GENERAL HISTORY. 



[31 



Catholics to vote for members of 

 parliament when duly qualified ; 

 also to hold and exercise all civil 

 and military offices or places of 

 trust or profit, with the following 

 exceptions, namely, the offices of 

 lord high chancellor, lord keeper 

 or lord commissioner of the great 

 seal of Great Britain, or lord lieu- 

 tenant, lord deputy, or other chief 

 governor or governors of Ireland ;, 

 also, to be a member of any lay 

 body corporate, and to hold any 

 civil office or place of trust therein. 

 A proviso is subjoined, ihatnothing 

 in this act shall extend to the re- 

 peal of any laws in force for estab- 

 lishing the uniformity of public 

 worship in the episcopal church of 

 England and Ireland ; or to make 

 any change in the ecclesiastical 

 judicature of the realm ; or to 

 enable a Roman Catholic to pre- 

 sent to any ecclesiastical benefice 

 whatsoever ; or to make it lav/ful 

 for him to advise the Crown as to 

 the disposal of any preferment in 

 the Protestant churches of Eng- 

 land, Ireland, or Scotland. 



It is further enacted, that every 

 person now exercising, or who 

 shall hereafter exercise, any spiri- 

 tual function belonging to the Ro- 

 man Catholic religion, besides the 

 oath and declaration above-men- 

 tioned, shall take a specified oath, 

 the tenor of which is that the per- 

 son will never consent to the ap- 

 pointment of any bishop or vicar- 

 apostolic but such as he shall deem 

 to be of unimpeachable loyalty and 



Eeaceable conduct ; that he will 

 ave no correspondence or cora- 

 , municatioQ with the pope or see 

 I of Rome, or with any tribunal 

 J iMtablished by their authority, or 

 , with any person authorised by 

 them, tending to disturb the estab- 



lished Protestant churches of these 

 kingdoms ; or any correspondence 

 at all with such persons or tribunals, 

 on any matter not purely ecclesi- 

 astical. A further enactment pro- 

 hibits any person born out of the 

 United Kingdom, except such as 

 are born of British or Irish parents, 

 from exercising any episcopal func- 

 tions in it ; and also requires a 

 certain term of residence within 

 the United Kingdom before such 

 functions can be exercised. 



We shall now proceed to give 

 an uninterrupted, though neces- 

 sarily very compendious, view of 

 the further parliamentary proceed- 

 ings relative to the Catholic ques- 

 tion, during the remainder of the 

 session. 



On May 11th, the day appointed 

 for the second reading of Mr. 

 Grattan's bill, sir J. Cox Hipfisley 

 rose according to the notice he 

 had given, to make a motion 

 which he stated to be to the fol- 

 lowing purpose : " That a select 

 committee be appointedto examine 

 and report the state of the laws 

 affecting his majesty's Roman Ca- 

 tholic subjects within the realm : 

 the state and number of the Ro-i 

 man Catholic clergy, their religious 

 institutions, and their intercourse 

 with the see of Rome, or other 

 foreign jurisdictions : the state of 

 the laws and regulations affecting 

 his majesty's Roman Catholic sub- 

 jects in the several colonies of the 

 United Kingdom : the regulations 

 of foreign states as far as they can 

 be substantiated by evidence, re- 

 specting the nomination, collation, 

 or institution of the episcopal order 

 of the Roman Catholic clergy, and 

 the regulations of their intercourse 

 with the see of Rome.'* If this 

 were conceded, he should move 



