]
[Footnote 210: The question had been discussed with the highest Papal
authorities more than once since the beginning of the century. In 1812
Mgr. Quarantotti, the prelate who, during the detention of the Pope in
France by Napoleon, was invested with the chief authority in
ecclesiastical affairs at Rome, in a letter to the Vicar-apostolic, Dr.
Poynter, formally announced the consent of the Papal See to give the
King a veto on all ecclesiastical appointments within the United
Kingdom; and, after his return to Rome, Pio VII. himself confirmed the
former title by a second addressed, by his instructions, to the same Dr.
Poynter, which letter, in 1816, was read by Mr. Grattan in the House of
Commons, it being throughout understood that this concession of the veto
to the King was conditional on the abolition of the disabilities and the
endowment of the priesthood. And in 1825, after Lord Francis Egerton's
resolution had been carried in the House of Commons, Dr. Doyle, one of
the most eminent of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland, in an
examination before a committee of the House of Lords, expressed the
willingness of the Roman Catholic clergy to accept a state provision, if
it were permanently annexed to each benefice, and accompanied with a
concession of an equality of civil rights to the Roman Catholic
laity.
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