180 Notes of the Month on [Fes. 
The Duke of Wellington—We had all along relied upon the manly 
views of the Minister, and lgughed to scorn the attempts of the popish 
journalists to intimidate the public by hints, promises, and oaths, that 
the Duke was a friend of the faction. His letter to Dr. Curtis has, we 
presume, settled the doubt tolerably. But let those who offered such an 
insult to his common-sense and. constitutional knowledge, refresh their 
memories by reading the subjoined authentic record of his opinions, 
extracted from a revised report (revised, we have reason to know, by the 
Duke of Wellington himself) of the speech delivered by his Grace on 
the debate of the Catholic Question in the House of Lords.—[It differs 
peed rg! from the report which appeared in the newspapers at the 
time |— 
** The question is one merely of expediency ; and I ground my opposition 
not on any doctrinal points, but on the chwch government of the Roman 
Catholics. My Lords, I do not intend, on the present occasion, entering into 
any detail, because I do not wish to say anything invidious, or which might 
hurt the feelings of any man; but I must nevertheless observe, that nobody 
can have looked at the transactions in Ireland for the last 150 years, without 
at the same time seeing that the Roman Catholic Church has acted on the 
principle of combination; that this combination has been the instrument by 
which all the evil that has been done, has been effected ; and that to this cause 
the state of things in Ireland is to be attributed. My Lords, the Noble 
Marquess has talked of the aristocracy being powerless, and of the people 
being powerful, but under the influence of their priests and demagogues ; and 
he has attributed this state of things to the state of the law, rather than to the 
combination to which I have referred. I do not think that the state of the 
law can account for this state of things ; the combination to which I have referred 
certainly will. We are then told—be the cause of the evil what it may—that 
Catholic Emancipation is the remedy. My Lords, I am afraid that if, in 
addition to Catholic Emancipation, we were to give up to the Roman Catholics 
in Ireland, the Church Establishments in Ireland, we should not have found a 
remedy for the evil produced by this combination, unless we could find the means 
of connecting the Roman Catholic Church with the Government of the country. 
But, my Lords, we are told, that there are securities. I am willing to admit, 
my Lords, that from the moment this question was first launched in this 
country—from the time of the Union to the present day—those who agitated 
it in Parliament have always stated, that securities ought to be required. It is 
also perfectly true, that the Right Honourable Gentleman under whose 
auspices the Union was brought about (Mr. Pitt), and who supported this 
uestion, stated, in the very letter alluded to by the Noble and Learned Lord 
CLotd Plunket), and I believe also in Parliament, that provision must be 
made to secure the State, including, of course, the Church of England, as 
established by law, its rights, privileges, and churches ; its union with the 
state; the King’s supremacy, and the denial of the claim of any other person 
whatever to any power or authority within this realm. But I likewise know 
that that Right Honourable Gentleman never stated in the cabinet, or else- 
where, what in his opinion, ought to be the nature of those securities. Ihave 
talked with those who were very intimately acquainted with that Right 
Honourable Gentleman, and who have held frequent conversations with 
him on that subject, and I have never yet been able to hear what securities 
they were that he had in contemplation. 
“ I beg leave to remind the Noble Marquess, and the Noble and Learned Lord 
on the cross-bench (Lord Plunket), of a fact which they cannot deny, that the 
Catholics themselves have all along objected to all securities. But the Noble and 
Learned Lord tells us that we ought not to attend to what we hear in Ireland 
on this subject. Now, though he may know that this is the case, I do not set 
how we, in this country, and in this house, are to get at this knowledge; © 
indeed, how the people of England are to become acquainted with it. Thes 
