debate on the state of the nation-two years before-March 25, 1678, prognosticating the mischief which would ensue from the accession of a Papist to the crown, and which did ensue on the occurrence of that event which he laboured to prevent. "Popery and slavery, like two sisters, go hand in hand, and sometimes one goes first, sometimes the other; but wheresoever the one enters, the other always following close at hand!" Hume (a philosopher, who, as Mr Lane justly remarks, like Shaftesbury, regarded religion only as a politician,) assigns, as the result of his observation," the disadvantages of recalling the abdicated family, consist chiefly in their religion, which affords no toleration, or peace, or security, to any other communion."

Though, however, it were admitted, that the Legislature of 1688 only confirmed a principle of government long before introduced, and that, in doing so, they regarded not merely the im mediate dangers to be apprehended from the adherents of the expelled family, but the political tendency, in a Protestant state, of the principles of the Roman Catholic religion, still, could nothing farther be adduced, it might perhaps be urged, that there is not anything to shew that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from politi cal power was designed to be esta blished as a permanent principle of the Constitution. But the maintenance of this principle, namely, the exclusion of Roman Catholics from power, was an article of the express contract of 1688, and one of the conditions upon which the Crown was settled in the Protestant, to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic, line of succession. For the terms of this contract we can refer to those legislative enactments alone, by which the settlement of the Crown was made, namely, the Bill of Rights, as incorporated with the act of settling the succession of the Crown, and the several acts passed as circum stances required, in corroboration of the principle then laid down. The Parliament of 1688, by a new Act of Supremacy, formed by retaining as much of the old oath as exclusively affected Roman Catholics, at the same time that they extended to the Throne the principle of exclusion, deliberately confirmed the existing laws, disqualifying from the legislation, and other

places of influence, all who “entertain scruples" of renouncing obedience to the jurisdiction or authority of a foreign prince, prelate, state, or potentate within this realm." By incorporating, in one and the same resolution, these important provisions, affecting the sovereign and the subject, they stamped them with the same authority. Nothing can be better on this point than the following passage:

"The strong terms used in the establishment of these provisions with reference to the permanency of them, afford no ground to charge the Legislators of 1688 with entertaining the absurd design of attempting to give by words an immutability to their institutions, of which, in the nature of things, those institutions were not suscep

tible.

Their language is to be taken with reference to the remarkable circumstances under which it was used, and to the sub

ject to which it was applied. They well knew that they could not, indeed, by the employment of the most solemn and emphatic terms, stay the hand of innovation in after times. But they could, and they did, thereby render the enactments comprised, expressly or by implication, within the articles of that compact, fundamental Laws of the Constitution. Future Legislators might adopt principles opposed to those upon which they acted; future Sovereigns might reign by another tenure than that which they instituted; but it was for the records of the Revolution, a warning them to mark in indelible characters upon which should go down with their institutions to posterity:-that, should any of those fundamental laws be abolished, the character of the Constitution would be changed, and the compact of the Revolution

be at an end!"

In the Act of Settlement, (after confirming the law for excluding Papists from the Throne,) it is enacted that every king and queen who shall succeed to the Crown by virtue thereof," shall have the Coronation Oath administered to him, or her, or them, at their respective coronations, according to the act for establishing the Coronation Oath, and shall make, subscribe, and repeat the declaration (against Popery) in the Bill of Rights." Now, in thus coupling the Coronation Oath with the declaration against Popery, is it possible to doubt that they can intend to refer to the same objects, and were designed to have, in one important particular, the same operation, namely, to render the Crown a barrier against the encroachments of Popery? Mr Lane has some acute remarks, in

a note, respecting the declaration against Popery

"It may here occur to the reader, that in none of the claims yet made by the Roman Catholics for unlimited concession, has the exclusion of persons of that communion from the Throne, on account of their religious tenets, been touched upon as a grievance; and that it has been fre quently declared by the advocates of those claims in Parliament, that the concession of them would in no degree affect the provisions for securing the Protestant succession. But let us suppose members of Par liament to be exempted from this and other tests against Popery; how long does any rational person suppose that this declara tion would remain in force as regards the Sovereign? Would it not then be urged with great force, that when this Royal Test was required to be taken before the two Houses of Parliament, it was contemplated that it would be taken in an assembly of Protestants only, and that it is not to be endured that men should be sub

jected in this liberal age to the pain of ha ving their religion thus stigmatized in their presence? an annoyance to which the Le gislature of 1688 obviously never intended Roman Catholics to be subjected. Before the next accession, doubtless this remain ing barrier,the issue of the deliberate thoughts and consultations' of former Parliaments, and established at the Revolution as absolutely essential to the peace and security of this Protestant kingdom,' would be removed! To save appearances, some other form, with many holiday and lady terms,' as efficacious as the tests in use before this declaration was framed, would perhaps be substituted; and the principle of a Protestant succession be left (as the Church of England would have been left by the Bill proposed in 1825) to the security of the preamble of the Act of Parliament, in the body of which the ex isting security would be repealed!",

Now, we ask, is the Coronation Oath what Lord Liverpool chose to call it, a bugbear? George the Third was not afraid of bugbears. He had too true a British soul for that too clear a conscience. We shall not say that no King of England could grant the Catholic claims without violating his Coronation Oath. It is a case of conscience. If, on consulting his conscience, often and long, and seeking to enlighten it by all discourse of reason with man, and all prayer to God, a King of England should-with the holiest reverence of his Coronation Oath-the most awful oath that ever fell from the lips of the Lord's anoint ed grant the Catholic claims to their

fullest extent, we should feel that a fatal blow had been struck at the heart of the well-being of Britainbut we should feel still that the King did right. But this much is clear as day, that neither honest and enlight ened king, nor honest and enlightened subject, can think that it is an easy thing to come to that conclusion that any little difficulties with which the interpretation of the oath may be surrounded, can be all brushed away like old cobwebs, by the reckless and unhallowed hands of temporizing, say at once pettifogging lawyers. King William felt that oath

rounding his temples" with cap awful weight; and had he tampered with its almost ineffable sanctity, he would have speedily been dismissed on the heels of the Abdicated, and reduced back again into the Prince of Orange.

Times indeed are different - but times are also the same. The Tree of British Liberty the oak in whose shadow dethroned monarchs have slept, till their restoration to their thrones, in foreign lands-has flung out more gigantic limbs, and its trunk is more tower-like. But its sap is the same→→→ and rough and thick as is its vener able rind, and enclosed within the sacred pale planted around it by the wisdom of those who dropt it of old an acorn into the soil, that has sent up that Glory to the sun, it may be perforated and drilled through by foolish foresters seeking, perhaps, as they say, but to revivify-till the plague of poison penetrate to the heart, and in far less time-many, many centuries less than it took to grow up into the monarch of all the woodsy will it decay, while weeping Liberty, ere she leave the land, will inscribe on the stem,

Magni stat nominis umbra." Let no man, then, who has the heart and soul of an Englishman, the conscience of a Christian, dare to degrade himself by talking of the bigoted pre-. judices of King George the Third on the subject of his own Coronation Oath. It is easy for paltry persons who break their word, either in letter or spirit, on every occasion that suits their interest or convenience, to turn up their lips and noses at a king's Coronation Oath. The creatures have only for a moment to imagine them selves, by the grace of God, King of

Great Britain, France, and Ireland, with the same character on a throne, that had hitherto dignified an imitation mahogany arm-chair bought cheap at a sale of the household furniture of a retired retailer of brown sugar and black tea, neatly wrapped up in ounce-weight paper pyramids; and such a "cutpurse of the Empire," would have no more scruple in cheat ing his country than his customers. But we expect the gentlemen of England to speak in a very different mood of the solemn sanction of a great oath. Dr Phillpotts has, with well-merited and unsparing severity, slashed up a paltry article in the Edinburgh Review on this subject-making use, all along, not unwarrantably, though we wish it had been otherwise, of the name of Mr Jeffrey. One writer at least, name ungiven but not unknown, (Mr Brougham, beyond all doubt, although Dr Phillpotts says he has been assured on good authority of the contrary,) in that Journal, which, though brought on its marrow-bones by the Doctor, still keeps striking in effectually at its victorious assailant, has written-often indeed, before this

of the late king, in a style most re volting and loathsome. Mr Jeffrey, we all know, is not that writer; but we are altogether at a loss to under stand how he could ever have brought himself to declare, indignantly too, that he is not responsible for any statements made by others in the Review of which he is editor. He is not, we grant, responsible for every sentence, word, or syllable; and on subjects of mere literature, or even philosophical speculation,-though then too, surely a certain consistency is expected, and a certain responsibi lity incurred, it would be absurd to take him, or any other editor of a periodical journal, too severely to task for sentiments and opinions, to which he might give his" imprimatur," without stamping upon them the authority of his own approbation. But in a most momentous and mighty question of national politics, involving the character and conscience of his king, and the best, nay all the in terests of his country, how can an eminent and distinguished person like Mr Jeffrey have the folly to declare, that he, the editor, stands aloof from his contributors, and that, in fact, were they to be guilty of high trea

son, and compass the king's death, not only "his withers would be unwrung, but his body undecapitated? Such declaration is utterly ir reconcilable with his manly charac ter-it is absolute infatuation-and covers himself, as editor of his journal, with deep, dark, and ineffaceable disgrace. As the head of the Whig party in Scotland, the only man of great genius among them, he not only is answerable for all such articles, but he ought either to rejoice in them when in print, or suitably to dispose of them in manuscript. He is under no physical necessity-we shall not profane the term moral-of editing either high or petty treason-insolent insults on his dead king's capa city and conscience-inhuman insults on that disorder in his reason with which it pleased God to visit him; though, perhaps, the visitation was one of mercy on his old age. Mr Jeffrey cannot regard such things with absolute indifference, still less can he, like others, chuckle over them in the same savage glee in which they were scribbled by " certainly the First Man in the House." Neither is it credible that he can have overlooked them; and therefore he must stand the brunt of Dr Phillpotts's fire, which is kept up with great steadiness, quickness, and precision, till the fort in which the editor has taken up a position is reduced to ashes, the governor made prisoner, after narrowly escaping death, and the garrison marched out without the honours of war.

The king, in one of his letters to Mr Pitt, had said that he considered the Coronation Oath as a religious obligation on him to maintain the fundamental maxims of the Constitution, namely, that the Church of England, being the established one, those who hold employments in the State must be members of it, and consequently obliged, not only obliged, not only to take oaths against Popery, but to receive the Holy Com munion agreeably to the rites of the Church of England. He adds, that this opinion was not formed on the moment, but had been imbibed by him for forty years. The Reviewer, says Dr Phillpotts, "with the folly, as well as the malice, of a Thersites, is pleased to charge his Majesty, in very plain terms, for expressing these sentiments, with the alternative either of dotage or falsehood. "It is quite im◄

possible, says he, "that one having all his faculties about him could write this, with the regard to truth which the late King has been so much praised for." Nothing, truly, can be more dis gusting than that-a traitorous sneer. But Dr Phillpotts goes on to expose the gross ignorance of the Reviewer, who has said, "To say nothing of the Forty Indemnity Bills, which he had made acts, how came he to pass the Irish acts of 1778 and 1793, which took off infinitely more restrictions from the Catholics than they left behind!" The Reviewer also says, in reference to the late King's having consulted the late Lord Kenyon, as in a case of conscience, respecting the CoronationOath, "we much question the fairness, if not the constitutionality, of secretly consulting a Chief-Justice and an Attorney-General, instead of a CabinetMinister, upon the policy to be pursued in a great question of state." Now, is it not " quite refreshing" to behold

here the infliction of the bastinado?

"Mr Jeffrey knows quite well, what is the nature of an Indemnity Act, and he has probably looked into one of those of which he is speaking. He must know, therefore, that there is nothing whatever in such an Act at variance with the principle which his Majesty professed ;-that, so far from it, a Bill of Indemnity proceeds on the very principle of recognising the binding character of the Law which has been violated, though it excuse the violation, in consideration of the special circumstances of the occasion. As far, therefore, as the Indemnity Acts are concerned, it is quite plain, that Mr Jeffrey has made this indecent charge absolutely without a par. ticle of ground on which to sustain it.

"But he speaks further of the Irish Acts of 1778 and 1793, saying that His Majesty could not with truth, if he were in his senses, assert that he had the view he professes of his Coronation Oath, when he assented to them. Did Mr Jeffrey ever look into these Statutes? The first of them, I am bound in charity to believe, that he never so much as saw. For if he had seen it, he could not have had the effrontery to affect to adduce it in derogation of his Majesty's honour. That Act enables Papists, on taking certain oaths, to enjoy the rights of property on the same footing as their Protestant fellow-subjects. What is there in this at variance with his Majesty's principle, of maintaining it as a fundamental maxim of the Constitution, that those who

hold employments in the State must be members of the Established Church?

"There remains the statute of 1793. And what are the provisions of that Act? Why, that Roman Catholics may hold all of fices civil and military,' except those which are properly, and according to all reasonable construction, employments in the State; from these they are, by that very statute, expressly excluded.

"Let my readers now look back to the insolent charge brought by Mr Jeffrey against this prince, who, beyond all who ever sat before him on the British throne, deserved and acquired the glorious title of a Patriot King, and then let them assign to his calumniator that measure of indignation which their own feelings will dictate.

"But Mr Jeffrey is not satisfied with reviling the late King; he must also give us his notion of what is the duty of all kings, in the very delicate matter of informing their own conscience, in a case in which their own conscience alone is responsible; and the result is, that the sovereign must, in fact, have no conscience at all. He must consider himself as degraded from the rank of a moral and accountable creature, and must submit to be directed in all his sentiments, even of religious duty, by his cabinet for the time being. This is really the sum and substance of Mr Jef frey's opinion, though he has thought fit to express it in the following very peculiar terms: We much question the fairness, if not the constitutionality, of secretly consulting a chief justice, and an attorneygeneral, instead of a cabinet minister, upon the policy to be pursued in a great question of State.' Mr Jeffrey is no fool; he knows as well as any man, that the point on which the King consulted Lord Kenyon, was nothing like what he has thought proper here to state it. He knows, that his Majesty did not, on this occasion, consult his chief justice on any matter of State at all, but on a previous question, which, whatever may be Mr Jeffrey's sentiments upon it, appeared to George III., and, thank God, appears to George IV., infinitely more important to him than any matter of State whatever. His previous question was, whe ther, if a measure which had been, in fact, rejected by his cabinet at that particular time, should ever hereafter be proposed to him, he, the King, was not so bound by his Coronation Oath, that he must give his decided negative to it? This, I say, was the point on which Lord Kenyon was consulted; it was a point of conscience; and on it the King, with perfect 'fairness,' and perfect constitutionality,' might have con sulted any person whatsoever, Mr Jeffrey, if he had pleased. If it were not so, what

a puppet would the King of England be! what a slave, amidst the surrounding liber. ty of his free-born subjects! a slave in the tenderest and most momentous of all concerns! Literally, his very soul would not be his own, but would be held at the arbitrary will of the minister of the day.

"But suppose the question were, what Mr Jeffrey states it to be, a question of State policy, is he so ignorant of the British Constitution as to assert, or does he think the rest of the world so ignorant of it as to believe, that it is unfair or unconstitutional for the King of England to consult the chief justice of England, and to demand from him a written opinion (thus making him formally responsible for his opinion) on a question of State intimately connected with constitutional law, that chief justice being a peer of the realm, (and, as such, called by his very patent to advise his Majesty in the arduous concerns of the realm,) and one of his sworn privycouncillors? Yes,' says Mr Jeffrey, 'unless the same chief justice, peer, and privycouncillor, be also a cabinet minister.' I will not condescend to answer such an assertion, but will send him who makes it, if he is honest in making it, to learn better what the Constitution of England is, be fore he presumes thus to read lectures on it to his sovereign. Meanwhile, it can hardly be necessary to remind him, that somewhat more than twenty years ago, it was a matter of grave discussion in both Houses of Parliament, whether it was consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, however it might be justified by the letter, for the chief justice to be a member of the Cabinet at all. In the course of that discussion, which was handled (among others) by men to whom it would not be derogatory to Mr Jeffrey, and his whole fraternity of Reviewers, to look up with some deference and respect,-in the course of that discussion, I repeat, never once was anything so preposterous asserted, or even imagined, as this newly-discovered maxim, (which, how ever, if true, would have been conclusive of the whole question,) that a chief justice may not be consulted by his sovereign at all, unless he be first made a cabinet-minister. What was the language of Mr Fox on that occasion? I have always held, and still hold, that a Cabinet Council is unknown to our law ;" and, in order that Mr Jeffrey may not ride off on the distinction suggested by the word Law, I will add another dictum of the same statesman :- In point of fact, there is nothing in our CONSTITUTION which recognises any such institution as a Cabinet Council.' But Mr Fox's language went still further, and was still more conclusive in settling the present point. Where no personal

*Hansard's Debates, vol. vi. p. 709. VOLA XXIV.

objections are, or can be, stated, one must hear it recommended with astonishment, that a class of officers, who are admitted to be perfectly eligible to the Privy Council, should not be allowed to discharge the duties of a Privy Councillor, should, in fact, be excluded from the performance of duties, which, on their admission to the Privy Council, they are sworn to perform.

"In truth, if any Cabinet should dare to exercise the right, which Mr Jeffrey claims for them, that of excluding from the royal closet any peer of the realm who has demanded an audience of his sovereign, much more who has been required by the sovereign to advise him, they would incur the guilt for which (inter alia) the two Spencers, in Edward II.'s time, were impeached and banished the kingdom, viz. :

That they, by their evil covin, would not suffer the great men of the realm, the king's good counsellors, to speak with the king, or to come near him; but only in the presence of the said Hugh the father, and Hugh the son, or one of them, and at their will, and according to such things as pleased them.' +

"So much for this very shallow person's knowledge of the Constitution: so much for his qualifications to set up as 'Schoolmaster with his Frimer' for the instruction of kings."

"Dead for a ducat!"

The Reviewer had said that Dr Phillpotts (alluding to the King's correspondence with Mr Pitt, edited by him) had selected a period, when the late King's reason was clouded, "for trying his intellects in conflict with those of Mr Pitt." Here, too, the Reviewer is utterly and justly demolish◄

ed.

6

"Mr Jeffrey, here, too, knows that there is not the smallest shadow of reason for the assertion he has found it convenient to make; he knows, that there was, in this case, no trying of intellects in conflict? one with another; for he knows, that the parties were speaking to two very different points; that Mr Pitt addressed to his Majesty a statement (a most able and most exquisitely written statement) of his views of the expediency of conceding to the Roman Catholics a full and equal share of all the powers of the state, (under certain most important conditions, of which I shall have more to say hereafter,) while his Majesty, in answer, expressly waves all discussion of Mr Pitt's question, and tells him at once, that he is precluded from entering into it by higher considerations than the highest reasons of State expediency which can be devised."

Blackstone, p. 292. C