The Act repealed was of this direct tendency; and it was made in the manner which I have related to you. I will now tell you by whom the bill of repeal was brought into Parliament. I find it has been industriously given 5 out in this city (from kindness to me, unquestionably) that I was the mover or the seconder. The fact is, I did not once open my lips on the subject during the whole progress of the bill. I do not say this as disclaiming my share in that measure. Very far from it. I inform you 10 of this fact, lest I should seem to arrogate to myself the merits which belong to others. To have been the man chosen out to redeem our fellow-citizens from slavery, to purify our laws from absurdity and injustice, and to cleanse our religion from the blot and stain of persecu15 tion, would be an honor and happiness to which my wishes would undoubtedly aspire; but to which nothing but my wishes could possibly have entitled me. great work was in hands in every respect far better qualified than mine. The mover of the bill was Sir George 20 Savile.

That

When an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him. I hope that few things which have a tendency 25 to bless or to adorn life have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even 30 to excess, and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages, and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which, wholly unencumbered, as it is, 35 with one single charge from luxury, vanity, or excess,

sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, diversion, or relaxation. During the session the first in 5 and the last out of the House of Commons, he passes from the senate to the camp; and seldom seeing the seat of his ancestors, he is always in the senate to serve his country, or in the field to defend it. But in all wellwrought compositions some particulars stand out more 10 eminently than the rest, and the things which will carry his name to posterity are his two bills-I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the Crown upon landed estates, and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. By the former he has emancipated property; by the latter 15 he has quieted conscience; and by both he has taught that grand lesson to government and subject, to regard each other as adverse parties.

no longer

Such was the mover of the Act that is complained of by men who are not quite so good as he is; an Act most 20 assuredly not brought in by him from any partiality to that sect which is the object of it. For, among his faults, I really cannot help reckoning a greater degree of prejudice against that people than becomes so wise a man. I know that he inclines to a sort of disgust, mixed with a 25 considerable degree of asperity, to the system; and he has few, or rather no habits with any of its professors. What he has done was on quite other motives. The motives were these, which he declared in his excellent speech on his motion for the bill; namely, his extreme 30 zeal to the Protestant religion, which he thought utterly disgraced by the Act of 1699, and his rooted hatred to all kind of oppression, under any color, or upon any pretence whatsoever.

The seconder was worthy of the mover, and of the 35

motion. I was not the seconder; it was Mr. Dunning, Recorder of this city. I shall say the less of him, because his near relation to you makes you more particularly acquainted with his merits. But I should 5 appear little acquainted with them, or little sensible of them, if I could utter his name on this occasion without expressing my esteem for his character. I am not afraid of offending a most learned body, and most jealous of its reputation for that learning, when I say he 10 is the first of his profession. It is a point settled by those who settle everything else: and I must add (what I am enabled to say from my own long and close observation) that there is not a man of any profession, or in any situation, of a more erect and independent spirit; of 15 a more proud honor; a more manly mind; a more firm

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and determined integrity. Assure yourselves, that the names of two such men will bear a great load of prejudice in the other scale before they can be entirely outweighed.

With this mover and this seconder agreed the whole House of Commons; the whole House of Lords; the whole bench of bishops; the King; the Ministry; the Opposition; all the distinguished clergy of the establishment; all the eminent lights (for they were con25 sulted) of the dissenting churches. This according voice of national wisdom ought to be listened to with reverence. To say that all these descriptions of Englishmen unanimously concurred in a scheme for introducing the Catholic religion, or that none of them 30 understood the nature and effects of what they were doing so well as a few obscure clubs of people whose names you never heard of, is shamelessly absurd. Surely it is paying a miserable compliment to the religion we profess, to suggest that everything emi25 nent in the kingdom is indifferent, or even adverse, to

that religion, and that its security is wholly abandoned to the zeal of those who have nothing but their zeal to distinguish them. In weighing this unanimous concurrence of whatever the nation has to boast of, I hope you will recollect that all these concurring parties do by no 5 means love one another enough to agree in any point which was not both evidently and importantly right.

To prove this; to prove that the measure was both clearly and materially proper, I will next lay before you, as I promised, the political grounds and reasons for the 10 repeal of that penal statute, and the motives to its repeal at that particular time.

Gentlemen, America- when the English nation seemed to be dangerously, if not irrecoverably, divided; when one, and that the most growing branch, was torn from 15 the parent stock, and ingrafted on the power of France, a great terror fell upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened from our dreams of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened with an immediate invasion, which we were at that time very ill prepared to resist. You remember 20 the cloud that gloomed over us all. In that hour of our dismay, from the bottom of the hiding-places into which the indiscriminate rigor of our statutes had driven them, came out the body of the Roman Catholics. They appeared before the steps of a tottering throne with one of 25 the most sober, measured, steady, and dutiful addresses that was ever presented to the Crown. It was no holiday ceremony; no anniversary compliment of parade and show. It was signed by almost every gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, in England. At such a 30 crisis, nothing but a decided resolution to stand or fall. with their country could have dictated such an address, the direct tendency of which was to cut off all retreat, and to render them peculiarly obnoxious to an invader of their own communion. The address showed what I long 35

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languished to see, that all the subjects of England had cast off all foreign views and connections, and that every man looked for his relief from every grievance at the hands only of his own natural government.

It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government should show itself worthy of that name. It was necessary, at the crisis I speak of, that the supreme power of the state should meet the conciliatory dispositions of the subject. To delay protection would be to re10 ject allegiance. And why should it be rejected, or even coldly and suspiciously received? If any independent Catholic state should choose to take part with this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that bigot (if such a bigot could be found) would be heard with little res15 pect, who could dream of objecting his religion to an ally whom the nation would not only receive with its freest thanks, but purchase with the last remains of its exhausted treasure. To such an ally we should not dare to whisper a single syllable of those base and invidious 20 topics upon which some unhappy men would persuade the state to reject the duty and allegiance of its own members. Is it then because foreigners are in a condition to set our malice at defiance, that with them we are willing to contract engagements of friendship, and to keep them 25 with fidelity and honor; but that, because we conceive some descriptions of our countrymen are not powerful enough to punish our malignity, we will not permit them to support our common interest? Is it on that ground that our anger is to be kindled by their offered kindness? 30 Is it on that ground that they are to be subjected to penalties, because they are willing, by actual merit, to purge themselves from imputed crimes? Lest by an adherence to the cause of their country they should acquire a title to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved to 35 furnish them with causes of eternal enmity; and rather