1827.] Death of Casttereagh to Canning's Premiership. 185 not be driven, and certainly this particular measure did not stop the progress of the Irish agitation. The very House of Commons which had thought it necessary to vindicate the law by the Act against the Association, thought itself bound to promote the object which the society was established to secure. On the 1st of March Burdett moved that the House resolve itself into committee to consider the state of the laws affecting Roman Catholics, and the motion was carried by 247 votes to 234. Six resolutions were then passed, and a bill founded upon them was ordered to be brought in by Burdett, Tierney, Grant, Plunkett, Mackintosh, Canning, Palmerston, H. Parnell, Abercrombie, and Spring Rice. Of these ten, four were members of the Government, one of them being the leader of the House of Commons, and this in itself formed an important advantage to the cause of emancipation. On the 23rd of March the bill was brought in by Burdett. It proposed to abolish Catholic disabilities ; to make a State provision for Catholic ministers, and as a set-off in favour of the Protestant Irish, to raise the county franchise in Irelaad from forty shillings to ten pounds. The bill passed the House of Commons, the second reading being carried on the 2ist of April, by 268 to 241, and the third reading on the loth of May, by 248 to 227. Between the two dates an event took place which might have been attended with serious consequences, but which, mainly owing to the strong common sense of the nation, merely produced a transient effect. This was no less than an attempt- the last one which has been made in this country to interpose the royal prero- gative between the nation and the execution of its will. The effort was made not by the actual occupant of the throne, but by the heir presumptive ; anu it was fortunate that it was so, since the danger of a collision between Crown and Parliament was rendered the more remote, and ultimately avoided. It was after the second reading of the bill in the Lower House, that the Duke of York rose in the House of Lords and made a declaration of his determination to oppose that and any similar measure. He asserted that his view of the coronation
