orce the law, establishes a
regular, but underhand, intercourse through the medium of a diplomatic
agent, whose character cannot be avowed, and the ministers of this
Protestant kingdom are continually soliciting the Pope to confer
appointments, the validity, even the existence, of which they do not
recognise, while the Pope, who is the chief object of our abhorrence and
dread, good humouredly complies with all or nearly all their requests."

Two years after the Minto mission, and a few months before he succeeded
to power in place of Peel, Lord John Russell told Charles Greville that
the Government was "the greatest curse to Ireland," and he spoke of
"their policy of first truckling to the Orangemen, insulting, and then
making useless concessions to the Catholics, without firmness and
justice."[13] It is only fair to Lord John to say that in the following
year he ordered a Bill to be drawn up to legalise intercourse with the
Pope and to put an end to these repeated acts of _praemunire_ on the part
of Ministers of the Crown; for a large number of constitutional
authorities believed that their action amounted to this offence, which
has been defined as consisting of acts tending to introduce into the
realm some foreign power, more particularly that of the Pope, to the
diminution of the King's authority.

The Diplomatic Relations with the Court of Rome Bill was introduced and
passed into law, with one important amendment which we shall have
occasion to notice later, in 1848, less than two years after Peel's
ministry had been succeeded by that of Russell. The grounds upon which
its acceptance by Parliament was demanded were that the complications
resulting from the revolutionary crisis throughout the Continent made it
essential that the Foreign Office should be in a position, in dealing
with the chancelleries of Europe, to obtain direct recognition, and as a
result first-hand information, as to the attitude of the Holy See in any
situations which might arise; and the acceptance by Parliament of the
change of policy which the Bill was intended to effect, on the
understanding that diplomatic negotiations should be confined to foreign
affairs, may be seen in the words of Earl Fitzwilliam in the House of
Lords. In his speech in support of the Bill he declared that "the very
last subject upon which the Government should communicate with the
Court of Rome was that which had reference to relations which it should
have with its own