Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw that opposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, and reserved themselves for a more favourable time.  The more favourable time soon came.  No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled, remember without shame that he had voted for a resolution which made no distinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, between clerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdom and integrity the fate of the nation might depend.  The salary of the Doorkeeper of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised to five hundred a year.  It ought to have been reduced to fifty.  On the other hand, the services of a Secretary of State who was well qualified for his post would have been cheap at five thousand.  If the resolution of the Commons bad been carried into effect, both the salary which ought not to have exceeded fifty pounds, and the salary which might without impropriety have amounted to five thousand, would have been fixed at five hundred.  Such absurdity must have shocked even the roughest and plainest foxhunter in the House.  A reaction took place; and when, after an interval of a few weeks, it was proposed to insert in a bill of supply a clause in conformity with the resolution of the twelfth of December, the Noes were loud; the Speaker was of opinion that they had it; the Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senseless plan which had been approved without a division was rejected without a division; and the subject was not again mentioned.  Thus a grievance so scandalous that none of those who profited by it dared to defend it was perpetuated merely by the imbecility and intemperance of those who attacked it.150

Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of a grave and earnest discussion.  The Commons, in the exercise of that supreme power which the English legislature possessed over all the dependencies of England, sent up to the Lords a bill providing that no person should sit in the Irish Parliament, should hold any Irish office, civil, military or ecclesiastical, or should practise law or medicine in Ireland, till he had taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and subscribed the Declaration against Transubstantiation.  The Lords were not more inclined than the Commons to favour the Irish.  No peer was disposed to entrust Roman Catholics with political power.  Nay, it seems that no peer objected to the principle of the absurd and cruel rule which excluded Roman Catholics from the liberal professions.  But it was thought that this rule, though unobjectionable in principle, would, if adopted without some exceptions, be a breach of a positive compact.  Their Lordships called for the Treaty of Limerick, ordered it to be read at the table, and proceeded to consider whether the law framed by the Lower House was consistent with the engagements into which the government had entered.  One discrepancy was noticed.  It was stipulated