appeared at the bar, and stated, that, together with the other hon. Members appointed by the House to present a message of condolence to her Majesty, the Queen Dowager, he had waited on her Majesty, and had been desired to deliver the following gracious answer:—

said, before the Speaker left the chair he must make some observations, which he should have made yesterday, when the Bill was read a second time, if he had not been in another place by the directions of those he was bound to attend to. The tendency of the present Bill, and of the mode in which it was proceeded with, seemed to be to hurry through Parliament the decision of the important question, whether, under the actual circumstances of the country, the acceptance of a foreign throne ought not, in expediency and justice, to form a bar to the succession to the throne of this country? He was perfectly aware, and so were the people behind him, that this was a question the combined Legislature of this country was competent to examine. And he knew, too, that great masses of the people of this country had grown up in the belief that the constitution did not labour under the defect of necessitating or admitting such an evident anomaly. It was known to all that no foreign prince nor potentate could have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm; and it was far from being wrought into the general admission of the people that he could have temporal either. Whether the people were right either on this question or the general one of expediency, it was not for him to undertake to give an opinion; but he was sure the public feeling would not be consulted, nor concord promoted, by the manner in which this weighty question had been slurred over by being pushed forward in such a manner, and at such a period of the Session.