To this meeting a Resolution was submitted, protesting against the emancipation of the Roman Catholics.  A counter-petition was submitted by Sydney Smith, begging for an inquiry into all laws affecting the Roman Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland, and “expressing a hope” that only those which were absolutely necessary to the safety of Church and State might be suffered to remain.  It is difficult to conceive a milder proposition, but it was defeated by twenty-two votes to ten—­Archdeacon Wrangham[83] and the Rev. William Vernon,[84] son of the Archbishop of York, voting in the minority.  Sydney Smith’s speech in support of his motion recapitulated the main arguments which, as Peter Plymley, he had adduced at an earlier stage of the same controversy.  He urged that a Roman Catholic’s oath was as sacred and as binding as a Protestant’s; that the English Constitution, with great advantage to its subjects, tolerated, and behaved generously to, all forms of religion (except Romanism); and that all possible danger to civil order in Ireland was averted by the stringency of the restrictions with which it was proposed to safeguard the gift of Emancipation.—­

“I defy Dr. Duigenan,[85] in the full vigour of his incapacity, in the strongest access of that Protestant epilepsy with which he was so often convulsed, to have added a single security to the security of that oath.  If Catholics are formidable, are not Protestant members elected by Catholics formidable?  But what will the numbers of the Catholics be?  Five or six in one house, and ten or twelve in the other; and this I state upon the printed authority of Lord Harrowby, the tried and acknowledged friend of our Church, the amiable and revered patron of its poorest members.  The Catholics did not rebel during the war carried on for a Catholic king, in the year 1715, nor in 1745.  The government armed the Catholics in the American war.  The last rebellion no one pretends to have been a Catholic rebellion; the leaders were, with one exception, all Protestants.  The king of Prussia, the emperor of Russia, do not complain of their Catholic subjects.  The Swiss cantons, Catholic and Protestant, live together in harmony and peace.  Childish prophecies of danger are always made, and always falsified.  The Church of England (if you will believe some of its members) is the most fainting, sickly, hysterical institution that ever existed in the world.  Every thing is to destroy it, every thing to work its dissolution and decay.  If money is taken for tithes, the Church of England is to perish.  If six old Catholic peers, and twelve commoners, come into Parliament, these holy hypochondriacs tear their hair, and beat their breast, and mourn over the ruin of their Established Church!  The Ranter is cheerful and confident.  The Presbyterian stands upon his principles.  The Quaker is calm and contented.  The strongest, and wisest, and best establishment in the world, suffers in the full vigour of manhood, all the fears and the tremblings of extreme old age.

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