3 made and subscribed, by such officer or officers as aforesaid, after he or they shall have accepted and received such commissions or warrants as aforesaid.' "From this it is evident (continues The Courier) that the object of the act is not a new measure, it is only to remove legal doubts which exist as to the law as it before stood, and to place the naval service on the same footing as the army and the bill was therefore introduced into the house of lords by viscount Melville, and into the commons by Mr. Croker. It is very true that this bill is nearly the same in practical effect, as that brought in in 1806, by lords Grenville and Grey, and the defeat of which was one of the grounds of their retirement from office; but the event only shows how crude and undigested their measure was, and how little they understood of the case, since it is clear that the army was at that time in practice, open to the catholics, and that it is doubtful whether in law both army and navy were not so. "We. however, must observe, that the effect of the law, as now declared, is only to place the catholics on the same footing with other dissenters, and that the tenure of commissions by them depends upon the passing of the annual indemnity bill, which, in case of danger, it will always be in the power of parliament to suspend. "We are very glad (quite as glad as The Chronicle can be) that an invidious and (as it now turns out to be) useless distinction between the catholics and the other dissenters is done away; but we must observe that the explanation which this bill gives of the law and the practice, shews that one of the chief arguments which the advocates of catholic emancipation have pressed upon us, was founded either in delusion or fraud--that they were ignorant themselves of the state of their own case, or that they insidiously attempted to deceive others. Our readers will be at no loss to remember the thousand appeals made to the house by sir J. Newport, general Mathew, sir H. Parnell, &c. &c. of the hardship, that the catholic who could bleed for his country in the field could never attain the honour or profits of the military profession, and we confess that this appeal had always great weight with us; but it now appears that there has been no bar to the catholic's promotion in the army; no oath or test has ever been offered to him, at least, not for a great number of years; and in point of fact, we believe we may truly say that there are many gallant officers in even the higher ranks of the army who are catholics, and who have never been called upon to profess a contrary persuasion. | "The matter is now, however, cleared up, and put on a footing which ought to be satisfactory to all parties. We shall not hear again of the grievance of excluding the catholic from the military and naval services of the country, and we shall be, therefore, the better able and the more firmly resolved to make our stand in resisting their endeavours to obtain political power. We know several staunch friends to the protestant ascendency who were disposed to indulge the catholics in the point which is now declared to be the law, and we therefore hope that this event will only serve to unite and consolidate the opinions and efforts of the friends of the protestant constitution in church and state.' This article called forth a rejoinder from the Chronicle of the succeeding day (the 11th), which is here annexed. "The Courier, in animadverting on the paragraph in our paper respecting the bill which removes the great disability suffered by the Roman catholics, says, that we omitted a sentence in the bill, by which the measure is misrepresented. We stated in few words the substance of this sentence, viz. that there were doubts whether the provisions of the ancient acts were still in force: the words being, Whereas the practice of taking the said oaths, and making and subscribing the said declarations by officers, previous to their receiving commissions in his majesty's army, had long been disused; and whereas it is expedient to remove such doubts, and to assimilate the practice of the two services,' Be it there fore enacted, &c.' "Now we submit to the consideration of our readers whether we did not state this curious concession of ministers fairly and candidly. In regard to the army, our Roman catholic brethren lived upon sufferance. The existing law was dispensed with. In the navy it was rigorously enforced. In the first it hung over them in terrorem. In the other it was a positive exclusion. The liberal administration of lord Grenville and lord Grey exerted themselves to remove the obstacle to the fair and honourable ambition of gallant men; and a cry was set up, that his majesty's coronation oath stood in the way. The whole bench of bishops, with one single exception, stood up against the dreadful attack on the conscience of the king. The whole phalanx of the present administration joined the cry-lord Grenville and lord Grey yielded their places to their principles. The cry of No-Popery was sounded all over the united kingdom, and a new parliament was elected under the influence of that clamour-a parliament that added several hundred millions to the national debt, and to which we are so peculiarly indebted for the burthens under which we labour. The curiosity of the measure therefore is, that it is identically the same as that introduced by lord Grenville and lord Grey, and this is acknowledged by The Courier. It is very true,' says the writer in The Courier, that this bill is nearly the same in practical effect as that brought in in 1806, by lords Grenville and Grey, and the defeat of which was one of the grounds of their retirement from office, but the event only shews how crude and undigested their measure was, and how little they understood of the case, since it is clear that the army was at that time in practice open to the catholics, and that it is doubtful whether, in law, both army and navy were not so.' It is not easy to conceive a train of reasoning more audacious than this, and it betrays the pen from which it came.. Mr. Croker brought this famous bill into the house of commons after it had passed through the house of lords, and this is the strain in which he supports it in The Courier. The measure is in effect practically the same as that of the bill of 1806, and yet the former was crude and undigested. This bill is to settle doubts that existed on the interpretation of au'cient laws and so was the bill of 1806. This is to open both services equally to the catholics, and to protect them against the intolerance of any man who might, by administering the oaths and requiring the declarations, prevent them from entering into the military or naval service and so was the measure against which the whole flock of time-servers, lords of the back stairs, courtiers, bishops, and expectants, joined in full cry; and upon which the present cabinet, in an evil hour, was formed. So far, therefore, from the measure being crude and undigested, the conduct of the present ministers serves only to prove its wisdom and liberality, since, after ten years experience-after having doomed the Roman catholic population to ten years more of doubtful incapacity as to the army, and of total exclusion as to the navy, they come forward, acknowledge the injustice of the intolerant system, and adopt the very measure for which their predecessors were excluded from office! La 1807 they gave a secret responsible advice to his majesty, that such a conces sion would be at variance with his coronation oath; and, in 1817, they give official advice to the prince regent, as his confidential servants, to go down to parliament to give his royal assent to the bill!" To this the Courier entered the following sur-rejoinder, on the same day, which the Chronicle did not think proper to rebut : "The Morning Chronicle renews its observations on the Officers' Oaths Bill,' and, of course, repeats its blunders, and gives It is frequent proofs of its ignorance. angry with us for stating that the measure proposed by lords Grey and Grenville was crude and undigested; while, in fact, says The Chronicle, it would have had the same practical effect with the bill which has just passed.' We admit again, that to a certain extent, the new bill will have the same practical effect, not by new enactments, nor by altering the law of the land, but by declaring that all dissenters shall be placed, as to commissions in the army and navy, on the same footing, and that this footing shall be that which was established on what are called the good Whig times of George I. and George II.; and it is because lord Grey's bill went about this business in a very different way; because it did not refer to the actual state of the law on the case; because it abrogated the act of George 1. (which the present act revives or declares); because it was an instance of blind innovation, when a recurrence to the principles of our ancestors and the existing laws would have sufficed; it is for all these reasons that we have presumed to call (and we think no one will say unjust. ly) that measure crude and undigested. "If, as The Chronicle informs us, the present measure has all the good effect of that proposed by lord Grey, why did not lord Grey propose such a measure, which, we repeat it, innovates nothing, and is only a declaration of the law as it had stood for these hundred years; though, in the practice of one administration, it has been misunderstood? Why did his lordship propose a bill absolutely new, and unnecessary, and dangerous; the chief provisions of which we beg to call to our readers' recollection. "That bill proposed to abrogate the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the declaration against transubstantiation, as by law established, and to enact in the place of them a new oath and declaration, of its own, which new oath and declaration, instead of being taken in the courts at Westminster, or at the quarter sessions (as the law now requires) should be taken before any one magistrate, general, or ad miral. "The bill of 1806 also contained some other provisions not relating to the point now in discussion, and of which we shall say on more than that we think they would have been inconvenient and mischievous; and we are glad to find that there is nothing like them in the bill which has passed. "Have we said then too much, in call ing the bill which contained these provi sions, and which was framed, as it would seem, in utter ignorance of the existing laws, crude and undigested! And can we forbear smiling, at finding Mr. Sheridan's pleasantry so exactly verified, when he said, that his injudicious friends had built up a wall to knock their heads against ?' "We recommend the Morning Chronicle to read over the acts of parliament which affect this question, and enquire a little after the facts of the case, before it renews its eulogies of the bill of 1806." While this contention was going forward between the Chronicle and Courier, the editor of the Times, a Canning and Wellesley journal, attempted to set the combatants right, by inserting the subjoined remarks in his paper of the 11th July: "An act which alters the law of the land in a most essential and disputed point, with respect to Roman catholics, has passed through both houses of parliament, and received the royal assent, entirely without observation. This act allows the executive government to admit Roman catholics freely into the navy and army, as officers, without tendering to them the oaths of su premacy and abjuration, which oaths, it appears, practically never were tendered, though that matter was overlooked in the various struggles which have taken place for their repeal. We confess that the manDer in which this act has been carried pleases us as much as the act itself. Our brother journalists state, that the act concedes all that lord Grenville and lord Grey contended for in their efforts upon the catholic question: this is an error. It has been the purport of all previous measures, we believe, to confer on the catholics the same right to enter the naval and military service of the country as other subjects enjoy. This bill only allows the crown to admit them. We are not surprized that the bill passed the house of peers without observation or opposition from the bishops. We think it wise, temperate, and conciliating. But we cannot help admiring the change of circumstances which time has produced. We now, without any dread, grant the crown the power to admit catholics into its naval and military service. The possession of this power by the crown was the great source of apprehension in the reign of, James II. Catholic emancipation is, we suppose, now conceded as to the naval and military service." To these observations the Chronicle made the following reply on the 14th: “It is said in a paper of Friday, that the bill for the relief of the catholics did not go so far as the measure of lords Grenville and Grey. The writer says, 'It has been the purport of all previous measures, we believe, to confer on the catholics the same right to enter the naval and military service of the country as other subjects enjoy. This bill only allows the crown to admit them.' We need scarcely state to our readers, that this is merely carping at our statement of the fact. The bill of the ministry of 1806, went to remove the obstacle in the way of the catholics entering the naval and military service, and this bill of 1817 does the same. Both measures went to place persons of all sects ou the same footing of eligibility to serve, leaving them still subject to the existing penalties with respect to oaths and the sacrament, after they shall have entered, as before, but from which all orders of the community are annually relieved by the indemuity bill." Now, with all due regard to the transcendent qualities of protestant intellect and wisdom, a grosser attempt at delusion, a more wilful perversion of words, or a greater display of stupid ignorance, than is here exhibited, was never before, I believe, submitted to the consideration of the enlightened people of England. The Chronicle says, the bill "completely does away and removes the most obnoxious incapacities that tholic fellow-subjects." By it "the stood in the way of our Roman cagreat obstacle to the entry of Roman catholics into the army and navy, and to their advancement to the highest rank in the service is completely and wisely withdrawn." How Mr. Perry will substantiate this assertion I obstacle" which opposes the entry am at a loss to guess, as the "great of catholics into the army and navy as the preceding pages clearly shew, is the operation of the acts of the 25th and 30th of Charles II. which is by no means "completely and wisely withdrawn," but only SUSPENDED at the will of ministers, who can enforce it or not at their pleasure. And this measure, the whig editor, who is constantly inveighing at the overgrown power of the crown, applauds as an act of “wis ་ dom and liberality," and congratu- ther the provisions of certain acts lates his constitutional readers upon which have not yet been repealed, this increase of ministerial influence. "are still in force," because the With the same disregard to truth, practice of enforcing them has been does the Courier assert, in replying long disused, and therefore, to reto the Chronicle, that " one of the move these doubts, it is made lawful chief arguments which the advocates for ministers to grant commissions in of catholic emancipation have press- the army and navy to individuals, ed upon us, (exclusion from mili- contrary to the stipulations of the tary and naval commissions by law) existing laws, but it is declared was founded either in delusion or that these laws are all in full force fraud," because the army has been against those who shall accept such in practice open to catholics, since commissions, unless they comply the partial toleration granted to with the provisions of the said acts their religion by the English act of after their appointments. Thus, this 1791, and that of Ireland in 1793; liberal concession, which has imfor the complaint of the catholics in parted so much gladness to the their petitions is not against the par- Courier, conveyed so much pleasure tial sufferance of granting commis- to the Times, and rejoiced the sions to a few of their body in the "constitutional" readers of the army or navy, but against the sta- Morning Chronicle, and which the tute laws, which exclude them as a Globe says "ought to be accepted disaffected and distrustful class, as no inconsiderable boon" by the none of which it is asserted by the catholics, turns out to be no concesCourier has been repealed; but, sion at all to that body, but the it assures its readers, one in particu- grant of an indulgence to the minislar, that of George I. is revived and ters of the crown to dispense, `on declared. If this be the case, the their part, with the law. The MornTimes must be incorrect in its sup- ing Chronicle says, "The measure position that catholic emancipation, is in effect practically the same as as to naval and military service, is that of the bill of 1806 .... This bill now conceded. From the most dis- is to settle doubts that existed on the passionate view I have been able to interpretation of ancient lawstake on the subject, the system of and so was the bill of 1806. This delusion is not in this instance on bill is to open both services equally the part of the real advocates of ca- to the catholics, and to protect tholic emancipation, but on the side them against the intolerance of any of the pretended friends to that mea- man who might, by administering the sure, who laud and extol an act, as oaths and requiring the declarations, wise, liberal, and conciliatory, which prevent them from entering into the concedes nothing that could not military or naval service-and so have been obtained before, under the was the measure against which the indemnity bill; which removes not whole flock of time-servers, &c. one obnoxious or penal law that now joined in full cry." In replying to disgraces our statute book; or esta- these observations, the Courier is blishes a single right in favour of the rather severe upon the whig oracle; mancipated. For what are the gra- but in exposing the ignorance (and cious terms of this most wise, most grosser want of knowledge never temperate, and most conciliatory was exhibited in a public writer,) of law? According to the copy pub- his antagonist, the tory champion lished in the Courier, it states, that betrays a shameful spirit of perver doubts have been entertained whe-Ision, The bill of 1806, which the latter calls crude and undigested, | demnity. If the minister finds a cawas a measure of real liberality, not tholic ready to become a subservient framed in utter ignorance of the law, instrument to his corrupt views, he but grounded on the true principles can now reward him with a military of constitutional freedom and reli- commission; but if an independent gious toleration. Its purport was gentleman of the same religion, to remove the disgrace, the foul dis- whose political opinions are in opgrace, which must attach to our position to the administration, makes statute book, whilst the laws enact- application for an appointment for ed under the iniquitous circumstances himself or his son in the army or I have detailed in the preceding navy, it is still in the power of the pages remain unrepealed; and to minister to refuse his request, unless secure by law, not by sufferance, the provisions of the disqualifying equal rights to the catholic in com- laws have been complied with, bemon with his fellow-subjects to com- cause the power vested in the crown missions in the army and navy; and is optional. Yet, the Chronicle, in it farther secured, by law, the free its zeal to vindicate its patrons, ig enjoyment of his religion to every norantly asserts, that the effects of individual in the service, of what- act of 1817 is practically the same soever persuasion he might be. The with the bill of 1806, and that one intention of lords Grenville and of the provisions of the former is to Grey was to obtain from the consti- protect the catholic from the into tuted authorities of the nation, that lerance of religious prejudice or state liberty of conscience to all classes of favouritism! To offer any further dissenters from the established comment on this exhibition of party church, which James II. attempted blindness and protestant sagacity, to establish by the sole authority of would be to insult the understandhis prerogative. This manly and ings of my readers; but I cannot undisguised conduct, however, gave conclude without calling the attenalarm to the selfish and overbearing tion of my catholic countrymen to the feelings of bigotry, and the same disadvantages which may possibly senseless but malignant cry of" No-accrue to their religion, by this dispopery," which banished James from ingenuous attempt to deceive the his throne, drove the two patri- public on the subject of our claims, otic statesmen from their stations.in the enactment of future regulaSince this time the catholics have annually presented a statement of grievances to the senate, and solicited a restoration of their civic rights; but each time their prayer has been rejected. To weaken the force of these renewed complaints, as well as to forward another object, which I shall notice hereafter, the act of 1817 has been passed, by which the power assumed by James of employing catholics in the army and navy has been conceded to the crown, but the former are still liable to the pains aud penalties incurred by transgressing the law, from which they must be yearly absolved by a bill of inOR THOD. JOUR. Vol. V. tions for us. DANGERS TO BE APPREHENDED FROM THE PASSING THIS LAW. The rapturous joy expressed by the hirelings of the English press, on the foregoing act of legislation, appears to have spread its delusive influence over a portion of the catholics of Ireland, as the papers from that country inform us, that an aggregate meeting was lately held at Ennis, in the county of Clare, at which a resolution was adopted, expressing their cordial gratitude to the legislature for this act, by means of which, they said, the catholics of 2 R |