Mr. Creevey's Complaint of a Breach of Privilege...... 28. Prince Regent's Message respecting a Vote of Credit........ Court Martial of Lieutenant Colonel Orde 1146 Motion respecting Seamen's Wages and Prize Money The Chancellor of the Exchequer's Motion respecting the Sup- FINANCE ACCOUNTS of GREAT BRITAIN, and IRELAND, for the Year ending Accounts from the Bank of England relative to Bank Notes in circulation, 1813 ..... lxxi ..... 1083 .... 1166 The Chancellor of the Exchequer's Statement respecting the IV. PRINCE REGENT'S MESSAGES. July 22. Prince Regent's Speech at the Close of the Session.............. 1225 VI. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS. 88 555 Clauses proposed to be added to the Roman Catholic Relief Bill................................... Account of Bills of Exchange drawn on the Treasury for the Service of the May 14. Petition from Cotton Spinners of York respecting the Cotton Trade 202 -- of Felmongers of Bermondsey respecting Apprentices... 213 VIII. PROTESTS. 958 June 29. Protest against the Rejection of an Amendment moved by Lord LIST of the Minority, in the House of Lords, May 14, 1813, on the Earl of Darnley's Motion respecting the Naval Administration of the Country 202 of the Minority, in the House of Commons, May 21, on a Clause in 361. 394 of the Majority and of the Minority, in the House of Commons, May of the Minority, in the House of Commons, June 30, on a Motion 997 of Public Acts passed in the First Session of the Fifth Parliament of ............App. lxxiii Correct Report of the Speeches of Mr. Charles Grant, sen. on the 22nd of March, the 3rd of June, the 16th of June, and the 1st of July, upon the Correct Report of the Speech of Mr. Thomas Courtney, June 16, on the Affairs of the East India Company ................................... Sir J. C. Hippisley's Reply at the Close of the Debate on his Motion for a THE Parliamentary Debates During the First Session of the Fifth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, appointed to meet at Westminster, the Twenty-fourth Day of November, in the Fifty-third Year of the Reign of His Majesty King GEORGE the Third. [Sess. 1812/13. HOUSE OF COMMONS. Tuesday, May 11, 1813. MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE ON THE STATE OF THE LAWS AFFECTING THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.] In pursuance of his notice, Sir John Cox Hippisley rose and addressed the House as follows: Before I proceed, Sir, upon the notice which I sometime since gave for this day, I would ask my hon. friend, the member for Dublin, whether he wishes to have it understood, that the House should also enter upon the discussion of the order, which, on his motion, stands among the orders of the day?-if he does, I think I have some cause to complain, as my notice was given anterior to that order. The notice, I am aware, is entitled to precedence; but nevertheless if it be not understood that the order should stand over till to-morrow, much impatience may probably be excited, little suited to that deliberate discussion, to which, I conceive, the object of my notice has some pretension. Mr. Grattan rose and intimated that he did not think himself warranted to move the postponement of the discussion of the order, as so many other gentlemen were anxious it should not be delayed-but that the House would be regulated probably by circumstances, according to the time which might be occupied in the discussion of the motion of the hon. baronet. Sir J. C. Hippisley.-From the answer of my right hon. friend, I fear I can pro(VOL. XXVI.) mise myself but little of his assistance in acquitting the task I have proposed to myself; and I am persuaded that I shall receive but still less indulgence from many, with whom I have been accustomed to act on former occasions, when this subject, upon which my present motion so materially bears, has been before the House. I am naturally led to this painful anticipation from the questions put to me and the observations made, since I entered the House, by many of those gentlemen-to institute any enquiry is now considered, by them, as wantonly opposing obstacles to those concessions which, accompanied with due regulation, I contend that I am not less disposed to promote, than my right hon. friend who is so anxious to move the order of the day. I must however, Sir, remind those who are now so strenuous in resisting investigation, and regard the question as on the eve of being probably carried by the physical force of numbers-for so confident are they of their strength,-I must remind them, I repeat, of the uniformity and consistency of the course I have pursued in reference to this question, whenever it has been agitated from the period of the motion of Mr. Fox in 1805, and on the successive motions of my right hon. friend, the member for Dublin; whenever I have pressed my opinions on the House, or given publicity to them without these walls, I must claim the admission that I have invariably contended for the qualification of concession by restriction and regulation, urging also, as indispensible, the most deliberate investigation of the grounds on which those concessions should be (B) 1 made. I certainly did, in the early debates on this subject, consider that such an investigation might have taken place in a committee of the whole House; but after the collision of opinions which was excited in consequence of the debate in 1808, on the motion of my right hon. friend, and principally among the Catholics themselves, in reference to those provisions which I ever considered as constituting an indispensibleaccompaniment of further concession, I have, from that period, uniformly maintained, from the sincerest conviction of my mind, that the adoption of a select committee affords the only practicable means by which any satisfactory result can be obtained. A committee of the whole House is ill adapted to the examination of the various documents which, in the existing circumstances, ought to be produced to constitute the basis of equitable and permanent legislation. No information whatever has hitherto been substantially adduced-assertions indeed have not been sparingly made, but unsubstantiated, and it is surely too much to demand credit to mere assertion on the facts and points at issue, in a question of such vital in terest. Before I enter, Sir, upon the grounds of the motion, I shall beg to state its component parts distinctly to the House, in the order I propose to move them, namely: Mr. Brogden, sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. Barham, and sir J. C. Hippisley: that they meet to-morrow morning, in the Speaker's Chamber, and have powers to send for persons, papers and records :that five be a quorum:-that they have leave to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, and that they have power to report, from time to time, the minutes of the evidence taken before them. The object of the motion, Sir, thus distinctly stated, is to collect and report a body of evidence which may best afford the means of legislating, on such a subject, with more accuracy and effect than could otherwise be obtained; and to facilitate this object, should the motion be acquiesced in by the House, I shall move for the production of various documents to be put upon record. In the selection of members to constitute the committee, I think it must be admitted that those I have named are fully competent to such investigation; I have had in view an equal selection of such as have been considered as supporters or opposers of concession to the claims of the Catholics. It is not my object to ask for powers to report any specific opinion upon the evidence which may be adduced, or to prescribe the course or limits of concession, but merely that the evidence should be "That a Select Committee be appointed distinctly stated to the House, which, by to examine and report the state of the laws having such a tangible body of information affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic before it, may, as I have observed, proceed subjects within the realm-the state and with more accuracy and effect to ultimate number of the Roman Catholic clergy, and adequate legislation. An hon. memtheir religious institutions, and their inter- ber near me (Mr. Wilberforce) who I concourse with the See of Rome, or other fo-ceived would have been the last to have reign jurisdictions:-the state of the laws and regulations affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects in the several colonies of the United Kingdom :-the regulations of foreign states as far as they can be substantiated by evidence, respecting 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 be conceded, I propose to move that the committee do consist of twenty one, and that the following members be the said committee, namely, lord viscount Castlereagh, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Yorke, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Ryder, Mr. Canning, Mr. Bathurst, Mr. Tierney, sir William Scott, sir John Newport, sir John Nicholl, Mr. M. Fitzgerald, Mr. Peel, Mr. Plunkett, Mr, Bankes, Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Barry, objected to so rational a procedure, observed on a former night's debate, when I mentioned the object of my present motion, that such an investigation, he feared, might lead to "darkness visible"-intimating also that we should be involved in a labyrinth of theological discussion, tending to no profitable result. Were it, Sir, my object to enter into such discussions, which in fact it is not, I might again remind my honourable friend, that accustomed as he has been himself to theological enquiries, he has not always manifested, as far as they have been connected with the Catholic subject at least, great accuracy of information. As a proof he must allow me also again to advert to the fact,-when I was stating, some years since, in this House, an ecclesiastical constitution of the established church, 6 |