The question was then put, and the House divided: Yeas 40; Nays, 83.

So it passed in the Negative.

Mr. T. Townshend offered an amendment, making temporary that part of the Bill which relates to the Legislative Council.

This produced a short debate, but it passed in the Negative, without a division.

Mr. Dempster offered an amendment, for establishing rules to be observed in the making of Ordinances; which also passed in the Negative.

Mr. C. Fox proposed an amendment, to secure the religious Orders their rights and properties, as a corporate body claiming under the capitulation.

Which was rejected without a division.

Mr. Dempster then proposed to amend the Bill, giving to the Canadians, claiming it, the benefit of the English laws of habeas corpus, and bail, in cases of commitment.

And the question being put, the House divided: Yeas, 21; Nays 76.

So it passed in the Negative.

Ordered, That the Bill be read the third time, upon Monday morning next.

MONDAY, June 13, 1774.

The Order of the Day being read, the Bill was accordingly read the third time.

Mr. Cooper moved, that the Bill do Pass.

Mr. Charles Fox opposed this, on the ground of its being a money Bill, and having originated in the other House; he moved, therefore, that the Journals of the House of Commons, of the 5th of March, 1677, might be read; and the same being read accordingly, it appeared that they had rejected a Bill from the Lords, for the purpose of collecting customary tythes and other dues. He then argued from this precedent as a case exactly applicable and in point to the clause in the Bill, which provides for the security of the accustomed rights and dues of the Romish clergy; and appealed to the sense of the House if the present Bill, under such circumstances, was permitted to pass, whether it would not be, in fact, a relinquishment of the ancient and hitherto undisputed right of the House of Commons, to originate money Bills.

Mr. Cooper, in answer, quoted another precedent, from the Journals in the year 1691, on the Bill for the recovery of small tythes, in which the Lords had made an amendment.

Mr. Howard observed, that Mr. Cooper's precedent did not apply, and that he knew of but one in the whole records of Parliament that did, which was in the reign of Edward the Sixth, on which the learned Bishop who wrote the History of the Reformation remarked, that it was a direct infringement on the rights and privileges of the Reformation.

Then the question being put, That the Bill, with the amendments, do Pass; the House divided: Yeas, 56; Nays, 20.

So it passed in the Affirmative.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

TUESDAY, June 14, 1774.

A Message was brought from the House of Commons, by Mr. Cooper and others:

To return the Bill, and to acquaint this House, that they have agreed to the same, with some amendments, to which they desire their Lordships concurrence thereto.

Ordered, That the said amendments be taken into consideration on Friday next; and that the Lords be summoned.

Ordered, That the said Bill with the amendments, be printed.

FRIDAY, June 18, 1774.

The Order of the Day being read, the amendments to the Bill were read three times by the Clerk;

It was proposed, "To agree with the Commons in the said amendments."

Lord Chatham rose, and entered fully upon the subject of the Bill. He said it would involve a great country in a thousand difficulties, and in the worst of despotism, and put the whole People under arbitrary power; that it was a most cruel, oppressive, and odious measure, tearing up justice and every good principle by the roots; that by abolishing the trial by Jury, he supposed the framers of the Bill thought that mode of proceeding, together with the habeas corpus, mere moonshine, whilst every true Englishman was ready to lay down his life sooner than lose those two bulwarks of his personal security and property. The merely supposing that the Canadians would not be able to feel the good effects of law and freedom, because they had been used to arbitrary power, was an idea as ridiculous as false. He said the Bill established a despotic Government in that country, to which the Royal Proclamation, of 1763, promised the protection of the English laws. Here the noble Lord read part of the Proclamation, and then entered fully on the Council and power vested in the Governors, the whole mode of which, he said, was tyrannical and despotic: he was likewise very particular on the bad consequences that would attend the great extension of that Province, that the whole of the Bill appeared to him to be destructive of that liberty which ought to be the ground-work of every constitution: ten thousand objections, he was confident, might be made to the Bill, but the extinction of the mode of trial above mentioned, was a very alarming circumstance, and he would pronounce him a bold man who proposed such a plan. When his Lordship came to the religious part of the Bill, he directed his discourse to the bench of Bishops, telling them, that as by the Bill the Catholic religion was made the established religion of that vast Continent, it was impossible they could be silent on the occasion. He called the Bill a child of inordinate power, and desired and asked if any of that bench would hold it out for baptism; he touched again upon the unlimited power of the Governor, in appointing all the members, and who might be made up of Roman Catholics only. He also took notice of an amendment which had been made in the House of Commons, which was a new clause, repealing so much of the Act of Reformation of the first of Elizabeth, as relates to the oath of supremacy, and substituting a common oath of allegiance in its place. This Act of Elizabeth, he said, had always been looked upon as one that the Legislature had no more right to repeal, than the Great Charter, or the Bill of Rights.

His Lordship stated, with great force, many-objections to the clause giving to the French Canadians so advantageous a part of the fisheries of cod on the Labrador coast, to the great prejudice of the English fishermen on the banks of Newfoundland; considering the said fisheries of Labrador as a nursery of French Canadian seamen, to man, in case of a French war, any squadrons of France, in those seas: He exposed the train of fatal mischiefs attending the establishment of popery and arbitrary power in that vast and fertile region now annexed to the Government of Quebec, and capable of containing (if fully peopled) not less than thirty millions of souls. He deduced the whole series of laws from the supremacy first re-vindicated under Henry the Eighth, down to this day, as fundamentals constituting a clear compact that all establishments by law are to be Protestant; which compact ought not to be altered, but by the consent of the collective body of the People. He further maintained, that the dangerous innovations of this Bill were at variance with all the safeguards and barriers against the return of Popery and of Popish influence, so wisely provided against by all the oaths of office and of trust, from the Constable up to the members of both Houses, and even to the Sovereign, in his coronation oath. He pathetically expressed his fears, that it might shake the affections and confidence of his Majesty's Protestant subjects in England and Ireland; and finally lose the hearts of all his Majesty's American subjects. His Lordship then said, that for these and other reasons, he gave his hearty negative to the Bill.

Lord Dartmouth said a few words in favour of the Bill.

Lord Lyttelton began by observing, that whatever fell from that noble Earl, fell with such weight as to make the deepest impression on those who heard him: that from the solemn opposition he had given to that clause of the Bill, which excused the Canadians from the: oath of supremacy, and imposed an oath of allegiance in the room of it,