lors are Roman
Catholics? About one-seventieth. And what, after all, is the power of a
Privy Councillor, merely as such? Are not the right honourable gentlemen
opposite Privy Councillors? If a change should take place, will not the
present Ministers still be Privy Councillors? It is notorious that no
Privy Councillor goes to Council unless he is specially summoned. He is
called Right Honourable, and he walks out of a room before Esquires and
Knights. And can we seriously believe that men who think it monstrous
that this honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics,
do sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may be
Commander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord of the
Admiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of the Treasury,
with the chief influence in every department of the Government. I must
therefore suppose that those who join in the cry against the three Privy
Councillors, are either imbecile or hostile to the Emancipation Act.

I repeat, therefore, that, while the right honourable Baronet is as free
from bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is more bigoted
than it was eleven years ago. The difficulty of governing Ireland in
opposition to the feelings of the great body of the Irish people is, I
apprehend, as great now as it was eleven years ago. What then must be
the fate of a government formed by the right honourable Baronet? Suppose
that the event of this debate should make him Prime Minister? Should I
be wrong if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be more
hated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of the
Crown have been? Should I be wrong if I were to say that all those
literary organs which now deafen us with praise of him, will then deafen
us with abuse of him? Should I be wrong if I were to say that he will
be burned in effigy by those who now drink his health with three times
three and one cheer more? Should I be wrong if I were to say that those
very gentlemen who have crowded hither to-night in order to vote him
into power, will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back? Once already
have I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose of
driving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation to which
they had themselves exalted him. I went out with them myself; yes, with
the whole body of the Tory country gentlemen, with the whole body of
high Churchmen. All the four Universit