Winchester Gazette

It appears from the London papers brought by the ship Scipio, which has arrived at Norfolk from Liverpool, that the motion of Mr. Canning, made in the British House of Commons, for the admission of Catholic peers into the House of Lords, was carried by a majority of five, in an unusually full house, the number of members present being four hundred and ninety three. One of the London editors remarks, that the probability is that the motion will be lost in the House of Lords; and he treats the success of it, in the Commons, as a matter of little interest to the great body of Catholics. He may be right as to the first point, but certainly errs as to the second. The admission of the Catholic peers would be a decided victory over that prejudice, which now, in the guise of religious and constitutional scruples, forms the chief obstacle to a complete equality of civil and political rights. The principles upon which the Peers would be restored to Parliament, must be applicable to the case of all their Catholic brethren, and their presence in the House of Lords would be an accession of strength to the Catholic cause in general, in Parliament.—Nat Gaz.