petition he should move to have it printed, that honourable members might see what it was.

The petition was then brought up, and was as follows:

"To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Ireland in Parliament assembled;

"The Petition of William Cobbett, of Barnes in the county of Surrey, "Most humbly Sheweth, "That your Petitioner prays your Honourable House, that the Protestant Church of Ireland, as by law established, may be, by law, repealed and utterly abrogated and abolished, and that this prayer he founds on the facts which he, with the greatest respect, will now proceed to submit to your Honourable House:

"That, until the year 1547, the Catholic religion was the only religion known in Ireland; that after the Protestant religion was introduced into England, it was, by law, made to be the religion_taught in the Churches in Ireland; that a Protestant clergy were made to supplant the clergy of the ancient religion; that the latter were turned out of the livings, and the churches; that the altars were pulled down, and the mass abolished, and the Protestant Table and Common Prayer forcibly introduced in their stead :

"That the people of Ireland saw, with great indignation, this attempt to force upon them a new and strange religion, and to compel them to abandon and to become apostates to that religion in which they had been born and bred-that religion which had been the religion of their fathers for many centuries, and the truth, purity, and wisdom of which were so clearly proved by its happy effects:

"That, therefore, the people rejected this new religion, of the origin of which, or of the authority by which it was imposed on them, they had, and could have, no idea. But the government of England persisted in compelling the Irish to submit to an abandonment of the ancient, and an adoption of the new, religion:

"That, in order to effect this purpose, clergymen, to officiate in the churches of Ireland, were sent from England; and that to these the tithes and other church revenues were all transferred, leaving the Catholic clergy to beg or starve. But that such was the abhorrence which the Irish people entertained, at the thought of

apostatising from their religion, that they shunned, as they would have shunned deposits of deadly pestilence, those churches to which they had before resorted with punctuality and zeal, surpassed by the people of no nation on the earth. And that, still clinging to faithful pastors, they secretly sought, in houses, in barns, in woods, in caves, amongst rocks, or in fastnesses of some sort, the comforts of that communion, to which they no longer dared to resort in open day:

"That government, irritated at this contumely, as it was called, but fidelity as it ought to have been called, resorted to means the most tyrannical, the most cruel, and even the most ferocious, in order to subdue this pious fidelity; that it inflicted fine, imprisonment, torture, death,

and sometimes two or three or all of those on the same person; it confiscated, not only innumerable estates belonging to Catholics, but whole counties at once, on the plea that this was necessary in order to plant the Protestant religion; that the lands thus confiscated were given to Protestants; and that, in reality, the former owners were extirpated, or made little better than slaves to the intruders:

"That, however, in spite of acts of tyranny, at the thought of which Nero and Caligula would have startled with horror, which acts continued to be enforced with unabated rigour for more than two hundred years; that, in spite of those acts of fining, confiscating, plundering, racking, and killing, all having in view one single object, that of compelling the people to conform to the Church as by law established; that, in spite of all these atrocious acts, these matchless barbarities of two hundred years, the people of Ireland, though their country was frequently almost literally strewed with mangled bodies and made red with blood, adhered with unshaken fidelity to the religion of their and of our fathers; that in spite of death continually looking them in the face; in spite of prisons, racks, halters, axes and the bowel-ripping knife; in spite of all these, their faithful priests have never deserted them; and that the priests now in Ireland are the successors of thousands of heroic martyrs, many of whom were actually ripped up and cut into quarters:

"That, nevertheless, the new Church, by law established, got safely into her possession all the property that had be longed to the ancient church; that it

took all the tithes, all the parsonage houses, all the glebes, all the landed estates, which in Ireland are of immense extent and value; so that Ireland exhibited, has for nearly three hundred years continued to exhibit, and still exhibits, the strange sight of an enormous rich established church nearly without -flocks, and, on the other hand, an almost mendicant priesthood with flocks comprising the main part of the people; it exhibits a religious system, which takes the use of the churches from the millions, and gives it to the thousands; that takes the churches from that religion by the followers of which they were founded and endowed, and gives them to that religion, the followers of which protest against the faith of the founders and endowers, and brand their religion as idolatrous and damnable:

66

That your petitioner can form an idea of no being short of a fiend, in point of malignity and cruelty, capable of viewing such a scene without feelings of horror; and therefore he is confident that your honourable House, still, as he hopes, animated with the benevolent spirit which led to the recent enactment in favour of the persecuted Catholics will hasten to put an end to a scene so disgraceful and to injustice so flagrantly outrageous:

That it must be manifest to every one that there could be, for giving the vast revenues of the Church of Ireland to the Protestant clergy, no ground other than that those revenues might be applied in such a manner as to cause the main body of the people to become and remain Protestants, and that, too, of the communion established by law; that those revenues, on the most moderate estimate, amount to three millions of pounds sterling a year; that several of the Irish bishops have, of late years, left, at their death, personal property exceeding, for each, two hundred thousand pounds; that the deaneries and prebends and other benefices in the church of Ireland, as by law established, are of great value; and that, your humble petitioner is sure that your honourable House will not deem him presumptuous, if he take it for granted, that your honourable House will allow, that it is impossible that any government in its senses, that any but tyrants, and mad tyrants too, would have given these immense revenues to the Protestant clergy, unless with a view and in the confident expectation of seeing the

people, or a large part of them at any rate converted to the Protestant faith, and joining in the Protestant communion; for that, otherwise, it must have been evident that those immense revenues could only serve to create division, and to perpetuate all the passions hostile to the peace and prosperity of the country:

"That, however, at the end of two hundred and seventy-six years there are, in Ireland, even a less number of church Protestants than, as your humble petitioner finds good historical reason for believing, there were an hundred and eighty years ago; that it is a fact generally admitted, that the church Protestants in that country have long been, and still are, decreasing in number, compared with that of the Catholics, and also as compared with that of those Protestant sects who stand aloof from her Common Prayer and Communion; that it is an undoubted fact, that in many parishes there are scarcely any Protestants at all; that in some parishes there is not one; that throughout the whole country there is not, on an average, more than one Church Protestant to every six Catholics or Dissenters; and that, while the Catholics are shut out of the churches founded and endowed by their forefathers of the same faith, and while these churches are empty, or at best echo to the solitary voices of the stipendiary agent of the opulent and luxurious incumbent, the Catholics are compelled, either to abandon the public practice of their worship, to build chapels at their own expense, or, which they are frequently compelled to do, kneel down on the ground, and in the open air:

"That, if your honourable House will hardly be able to refrain from expressing deep indignation at the thought of a scene like this (existing apparently with your approbation), it would be presumption indeed in your humble Petitioner to attempt to estimate the feelings with which you must contemplate the present state of the Irish church, as by law established, and the present application of its prodigious revenues:

"That there are in Ireland, three thousand four hundred and three parishes; that these are moulded into five hundred and fifteen livings, and that, therefore, each parson has, on an average, the tithes and glebes of more than nine parishes; that this is not the worst, however, for that many of the livings are united, and

that the whole three thousand four hundred and three parishes are divided amongst less than three hundred and fifty parsons; that of the three thousand four hundred and three parishes, there are only one hundred and thirty-nine that have parsonage-houses, so that there is now remaining only one parsonage-house to every twenty-four parishes, and only four hundred and sixty-five that have any churches, or one church to seven parishes; and that even in these, residence of the incumbent, or even a curate, seldom takes place for any length of time; that the Church, as by law established, would seem to be merely the means of making, out of the public resources, provision for certain families and persons; that of the four archbishops and eighteen bishops of the Irish Church, as by law established, there are as your Petitioner believes, fourteen who are, by blood or marriage, related to peers; that a similar principle appears to your humble Petitioner to prevail in the filling of the other dignities and the livings: and that, therefore, the Irish Church, as by law established, really does seem to your humble Petitioner to exist for no purpose other than that of furnishing the government with the means of bestowing largesses on the aristocracy :

"That, though this must, as your Petitioner presumes your honourable House will believe, be a great evil, it is attended with evils still greater than itself; that to expect in such a state of things, a willing payment of tithes and clerical dues would be next to a trait of madness; that the tithes are often collected by the aid of a military force; and that bloodshed is not unfrequently a circumstance in the enterprise; that it is manifest that, if there were no military force kept up, there could be no tithes collected: and that, therefore, to the evil of the present application of the Irish Church revenues are to be added the cost and all the other evils arising from the keeping up of a great standing army in Ireland; that, besides this army, there is kept on foot an armed, and sometimes mounted, police establishment, costing an immense sum annually; that it is clear, that neither army nor police would be wanted in Ireland, were it not for the existence of the Church establishment, which the Catholics and Dissenters, who form six parts out of seven of the people, must naturally, and notoriously do, detest and abhor; that, therefore, while

the Irish Church, as by law established, appears to your humble Petitioner to be kept up as a source for supplying the government with the means of bestowing largesses on the aristocracy, the army and police appear to him to be required solely for the purpose of giving efficiency and permanence to that supply h

"That, hence, as your humble Petitioner firmly believes, all the discontents, all the troubles, all the poverty, nakedness, hunger, all the human degradation in Ireland; and this belief he founds upon facts which are incontrovertible:

"That, when the Reformation laid its merciless hand on Ireland, that country, blessed with a soil and climate as good as any in the world, had six hundred and forty-nine monasteries and other foundations of that nature; that it had a church in every parish, instead of having, as now, one church, on an average, to every seven parishes: that it had then a priest in every parish, who relieved the poor and repaired the church out of the tithes; that it had in the monasteries and in the bishops' palaces, so many points whence the poor the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, received relief; and that it had (greater than all the rest) unity of faith, glory to God with one voice, peace on earth, and goodwill towards men:

"That, alas! your humble petitioner need not tell your honourable House, that those have all, yea all, been swept away by the means made use of to introduce, establish, and uphold the Protestant hierarchy; that these means are still in practice, and are, in productiveness of turmoil and misery, as active and efficient as ever; and that, as long as this hierarchy shall continue to exist, the same means must, your petitioner is convinced, be employed constantly and with unabated rigour:

"That, therefore, your humble petitioner prays that your honourable House, proceeding upon the clear precedents set by former parliaments, will be pleased to pass a law to repeal, abrogate, abolish and render utterly frustrate and of no effect, the Protestant church now established by law in Ireland; that you will be pleased to cause a just distribution, in future, of the tithes and other revenues now received by that church; that, in this distribution, you will be pleased to cause to be made effectual provision for the relief of the poor; and that you will be pleased to adopt, relative to the premises, such other

measures as, in your wisdom, you shall deem to be meet. And your petitioner will ever pray."

subsequently withdrew; one, however, continued to express his willingness to abide by the offer made. That offer con

SWAN RIVER SETTLEMENT.] Mr. Hume said, he had a question to put to the right hon. Secretary for the Colonies, relative to the new settlement at the Swan River, to which he hoped to obtain a satisfactory answer, for the advantage of those who were disposed to emigrate to that Settlement. It had been stated in the public papers, that the whole of the fertile land at the Swan River was granted to one person, so as to preclude the hope of those who were disposed to emigrate to that Settlement, of their being able to obtain any good land unless they obtained it by purchase from this individual. He hoped the right hon. Secretary would give such an explanation on the subject as would satisfy the House that the statements which had been made respecting this colony, as to the disposal of the land in the manner he had mentioned, were unfounded.

Sir George Murray said, he was glad of the opportunity afforded him to give an explanation-he trusted a satisfactory one -on the subject referred to by the hon. member. The first proposal made to the government, relative to the Swan River Settlement, originated with two gentlemen who applied for a charter, and for power and liberty to form a colony, after the manner in which the formation of other colonies had taken place. This proposal, however, did not meet the approval of government, as it was deemed desirable to exercise a more immediate control over the Settlement by government, than by such an arrangement it would possess. The second proposal came from four persons of great respectability and considerable capital. They proposed to take out ten thousand persons as emigrants from this country, on government allotting them a district of the country to the extent of two millions of acres. This, however, was a larger portion of the country than government were disposed to place out of their hands, on the terms proposed to them. He (sir George Murray) did propose, however, to accept of the proposal in a modified form, and to accede to the wishes of those four individuals on a limited plan. Of the four proposers, three

and fifty thousand acres of land; and a condition was made with this person, that the grant should be situated at a considerable distance from the mouth of the Swan River, so as to leave a great extent of fertile territory for the advantage of future settlers, and as an inducement to them to emigrate thither. The statements referred to by the hon. member, which had found their way into the newspapers, were wholly unfounded. They were statements, he feared, got up by artful persons, for the purpose of preventing others from making proposals to the Colonial Department, in the hope that their own might meet with an undue preference. He was glad of the opportunity of making this explanation. At the Colonial Office the fullest information would be given, as to the circumstances in which that colony was situated, and the facilities held out to emigrants intending to settle at the Swan River.

Mr. Baring wished to know, if any conditions were imposed on the individual to whom the grant of two hundred and fifty thousand acres was made, as to the number of emigrants who were to be taken out to it, or as to the time in which the land granted to him was to be settled?

Sir George Murray said, that the individual who had obtained the grant had engaged to take out four hundred persons, to settle in the colony, before the 1st of November. He had also engaged, that the land granted to him should be settled within twenty-one years after the date of the grant. The usual time allowed for settling was ten years; but in the present instance, on account of the peculiar circumstances of the case, the time was extended to twenty-one years.

SILK TRADE BILL.] The order of the day was read for going into a committee on this bill. On the motion, "that the Speaker do now leave the chair,"

Mr. Fyler said, that having formerly addressed the House at considerable length upon this subject, he should not intrude upon them for any time on the present occasion. He trusted, however, that he might be allowed to take the opportunity of re-stating a few of the objections to which the measure was obnoxious—a mea