circumstances in which the member for Clare stood. The question then was, as Mr. O'Connell's peculiar case of having been elected before the passing of the act, but not having taken his seat till after, was wholly passed over, -that is, altogether unprovided for in the act, whether there was not some clause in it, which, interpreted according to the spirit of the whole measure, might entitle him to partake of all its benefits. The Solicitor-general had admitted that the spirit of a part of that act was in favour of Mr. O'Connell's present claim; and who could know that spirit better than the framer of the bill? If so, then nothing less than express, explicit, unquestionable exclusion in the preceding clauses could deprive him of his right. Now the preceding clauses contained not one word of Mr. O'Connell's exclusion, in fact did not allude to him at all; therefore, he was not only in justice entitled to the benefit of any other doubt in his favour, but to the advantages to which the strict and plain rule of statute construction would entitle him. As the member for Clare would have been admissible under the 10th section of that bill, had it stood alone, so under that section he must be still admissible, unless expressly excluded in the preceding sections, by apt legal words. All legal documents, be they wills, deeds, contracts, or acts of Parliament, were thus interpreted; for if, in the case of a doubtful expression in any of them, one or two words, additional or explanatory, would make the whole passage or document plain and clear, the spirit would be taken into account, and the construction would be in conformity to it. If such be the case with respect to VOL. LXXI.

legal documents in a court of law, he thought the benefit of a doubt should have double weight in a case like that before the House.

During the discussion, the friends of Mr. O'Connell insisted much on the ungraciousness of appearing to legislate against an individual, and the danger of impressing the public mind with the idea, that the measure was not to be executed in the same conciliatory and liberal disposition in which it seemed to have been brought forward. But if the law neither included, nor was intended to include, the case in question, there was no reason why Parliament should make a new act, or dispense with the plain provisions of the existing act, out of mere condescension to Mr. O'Connell. Whether was it more fitting that the law should bend to him, or that he should be subject to the general rule of the law? The claim of Mr. O'Connell, said Mr. Peel, was undoubtedly an individual one, but not strictly a personal one. He happened to be the only Roman Catholic that was returned to Parliament previous to the passing of the late act for the relief of his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects; and if the case had been that of lord Surrey, the new member for Horsham, instead of the member for Clare, the House of Commons would have dealt with it precisely in a similar manner, upon similar grounds, and in reference to the operation of the law under which he was elected. Mr. O'Connell being a Roman Catholic when he was elected, was disqualified by

This nobleman, son of the duke of Norfolk, had been elected for Horsham during the Easter recess and was the first Catholic who took his seat in the House of Commons. [1]

the operation of the then existing law, as generally understood, from taking his seat. He himself knew, at the time when he was returned, that such was the meaning given to the law then in operation; and there was, therefore, nothing unjust in telling him, that, as he was elected under the former law, by that law he must abide, and that he was by it excluded from sitting in this House. They would justly say to him, "We deprive you of nothing, we leave you in the state you were in before the passing of the late Relief bill. We have certainly for the future relieved you, in common with all Roman Catholics, from the necessity of making the Declaration against transubstantiation. That bill was undoubtedly intended to place all Roman Catholics in that respect upon an equal footing; but it was not a bill intended to apply to your personal case; it was not intended to relieve you from the necessity of taking the Oaths of Abjuration and Supremacy, prescribed by those former acts of Parliament, which were the law of the land at the time when you were elected. It is by the operation of the former law that you are now excluded; and as you were elected previous to the passing of the Relief bill, it is abundantly plain that there is no injustice in now excluding you, and no necessity has been shown to induce us to go out of our way to perform in your regard an uncalled-for act of grace and favour." The fact was, that Mr. O'Connell was elected at a time when the passing of that act was contemplated neither by him, nor by his constituents; and he had no right to have it applied retrospectively to his case, and for his peculiar benefit. The clauses which exclude Mr. O'Connell, said Mr.

Ferguson, would have been in the bill, though Mr. O'Connell, and his election, had never existed.

The question, however, was pressed to a division, when the Solicitor-general's resolution was carried, by a majority of 190 to 116.

Next day Mr. O'Connell appeared at the Bar. The Speaker communicated to him the resolution of the House, and asked him, whether he was ready to take the Oath of Supremacy. Mr. O'Connell requested permission to look at the oath; it was handed to him, and he answered, after a short pause, "I see, in this oath, one assertion as to a matter of fact which I know is not true, and see in it another assertion, as to a matter of opinion, which I believe is not true. I therefore refuse to take this oath.”

This was followed up by the Solicitor-general moving that the Speaker should issue his warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to issue a writ for a new election. Mr. Spring Rice, on the other hand, moved as an amendment that leave be given to bring in a bill to relieve Mr. O'Connell; whereupon general Gascoign gave notice that he would move for leave to bring in a bill, to alter and amend the Catholic Bill itself. The amendment was supported principally on the ground that it was imprudent to produce in Ireland, at this moment, the agitation of a new election, but it was ultimately withdrawn. The motion of general Gascoign was never made; and the motion for a new writ was agreed to without a division.

The last parliamentary result of the measures which had been thus carried through in regard to Ireland, was a motion for Parliamentary Reform. We have already noticed the agility with which the majori

ties of both Houses wheeled round at the word of command from the minister, and the little regard that was paid to public opinion in revolutionizing the internal arrangements of the country. On the 2nd of June the marquis of Blandford moved a series of resolutions, which went to declare that there existed a number of boroughs the representation of which could be purchased, and others in which the number of electors was so small as to render them liable to the influence of bribery; and that such a system was disgraceful to the character of the House of Commons, destructive of the confidence which the people should repose in it, and prejudicial to the best interests of the country. He supported the motion on the ground that late events had shown how completely the representative body could be separated from the feelings, the wishes, and the opinions of the people. An imperious necessity had been added to the already existing propriety of putting down the boroughmonger and his trade; all the rights and liberties of the country were in jeopardy, so long as majorities were to be obtained by a traffic of seats and services. After what had happened, the country demanded some statutory provision to secure its agriculture, its manufactures, and its trade;

and especially to secure the interest of the Protestant community against the influx and increase of the Roman Catholic party; and one mode of securing it, and at the same time to purify the representation, would be, to abolish the borough-market, which had now been thrown open to Catholics as well as Protestants. The resolutions, however, were rejected by a majority of 401 to 118. In truth, the motion itself was intended to be rather in the nature of a notice, than made with any design of having the topics which it embraced fully discussed, at that late period of the session. It was supported by some of the old reformers, though on very different grounds from that dislike of free-trade, and apprehension of Catholic influence, which animated the mover. They confessed they would be less favourably inclined to reform, if they could think it would produce a House of Commons unfriendly to what was called free-trade, or to the liberal principles which had granted emancipation. Mr. W. Smith, in voting for the resolutions, expressed his high satisfaction that the Relief bill had produced one effect, which its best friends had not anticipated, the transforming a number of the highest tories in the land into something very like radical reformers.

THE

HE House and the country were so engrossed by the measures and discussions relative to Ireland, that scarcely any other proceedings worthy of being recorded took place during the session. In the mean time, however, the manufacturing part of the population were suffering great distress; and in some places they aggravated their sufferings by combining to remain idle; rather than work at the wages which were offered them; and both causes led to frequent riotous proceedings, and to the destruction of the property of their employers. The silk weavers in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green particularly distinguished themselves in this work of violence.

On the 14th of April, Mr. Fyler, one of the members for Coventry, brought the state of the silk-trade before Parliament, by moving for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into its condition, and the cause of its decline. The motion was founded on the distress which was acknowledged on all hands to prevail, and on statements which were said to prove both that the decline of the trade was still progressive, and that its origin was to be sought in the recent changes in our commercial legislation. It was mentioned that, in Coventry, the number of silk weavers out of employment, had increased by five hundred since

the middle of March, and that the total number of unemployed persons connected with the trade, amounted to upwards of four thousand two hundred. There were, it appeared, twenty-six mills standing still in Congleton. In 1824, the average wages were 12s. 8d. per week; in 1828, 4s. 7d. In Paisley, there were two-thirds more mills at work in 1824 than in 1828. the average rate of wages was 15s. in 1824, and only 8s. 1 d. in 1828. In Macclesfield there were fifty-two mills employed in 1824; in 1828 sixteen of them were standing still. At Taunton, in Somersetshire, of seventy mills that were employed in 1824, fifty were now standing still, and wages were reduced seventy per cent. In Spitalfields, in 1824-5, Gros-deNaples was paid for at the rate of 10d. a yard, it was now 6d. ; lustring was 1s. a yard, it was now 8d.; other fabrics, which were then for at the rate of 1s. 2d. a yard, were now 9d. In 1824-5 there were seventeen thousand looms employed in Spitalfields, while at the present day there were only nine thousand. The rate of wages averaged at the former period 17s.; at present it amounted to only 9s. Figured and fancy goods, in 1824-5, produced an average of 22s. a week wages; that rate was now reduced to 14s. In 1824-5 one-third of the whole manufac