TWO:The Ministry lost no time in introducing their Irish measuresthe new Municipal Reform Bill and the Bill for the Relief of the Poor. The former, after three nights' debate, passed the Commons by a majority302 to 247. It was during this debate that Mr. Sheil delivered his brilliant reply to the indiscreet and unstatesmanlike taunt of Lord Lyndhurst, who, when speaking on the same question in the Upper House, declared that the Irish were "aliens in blood, in language, and religion." "The Duke of Wellington," said Mr. Sheil, "is not a man of sudden emotions; but he should not, when he heard that word used, have forgotten Vimiera, Badajoz, and Salamanca, and Toulouse, and the last glorious conflict which crowned all his former victories. On that day, when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, when the batteries spread slaughter over the field, and the legions of France rushed again and again to the onset, did the 'aliens' then flinch? On that day the blood of the men of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland was poured forth together. They fought on the same field, they died the same death, they were stretched in the same pit; their dust was commingled; the same dew of heaven fell on the grass that covered them; the same grass sprang from the soil in which they reposed together. And is it to be endured that we are to be called aliens and strangers to that empire for whose salvation our best blood has been poured out?"The two rival Ministers of England became every day more embittered against each other; and Bolingbroke grew more daring in his advances towards the Pretender, and towards measures only befitting a Stuart's reign. In order to please the High Church, whilst he was taking the surest measures to ruin it by introducing a popish prince, he consulted with Atterbury, and they agreed to bring in a Bill which should prevent Dissenters from educating their own children. This measure was sure to please the Hanoverian Tories, who were as averse from the Dissenters as the Whigs. Thus it would conciliate them and obtain their support at the[19] very moment that the chief authors of it were planning the ruin of their party. This Bill was called the Schism Bill, and enjoined that no person in Great Britain should keep any school, or act as tutor, who had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the Church of England, and obtained a licence of the diocesan. Upon failure of so doing, the party might be committed to prison without bail; and no such licence was to be granted before the party produced a certificate of his having received the Sacrament according to the communion of the English Church within the last year, and of his having also subscribed the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy.
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