Note 17 — REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE CAREER OF THE LATE PREMIER.

The expression which was chiefly insisted on in that discussion, and which he strenuously laboured to disprove, was that in which he was reported to have said, that in 1825 he gave it as his opinion to Lord Liverpool that “something ought to be done for the Catholics.” He strongly denied having ever used those words, and as indeed they are not found in many of the reports of his speech, there would not appear to be sufficient evidence that he did so. But it was labour lost to disprove the point, for this sentence after all was by no means so clear or explicit as that which stands in his own revised report. He might have stated that something ought to be done for the Catholics, without its being thereby evident, that by that something he meant the measure of Catholic Emancipation. Some other course might have “suggested itself to his mind,” as a solution of the difficulty. But when he tells us in so many words, that the course which then suggested itself to his mind was the very same which he afterwards pursued in proposing the measure of Catholic Emancipation, no room for question is left; this is a precise and explicit statement to which we do not see how two meanings can well be given. When such a statement stands in his own corrected report, it was worse than idle so strenuously to disclaim the weaker one.