mr. J. P. Grant suggested the only new topics, that were urged in it. To oppose the cases adduced by the lord advocate, he contended, that subsequent acts of parliament proved that the 10th of Anne was not considered by the legislature as extending to whoever might be

sovereign for the time being; and in proof of this, he appealed to the 5th George I. chapter 29, sect. 3. That act had been passed in 1719. The last case quoted by the lord advocate was in 1718; consequently the act was later authority than any of the cases cited. The 5th of George I. prohibited any number of persons, exceeding nine, to assemble in a meeting-house or episcopal place of worship, who did not pray for the king, the prince and princess of Wales, and their issue, under the pain of imprisonment for six months. Here there was no reference to the act of queen Anne. How then did the case stand? The act of Anne was either effec tual, or it was ineffectual. If it was effectual, there was no need of a new act; if it was not effectual, and a new act was required, then had the force of the act of

queen Anne ceased with her life. The House having divided, there appeared,

For the motion...... 35
Against it ............110
Majority 75

The bill for granting her majesty an annuity of 50,000l. went through the regular stages; and, though there were members who objected to the sum as too large, it was passed. Her majesty, notwithstanding her declaration that she would not accept of any provision while her name was excluded from the Liturgy, changed her purpose and received the money. Her conduct and her treatment ceased to be the theme of parliamentary discussion, till the very close of the session; when some weak attempts were made to agitate her claims to share in the honours of the coronation ceremony.

eye of the law, why should its wrath be directed against Catholics rather than against Jews, Mahometans, and Pagans? He who worships Osiris, the ape, the crocodile, the host of heaven, and the creeping things of the earth, is admitted to the privileges of the state; and our abhorrence is reserved for the Roman Catholic, who believes all that we believe, and differs from us only by believing something more. Proceeding to the second view of the subject, Mr. Plunkett held, that the constitution intended to admit every person performing the duties of a liege subject, to all the franchises of the state. Now, were not the Roman Catholics the liege subjects of the king? No one denied that they were. What shut them out, then, from the general right? Nothing, that he had ever heard of, except that they asserted a spiritual supremacy in the pope-a supremacy which had been universally acknowledged long before the constitution existed, and had for centuries formed part of the creed of the country. Circumstances, he allowed, had afterwards occurred, under which it had been thought prudent to impose certain restraints and exclusions on those who acknowledged that supremacy; but these circum stances had long past away, and the present times called for a different course. "Backed, said he, by the original principles of the constitution, by the object and scope of the course of our history from the Reformation to the Revolution-backed by the concurrent declaration of the legislatures of England and Scotland on the first union, and of the parliaments of England and Ireland on the last-backed by the

unimpeached loyalty, the unquestionable integrity of our catholic fellow-subjects recorded in the enactments of the legislature, and guaranteed by their own oaths-backed by the numerous concessions of the last fifty years--by that spirit of Catholic conciliation which presided during the late reign, and which, if the arguments in favour of exclusion were at all tenable, would have been so many outrages on the principles of the constitution,

backed by the memories of the great lights and ornaments of that reign, of Dunning, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and Windham-backed, by the name of every man who possessed buoyancy enough to float down the stream of time;-I feel that I have made out-I had almost said that I have established-the position that I sought, triumphantly. But when I look around me, and reflect on those whom I miss, and who were present when I last had the honour of addressing the House on this question, I am checked. When I reflect that since that period we have lost Whitbread, the incorruptible sentinel of the constitution-that we have lost the aid of the more than dawning virtues of Horner-that we had then Romilly, whose mature excellencies shed a steady light on his profession, on his country, and his nature-that Elliot, the pure model of aristocracy-that the illustrious Ponsonby, the constitutional leader of the ranks of Opposition in this House, revering alike the privileges of the Crown and the rights of the subject, are no more:-but above all, when I dwell upon that last overwhelming loss-the loss of that great man, in whose place I this night