ut we
are sad cowards, I am afraid; at least, we are shamefully used. Poor
Duigenan could not get a hearing, and the general impression seemed
against the Protestants. We will fight them out, however, to the last.
I am sure it is better than to give way.' 'Your defence of the
Protestant cause,' wrote Saurin, 'was not only by far the ablest and
best, but the only one which did not seem to strengthen the cause of
the adversary by some concession of principle. I really fear the
Protestant cause is lost in the Commons. There can be no rally now but
on the securities.'[16]

Grattan at once brought in a Bill in accordance with the terms of the
Resolution that had been carried; but the Protestant party now rallied
around a motion of Sir John Hippisley, for a committee to inquire into
the state and tenets of the Roman Catholics, and the laws affecting
them. Canning pointed out with great force that a committee of inquiry
was exactly what the Protestant party had for so many years
strenuously resisted; but, as Peel wrote to the Duke of Richmond,
there was no inconsistency in their conduct: 'When the question was
whether we should consider the claims of the Catholics and the laws
affecting them, or should resist their claims, we voted for resistance
without inquiry; the question now is, whether we shall consider or
concede, and we prefer inquiry to concession.'[17]

The motion for delay, however, was defeated by 187 to 235, and the
second reading of Grattan's Bill was carried by 245 to 203. But a
sudden change now occurred in the prospects of the cause. Canning and
Castlereagh, with the full assent of Grattan, introduced clauses for
the securities which had been before intimated, giving the Crown a
control over the nomination of the Catholic bishops. But the bishops
unanimously condemned the proposal, and the large majority of the
Catholic Board supported them. It became evident that the Bill before
Parliament would fail to satisfy the Catholics, and after a long
discussion the clause admitting Catholics to Parliament was rejected
by 251 to 247.

Peel had triumphed. The profound division which had broken out among
the supporters of Catholic emancipation threw back for many years a
cause which had been almost gained, though in 1817 an Act was passed
without opposition throwing open to the Catholics the military and
naval positions which Grenville had vainly attempted to open in 1807.
Few things could have been eventually more