With this mover and this seconder agreed the _whole_ House of Commons,
the _whole_ House of Lords, the _whole_ Bench of Bishops, the king, the
ministry, the opposition, all the distinguished clergy of the
Establishment, all the eminent lights (for they were consulted) of the
dissenting churches. This according voice of national wisdom ought to be
listened to with reverence. To say that all these descriptions of
Englishmen unanimously concurred in a scheme for introducing the
Catholic religion, or that none of them understood the nature and
effects of what they were doing so well as a few obscure clubs of people
whose names you never heard of, is shamelessly absurd. Surely it is
paying a miserable compliment to the religion we profess, to suggest
that everything eminent in the kingdom is indifferent or even adverse to
that religion, and that its security is wholly abandoned to the zeal of
those who have nothing but their zeal to distinguish them. In weighing
this unanimous concurrence of whatever the nation has to boast of, I
hope you will recollect that all these concurring parties do by no means
love one another enough to agree in any point which was not both
evidently and importantly right.

To prove this, to prove that the measure was both clearly and materially
proper, I will next lay before you (as I promised) the political grounds
and reasons for the repeal of that penal statute, and the motives to its
repeal at that particular time.

Gentlemen, America--When the English nation seemed to be dangerously,
if not irrecoverably divided,--when one, and that the most growing
branch, was torn from the parent stock, and ingrafted on the power of
France, a great terror fell upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened
from our dreams of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened with an
immediate invasion, which we were at that time very ill prepared to
resist. You remember the cloud that gloomed over us all. In that hour of
our dismay, from the bottom of the hiding-places into which the
indiscriminate rigor of our statutes had driven them, came out the body
of the Roman Catholics. They appeared before the steps of a tottering
throne, with one of the most sober, measured, steady, and dutiful
addresses that was ever presented to the crown. It was no holiday
ceremony, no anniversary compliment of parade and show. It was signed by
almost every gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, in
England. At such a crisis, noth