ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, I, 5 June 1808, pp. 353–4. Hunt makes clear his support of the repeal of the restrictions on Catholics serving in Parliament, repeal being an important cause of those who supported Ireland, not to mention religious liberty. Following the Act of Union (1800), which dissolved the Irish Parliament and provided the Irish with representation in the British Parliament, a number of efforts (most recently on 25 May) were made to repeal the Penal Law restrictions on Catholics fully, but George III violently opposed any such changes, which is one of the main reasons a Whig government could not be formed during these years, despite the relative weakness of the various Pittite ministries. The Catholic issue would loom large in 1811 when the Prince Regent kept the conservative government of the ultra-Protestant Perceval in power rather than turn to a Whig government that would have insisted upon full Catholic emancipation.
