The Catholics were never excluded at any time
because of their religious creed; they were excluded for a supposed
deficiency of civil worth, and the religious test was applied to
them, not to detect the worship of saints, or any other tenet of their
religion, but as a test to discover whether they were Roman Catholics.
It was a test to discover the bad, intriguing subject, not the
religionist; and, therefore, when he parted with the declaration against
transubstantiation, it was not from any doubt which he entertained as to
the doctrines of the Roman Catholics, but from looking at it as a test
of exclusion, and from thinking that, when the exclusion was deemed
unnecessary, the test of exclusion, might be dispensed with. Mr. Peel
complained grievously that an unfair application had been made of his
unhappy phrase, that the proposed measure would be "a breaking in upon
the constitution of 1688." He meant no more, he said, than that there
would be an alteration in the words of the Bill of Rights: and if an
alteration of its words were a breaking in upon the constitution, then
had the constitution been often broken in upon. He called upon the
house to consider the altered position of affairs in Ireland since the
annunciation of this measure had been made; and warned it that if the
bill was rejected, it would be attended with consequences fatal to the
repose of the empire. He added, "I am well aware that the fate of this
measure cannot now be altered: if it succeed, the credit will redound
to others; if it fail, the responsibility will devolve upon me, and upon
those with whom I have acted.
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