The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 712: THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

During this session Mr. Grattan carried a motion for referring the Catholic claims to a committee of the whole house. On the 30th of April, he presented to the house a bill for the removal of the civil and military disqualifications under which his majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects laboured; but this bill, though read a second time, was lost on its passage through the committee, Mr. Abbott, the speaker, having divided the house on the clause by which Catholic members were to be admitted to a seat in Parliament. This was rejected by a majority of two hundred and fifty-one against two hundred and forty-seven, and then the bill was abandoned by its supporters.