478 The Dissolution of Parliament. [MAY, 



With him it is merely a matter of political arithmetic. He " should 

 regret it, indeed/' as he politely says. But if it must come, why he has 

 the comfort remaining, that the Union may still subsist. As if the pre- 

 dominance of popery, which is idolatry, ought not to be a terror in 

 itself to every man who desires the favour of God on his country. As 

 if the predominance of popery in any country did not imply the pre- 

 dominance of every private and public abomination, of every abandon- 

 ment of free principles, and of the adoption of every furious excess of 

 tyranny and persecution. Would we have Ireland what Spain or Por- 

 tugal is at this moment ? and yet those are the countries of Europe in 

 which popery is most in the situation which this protestant premier 

 contemplates with such frigid equanimity. Every man who knows 

 Ireland, knows perfectly too that the predominance of popery would be 

 the extinction of British connection ; that the only link by which Eng- 

 land holds Irish allegiance is the protestantism of the respectable orders ; 

 and that civil power put into the hands of the papist would, before half 

 a dozen years were over, force us to the question of retaining the island 

 by arms. 



But his Lordship's arguments are as weak, as his prejudice is strong. 

 Does he compare the trivial differences of the establishments in England 

 and Scotland with the deep and perpetual gulph of separation that divides 

 popery from protestantism? The Scotch and English profess word for 

 word the same religious principles, and differ only in discipline. The 

 Scotch have 110 sovereign lord the pope demanding the first allegiance, 

 and giving the sovereign lord the king the second, or none. They are not 

 bound by their religion to destroy ours, nor to pronounce us heretics, 

 and excluded from all salvation. 



And as to Lower Canada, what comparison can be drawn between a 

 little shivering community of French settlers, under the cannon of 

 Quebec, overawed by a constantly increasing European population, and 

 .cut off from Europe by a sea of three thousand miles ; and Ireland, 

 naming with disaffection and superstition, crowded with demagogues 

 and priests, and with its shores actually visible from our own ? So much 

 for the wisdom of Lord Grey. The sects of the continent are still more 

 out of the comparison. There, but one power exists, the bayonet. The 

 government is administered by the power of the bayonet. All sects are 

 menaced alike by the strong hand; and Lord Grey might as well talk of 

 freedom in a dungeon, as of the effects of liberty of thought in three- 

 fourths of the continental states. The whole argument was nonsense. 



Sir R. Vyvyan then touched on another point of ministerial conduct, 

 to which we call -the attention of all -honest men : their notions on the 

 subject of the National Debt. 



" The parliaments of this country had been for two centuries consti- 

 tuted in the manner in which they were at present ! but if the system 

 proposed by the ministers should be carried, there would be a mighty 

 alteration in their constitution, and the people of England would do well 

 to reflect upon its inevitable consequences. Already had the ministry 

 which called for this Reform in Parliament attempted to touch the funds, 

 and did the fundholders think that their property would be held sacred 

 if the change in the parliament now took place ? He stated his belief, 

 founded upon the experience of the history of every country, that no new 

 body of legislators, no new system of government, ever entertained a 

 strictly honourable regard for the debts incurred under the old one. It 



