stability of our institutions, will, I am confident, be
your constant care. We may esteem ourselves fortunate
that we can pursue, without disturbance, the course of
calm and peaceable amelioration; and we have every
cause to be thankful to Almighty God for the measure
of tranquillity and happiness which has been vouchsafed
to us."

In the House of Lords, the Earl of EFFINGHAM
moved The Address in a speech of considerable length.
The address was seconded by Lord CREMORNE.—Lord
STANLEY said that though he was not altogether satisfied
with some parts of the speech, it was not his intention,
or the intention of those with whom he acted, to
call on the house to negative or alter the address. After
making some remarks on the part of the speech relating
to Foreign Affairs, he said that the allusion to agricultural
distress afforded a basis for some criticisms. Last
year, her Majesty stated that she had heard with regret
the "complaints" which had proceeded from a certain
portion of the owners and occupiers of land; but added,
that cheapness and plenty had bestowed an increased
enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts of life upon
the great body of the people. This year, however, they
were told that her Majesty lamented "the difficulties
which are still felt by that important body"—no longer
a small fraction, whose interests were to be separated
from those of the mass, "who are owners and occupiers
of land." It is a melancholy satisfaction to the general
class to have the extent and reality of its distress,
and the reasonableness of its complaints, thus acknowledged
by the government. The sympathy, however,
should in consistency have been more active. They
were told that there was great and general prosperity
throughout the country, and that the manufacturing
classes were largely profiting; but that concurrently
with this general prosperity of the great bulk of the
people, one class—and that the most important of all
interests—was suffering severely. They were informed
also, that, notwithstanding the large reductions of taxation
which had been effected in late years, the state of
the revenue was satisfactory; which meant, he supposed,
that there was at the disposal of the government a very
large surplus applicable for the remission of taxation.
If, then, all interests in the country, with the exception
of the most important, are prospering, and if it were
possible to apply any relief in the shape of remission of
taxation, he asked her Majesty's government, what is
the interest in favour of which such remission of taxation
might be most fitly and justly adopted? Lord Stanley did
not deny that in certain parts of the country, and with
regard to certain productions, the condition of the
agricultural interest is prosperous—as near manufacturing
towns, where the profits are more derived from stock
than from wheat; but he retained his impression of the
impolicy of the measure of 1846 as a whole. He would
not deceive or delude the producer of this country by
holding out any false hopes. He would therefore say,
that he believed the present prices are permanent; he
believed they are the effect of recent legislation; he
believed that at those prices the production of this
country must be materially diminished; that with that
decrease of production the comfort and happiness of the
most important portion of the population would also be
greatly diminished; and that the diminution of the
amount of real capital would render the people less able
to sustain that enormous weight of taxation which they
had hitherto borne. Lord Stanley then proceeded to the
subject of the Papal Aggression. This, he said, was no
question of religious controversy; and he trusted that in
neither House of Parliament would it be treated as a question
of the comparative purity of the doctrines of the
Reformed and of the Roman Catholic faith. With that
subject we have nothing to do. But the question was,
should the Roman Catholic prelates, with the head of
the Roman Catholic Church, be permitted to exercise
in this country a mischievous interference, not with
trifles, or shadows, or ideas, but with substantial realities
and with the government of the country? A noble
Lord, holding a responsible office under the crown, had
written a letter which had attained great celebrity:
that noble Lord could not but have been well aware of
the nature of the flame he was about to kindle in the
country; he could hardly have taken such a step
without having deliberately counted the cost, and
calculated the magnitude of the struggle on which he was
about to enter. He must mean to vindicate the supremacy
of the crown, to vindicate the rights of the
bishops and the clergy, to vindicate the undivided
sway of her Majesty and of parliament over the
domestic concerns of this country, and to put down any
interference with the administration of this realm and
the authority of its Queen and parliament. The
government ought to consider temperately, but firmly, all
the difficulties of the relation in which the Roman
Catholic subjects of this country stand to the crown.
In the year 1829 there were certain securities
introduced into the great measure of Emancipation, which
it was supposed would be an effectual security to the
Protestant Church against Roman Catholic aggression.
It would be the duty of the government deliberately
to examine those securities; and if there are any of
them which, whilst they are offensive to the Roman
Catholics, yet give no real security to the interests of
Protestantism—any which are incapable of being
enforced, and only lie encumbering the statute-book as
a dead letter—he would say, "Sweep them off at once,
and don't leave yourselves the odium of having enacted
them when you derive no benefit from enforcing them."
But if there are any cases in which the law, however
well intended, does not reach the point it was meant to
touch—if it does not reach this encroachment upon our
liberties by the see of Rome, which at the time of the
passing of the act of 1829 was never contemplated—
then he said that it would be no violation of the civil or
religious liberties of the Roman Catholics that those
securities should be made, as they had always been
intended to be, effectual. Let them look the whole case
in the face boldly, but dispassionately—not contenting
themselves with trifling legislation, but legislating
unflinchingly to the extent which the imminence of the
danger called for.—The Duke of RICHMOND spoke
briefly on the confirmation given to his anticipations,
and justifying his conduct as a consistent opponent
both of Catholic Emancipation and of Free Trade from
the first mooting of either of those measures to the
present moment. On the subject of agricultural
distress he said that he had spent a great deal of money
in improvements; but, unless protection was restored,
he would never spend another shilling in that way, for
he was not one who liked sending good money after
bad.—The Earl of WINCHELSEA said that England had
never been so degraded as at the present moment, when
she had been insulted by the bishop of Rome. He only
hoped the government measure would be such as to
sustain those Protestant principles which had made
England great and free.—Lord CAMOYS said that he
was a Roman Catholic, as his forefathers had been for
centuries, but at the same time he was an Englishman, and
the rights and liberties of England were as dear to him
as to any of their lordships. He admitted the spiritual
supremacy of the Queen over the established church to
the fullest extent that the most orthodox member of that
church could desire, and he acknowledged the supremacy
of the Pope over the Roman Catholic population of
this country in spiritual matters; but as to any other
assumption of power over this country on the part of
the Pope, or any undue exercise of his spiritual power
over its population, against any such assumption he felt
it to be his duty to protest.—The Marquis of LANSDOWNE
called the attention of the house to the peculiar nature
of the act of usurpation lately committed by the Pope
against the royal supremacy, and remarked on the
absurdity of the arguments of those apologists who
wished to make it appear that the Pope only intended
in his letter apostolic to assert his spiritual influence
over members of the Roman Catholic faith. He had no
doubt that the proposed measure on the subject would
be discussed with all due deliberation by the house.—
After some observations from Lord RODEN, who
expressed his disappointment that the speech had not
contained stronger expressions respecting the Protestant
religion, the address was agreed to unanimously.

On Thursday the 6th, Earl FITZWILLIAM asked Lord
Minto if there was any truth in the allegation that he
had, directly or indirectly, encouraged the Pope in his
recent act of aggression.—The Earl of MINTO had no