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Proceedings in the present stated, that not only was the whole of a county put to inconvenience to get a few men yearly-to do no duty, but the expense to the public, over and above all this inconvenience, was 251. per man, while men were raised for the regular service at 31. each. In illustration of this fact Mr. Peel mentioned, that last year the expenses attending the Ballot for twenty-one men for the Stafford Militia, amounted to five hundred pounds, besides the extreme inconvenience and expense to or 400 individuals who were obliged to appeal. The Bill was read a first time.

March 17. Mr. Peel having moved the second reading of the CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL, Mr. Benson spoke at some length in its favor; he thought, if the Bill were passed, that it would restore peace and tranquillity to Ireland; that the Irish landholders would reside upon their estates, and there diffuse that capital which was now spent elsewhere.-Sir Edward Knatchbull said he had always been ready to show his confidence in Ministers; but he had no notion of such confidence in any Ministry as would justify him in voting away the constitution of the country. He contended that no circumstances now existed to warrant the important changes now proposed; and, believing that the measure would not be productive of the anticipated good, he should give it his most decided opposition.-The Chancellor of the Exchequer argued that the state of Ireland, particularly as regards the Church in that country, rendered the measure absolutely necessary. Mr. G. Bankes had heard nothing to induce him to withhold his hearty opposition to the Bill. He contended that no security to the Established Church was provided by it. The country had unequivocally declared its sense of the measure, and he confidently believed that the opinion of the country, so declared, would finally triumph.-Lord Castlereagh spoke in support of the Bill.-Mr. Sadler delivered a very long and eloquent speech against the Catholic claims. He said, that of all the times in which this measure had been proposed this is undeniably the worst. many former occasions the concession would have been accepted as a boon; it would be now sullenly taken as the recovery of a just but long disputed debt; one insultingly withheld, and at last reluctantly granted. But the most important consideration he would present to the House affected its competency to entertain this question. This House had no right to proceed in this work of counter-revolution without consulting the people. The Protestant Constitution, now endangered, was first established in a Convention called for that special purpose; and without as full an appeal, and with equal formality, the people had no right to be robbed of it. The Parliament was neither

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called to, nor competent to alter the original frame-work of the Constitution. Neither the established Constitution of the country, nor the oaths and declarations taken, permitted them to assume the right which was now so eagerly sought to be excercised, namely, the right of throwing open the doors of this House to the admission of Popery, to the scandal, disgrace, auc danger of the Protestant Establishment in Church and State. After some observations from Sir G. Warrender and Mr. Fane, it was agreed to adjourn the debate.

March 18. The debate on the Catholic Relief Bill being resumed, Mr. Bankes addressed the House at great length, and conIcluded by declaring his determination to oppose any further concessions to the Catholics.-Lord Tullamore and Mr. Trant spoke against the measure; and Lord Milton, Sir H. Parnell, Mr. W. Horton, Lord Palmerston and several other Members, in favour of the concessions.-The Attorney-General rose, amidst loud cheering, and delivered a most eloquent address against granting concessions to the Catholics. He said, that having used the utmost assiduity in investigating this question, I may be permitted to state, that no pain which I as an individual ever endured could be compared with that I suffered when, only seven days before the opening of the present Session of Parliament, I was informed that the question, commonly called the Catholic question, was to be recommended to Parliament by his Majesty's Government! I declined to draw the Bill which is now on the table, because, looking at the oath I took as

Attorney-General, I thought that, in drawing up the Bill, I should be abandoning my duty to the country and to my King, and drawing up the death-warrant of the Established Church as completely as Noy did when he advised the levy of ship-money, or as Lord Chancellor Jeffreys did when he drew up the committal of the seven Protestant Bishops to the Tower-(Continued cheering) The learned Gentleman then entered into a long argument to prove, by the testimony of history, and by uncontroverted public acts, that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from power was a principle acted upon before the revolution, at the time of the revolution, and after the revolution. I must say that this is a sudden, an unadvised, and a hasty measure of Catholic Emancipation; and that if the King's Ministers had followed, as they ought to have done, the orders in his Majesty's Speech, they would have gone into a Committee on the state of Ireland, in order to find out and report on the actual condition of that country, before they brought in any measure to remedy, as they say, the evils existing there.—Mr. Peel, in reply, observed that he did not expect that any man holding the situation which the learned Gentleman held, would have felt himself called upon to

THE measures of Ministers now in progress through Parliament for removing Roman Catholic disabilities have been the allengrossing topic of the day. But large and ample as the measure of concession is, it has still been received by the members of the Irish Catholic Association in the most ungracious manner, so far as relates to the forty-shilling freeholders, the Catholic prelacy, and the Jesuits. A letter from Mr. Lawless to the Catholics of Ireland, says; "O'Connell has agreed with me that the present Bill of Emancipation, if followed by Bill destroying the rights of the fortyshilling freeholders of Ireland, should be unanimously and indignantly rejected by the Irish people. He has followed up the denunciation of such a Bill by a powerful and practical system of revenge. He has called on the Irish people to proclaim a simultaneous war against the circulation of Bank Notes, and the consumption of every article of excise from which Government derives its support." Nor is this the sole objection urged against the measure. "It is cruel and dishonourable to the Catholic prelacy of Ireland,' to prevent them from assuming the same titles as the Protestant prelacy in Ireland. Again, with regard to the measures for suppressing the Jesuits, Mr. Lawless says: Let the trumpet of persecution against the Jesuits be once sounded, and then they will be truly forinidable. All their resources (and they are great) will rise into simultaneous action. Penal law after penal law may be enacted, but the unconquered spirit of the martyr will triumph over all." The Freeman's Journal says, "the people shall not be tranquillized by a measure which takes away more than an equivalent for what it gives." It is thus evident that dissatisfaction will only increase in proportion to the concessions made on the part of Government.

ROMAN CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND AND WALES. The following statistical view of the present state of the Roman Catholics in England and Wales is derived from the most authentic sources, and will, at the present time, be interesting.

The aggregate number of Catholics in England and Wales are computed at nearly 400,000, principally resident in the counties of Lancaster, Stafford, Warwick, Northumberland, Durham, Cheshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Keut, and Worcestershire. Middlesex and Surrey contain, independently, about 50,000. They consist of Clergy, Nobility,

and Commoners, under which heads we shall proceed to class them.

[March,

tolic; these Vicars are deputed by the Pope, and exercise vicarial powers, revocable at pleasure. They are, indeed, Bishops, in the Roman Catholic Church, but do not enjoy episcopal authority in Britain; their sees are little more than nominal, or " in partibus," as it is termed, as Centurion, Castabella, &c. Each Vicar has a district, therefore, assigned to him, not a See. Thus, were Dr. Gibson, in the Northern; Dr. Milner, in the Midland; Dr. Pointer, in the London; and Dr. Collinridge, in the Western district. In like manner each Priest has a separate district; not, however, any particular parish, but a "mission," and he is called a "Missionary." He acts by virtue of a faculty granted by the apostolic Vicar of the district, and is removable at pleasure. In Ireland, on the contrary, where the regular succession has been preserved, no Bishop is removable at the mere will of the Pope-nor is any parish Priest removable at the mere will of his Bishop. To effect such a removal there must exist a canonical cause, an accuser, regular trial, sentence, and ratification.

In England there are above a thousand Roman Catholic chapels, mostly erected within the last forty years; they are generally clean, commodious, and well-built; many of them elegant edifices of classical or Gothic architecture, or the altar-pieces richly fitted up and ornamented. Lancashire alone counts upwards of a hundred Roman Catholic chapels. In London there are fifteen; some of them, as Duke-street chapel, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, Sutton-street, Soho, Manchester-square, and Warwickstreet, very superior edifices withinside, and that elegant structure lately erected in White-street, Moorfields, described in vol. XCVII. ii. 580. Moreover, most of the Roman Catholic country gentlemen of fortune maintain chapels, some of them of the most superb description, at their seats and mansions.

For education, besides great numbers of schools dispersed over the kingdom, they have been allowed, by the favour of Government, to erect or re-establish various nunneries and monastic foundations, furnished with chapels, cloisters, cemetries, and all the usual parts of those buildings, as they existed before the Reformation, in which they wear the dress, and follow all the ancient rules of their respective orders. Of the former sort may be mentioned the nunnery at Hammersmith, in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, fitted up in all respects as described; of the latter, is the Cistercian convent, on the site of an ancient one of the same order, at Lulworth Park,

Dorsetshire; and various others in different parts of the country.

7. Baron Stafford......

8. Baron Clifford, of Chudleigh....... 1672 In Scotland there are two Roman Catholic Earls, Traquair and Newburgh.

:-

1611

The Roman Catholic Baronets of
England are 14 in number, viz. :-
Sir William Gerard..........
Sir Henry Tichborne, Hants........ 1626
Sir Thomas Vavasour, Yorkshire... 1628
Sir John Throckmorton, Berks..... 1641
Sir Edward Blount, Shropshire..... 1642
Sir William Hunlake, Derbyshire... 1643
Sir Carnaby Haggerston, Northumb. 1643
Sir Thomas Webb, Wiltshire....... 1644
Sir Edward Smyth, Warwickshire... 1660
Sir Richard Bedingfield, Norfolk... 1660
Sir Thomas Stanley, Cheshire...... 1661
Sir Thomas Gage, Suffolk........... 1682
Sir Henry Maire Lawson, Yorkshire 1665
Sir Peter Mostyn, Flintshire........ 1670
There is also one Scotch Baronet :-

Sir John R. Gordon, Tweedaleshire 1686 The principal names which have dropped off latterly, either by death or conformity, have been Browne, Lord Montague; Roper, Lord Teynham; Vavasour, Curzon, Acton, Mannock,Gascoigne, Fleetwood, Swinburne, Englefield, Hales-all Peers or Baronets.

Amongst the English Roman Catholics are many ancient families of name and renown in English history. Their present heads are mostly country gentlemen of secluded habits of life. Such are the names of→→→

Acton of Wolverton; Anderton.

Bishop, Blundell of Ince, Bodeuham, Bowden, Brockholes, Browne of Mostyn, Biddulph, Berington, and Berkeley.

Clavering of Northumberland, Clifton, Constable Maxwell of Everingham, Courtney, Carey, Chichester, Chomley, Charlton, Crathorpe, Clifford, and Canning.

Disconson, Doughty, Dalton, and Darrell, Eyston, Eyre, Errington, Eccleton. Fairfax, Ferrers, Fitzherbert, Fermor. Gibson, Gildebrand, Greenwood, and Giffard of Chillington-whose ancestors saved King Charles II., at Boscobel.

Hansford, Hanvers, Hyde, Hodgson, Hornyold, Hussey, Howard, Henage, and Huddlestone.

Ingleby, Jones, Jackson.
Laugdale, Lorimer.

Maire, Menell of Yorkshire, Middleton of Stockheld, More, and Manby.

GENT. MAG. March, 1829.

265

Needham, Nevell, Nelson, Norris, Paston, Porter, Plowden, and Ridel.

Saltmarsh Garstald of Yorkshire, Salvin of Durham; Scarisbrick, Scrope of Yorkshire, Silvertop, Standish, Strickland of Westmorland, Stapylton of Carlton, Stones, Stanley, Selby, and Sheldon.

Tempest of Yorkshire, Trapps, Townley, Tuberville, Tunstall, Tasborough, and Trafford.

Vaughan, Wakeman, Willoughby, Whit greave, Whitham of Yorkshire, Wright,

and Watson.

There are above 300 of these Roman Catholic families not inferior to many in the British Peerage in ancient, pure, and noble lineage-some who can boast the legitimate Plantagenet blood-several who enjoy landed estates lineally transmitted since the Norman days, and even the Saxon era. These, though now not titled, may be classed by the Herald amongst Nobility. The heads of these families mostly have retired upon patrimonial incomes, varying in nominal value from 1,500l. to 25,000l.

In the beginning of the last century there were above 60,000 Roman Catholics in the Highlands alone. With a few exceptions, most of the Gordons, Macdonalds, Mackintoshes, Macphersons, &c. were Roman Catholics; their grand and great grand children are Protestants. The Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 effected this change, by dissolving the Feudal system. The children of the Gentry in general, particularly those but remotely allied to the chieftains, were dispersed, educated in the South, and put to business. Great Britain now enjoys the happy consequences of their conversion to Protestantism, and our heroes are kept at home that used to fill the armies of the Northern Princes.

An enormous whale has been lately caught in Whitstable Bay, which has been attracting numerous visitors. Upwards of 401. has been realized by its exhibition on the beach. The sailors sold it to a Mr. Sturge of London for 100 guineas. He erected coppers on the beach, where the fish was cut u, and yielded nearly seven butts of fine oil, valued at 80%. a butt. The skeleton is destined for the Zoological Society of London.

SHERIFFS FOR 1829. Beds.-W. D. C. Cooper, of Toddington, esq. Berks.-G. H. Cherry, of Denford, esq. Bucks.-H. W. Mason, of Amersham, esq. Camb. and Hunt.-R. Orton, of Upwell, esq. Cheshire-L. Armitstead, of Cranage, esq. Cumb.-E. W. Hasell, of Dalemaine, esq. Cornwall-G. W. F. Gregor, of Trewarthenick, esq.