ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, XII, 2 May 1819, pp. 273–4. The Test and Corporation Acts prohibited Catholics from many basic rights, such as voting, serving in the military, holding government office, attending university, and sitting in Parliament. The movement for granting Catholics full political rights, which became known as Catholic Emancipation, was deeply implicated in the question of Irish independence as well. It became a prominent political issue in the late eighteenth century and continued to dominate political discussion throughout the romantic era, with various reform steps and riots in resistance (most famously the Gordon Riots of 1780) occurring throughout the period. The topic, especially following the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the Act of Union of 1800, was so volatile as to bring down administrations (such as that of Pitt in 1801) and determine the shape of government ministries. Generally, Whigs and liberals supported Catholic Emancipation, which is one of the main reasons they felt betrayed by the Prince Regent when he refused to honour his promised support of Catholic Emancipation once he assumed his powers in 1811. Hunt’s scathing caricature of the Regent, which ultimately resulted in imprisonment for political libel, sprung, in part, out of the Regent’s apostasy on Catholic Emancipation (see Vol. 1, pp. 215–21). See, also, Hunt’s early article in support of an 1808 petition for Catholic rights (Vol. 1, pp. 61–3). His continuing advocacy of such appeals coincided with a new parliamentary motion for Catholic relief in 1819. Sir Francis Burdett had presented two petitions for Catholic Emancipation in April, one signed by 4,000 Catholic residents of London and another signed by 2,000 Catholic inhabitants of Liverpool. Although full Catholic Emancipation would not be achieved until 1829, Hunt’s article below joins this important cause with the larger struggles he espoused throughout 1819 for liberation from the reactionary tyrannies of established power in England and throughout Europe. For Hunt’s previous Examiner commentary on religious superstition and persecution, see 6 September 1818, pp. 561–3 and above, p. 164– 6, and the first in a series of articles on Methodism, 8 May 1808, pp. 301– 3 and Vol. 1, pp. 49–55.
