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of a mind so morbid. as to become wholly alicnated when pressed upon a certain topic, are not of the highest authority-particularly on that topic; that to consult one labouring under such a calamitous dispensation, upon any nice point, but especially upon the very point which forms the subject of the malady, argues anything rather than a very sound judgment in him who so consults. The late King's understanding was of so ordinary a cast, his prejudices so strong, and his reasoning powers naturally so little exercised, that his opinion, when age and disease had done nothing to impair those faculties which nature had bestowed with no very lavish hand, and education had very scantily improved, would have been of very little weight with reasonable men. Upon any matter of mere feeling in either public or private affairs, the sentiments were well worth having of so right-hearted a man, one whose good dispositions in domestic life were so much less sophisticated by the follies of a court, or perverted by the corruptions of power, than almost any other sovereigns of whom we have had recent experience. But, at the best, his notions upon government and policy were of a limited and contracted cast, and so often under the dominion of incurable prejudice and personal feeling, that no reliance at all could be placed on their justness. Why should we confine the use of his name to one question alone, and that the question, of a mixed nature religious as well as political, which was most likely to excite his strongest prejudices, and most unregulated feelings? Let us try the soundness of this test by consulting the responses of the same oracle on other subjects.

If the late King's opinion had been infallible, nay, if any weight whatever had been allowed to it, no advances could ever have been made towards peace, either with the republic or the Emperor of France. Possibly some may agree in this love of eternal war, rather than treat with illegitimate authorities: But the same creed would have denounced all acknowledgment of the independence of South America, as the last of national crimes,-and all from a personal motive-because the late King's first misadventure was a disastrous war with his own colonies. To the gratification of this pique, the prejudice arising from a mere sense of personal affront, the Sovereign was ready to sacrifice every consideration of public policy; and his wish-his deliberate judgment,if consulted, must have led to everlasting hostility with all revolted colonies. He had a strong prejudice, too, against the abolition of the Slave Trade; and though he never interfered actively to prevent it, yet, had he been followed as an authority, the most righteous and glorious measure of his long reign never would have been carriced. Does any one doubt that his opinion

would have held the Navigation Act sacred, in every letter of every clause? Does any man question his disposition to keep everything in our Criminal law, the worst as well as the best parts of it, for ever in the self-same condition in which it had come down to him from the Tudors and the Plantagenets? That we are to regard as the oracles of perfect wisdom, all the notions of a prince whose views were a century behind the present day, -because in moral and domestic demeanour, he far excelled most of his exalted rank, is really a position so extravagant that we should never have dreamt of combating it, had not the publication before us proceeded upon the full adoption of it.

But if the late King's authority, at the best period of his life, was little to be regarded, merely as an authority, what shall be said of those who give it forth as very wisdom, when the monarch was in the decline of his life-and when his reason was bowed, or at least bending under disease! Such, however, is the period when the most important of the documents before us were prepared, and used by his late Majesty, in his communications with his servants. The use covertly made of the late King's authority, has done so much harm to the Catholic question, that we, its warm supporters, could have desired no greater boon than such an exposition of the weakness of that ground, as its avowed enemies have, in this publication, furnished by their indiscreet and unthinking zeal. But we owe them, on behalf of that great cause, a more lasting obligation. They have put forth the King's prejudice,-it can hardly be called his opinion,-in all the nakedness of such an authority unsupported by argument; and they have placed by its side, not merely the far higher authority of Mr Pitt, but his reasons, his unanswerable reasons, for espousing the opinion which he always strenuously maintained, and to which he once sacrificed his office. The tract before us acquires a very high value from this circumstance.

It opens in a solemn strain with the Coronation Oath, carefully copied from the Statute and the Liturgy. This is fair and candid; and it puts an end to the whole question. It is quite decisive of the whole crotchet-argument we cannot call it-put into the late good old King's head by some wily intriguing courtiers for their own sinister purposes, and which Lord Liverpool himself, with all his No Popery violence, could not gravely defend, but abandoned as stark nonsense. The Archbishop says:-" Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this "kingdom of England and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the laws "and customs of the same?" The King's answer is," I so"lemnly promise to do so." Now, no man-not certainly the

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late King, who gave his assent to acts unnumbered, repealing the old laws and customs of the realm, nor the Duke of York, who supported those changes-ever could maintain that this involves a promise to govern by the statutes then in being, but only by such statutes as should at any time be agreed on. Then comes a similar promise to execute law and justice in mercy, subject to the former promise, of course, and only implying an administering justice and law in mercy, according to whatever law may be established. Next is the promise in dispute: "Will you, to "the utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God, the true "profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion "established by law; and will you preserve unto the Bishops "and Clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to "their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or SHALL appertain unto them or any of them ?" The answer is, "All this I promise to do." This really should seem as if the crotchet had been foreseen by the wise framers of the oath, so excellently are the words contrived to prevent it. Not only does the first promise ride over the whole; the promise to execute the law mercifully, whatever the law may at any time be, as well as the promise to preserve the established religion and hierarchybut even if this third promise be taken by itself, its language is so clear as to be incapable of misconstruction, without wilful blindness, and the most perverse and wrongheaded ingenuity. The thing promised is, to support the religion established by law; the rights and privileges promised to be preserved, are those which "are or shall" be given to the Church" by law." The oath plainly applies to the conduct of the King in his executive capacity, not as a branch of the Legislature; it binds him to reign according to law in his conduct as King; it forbids him either to hang men without lawful judgment, or to attack the church illegally; or to take from religion its lawful sanction; or to take from the church its lawful rights. If this be not the construction, how could George the Third, with a safe conscience, take from parsons the right of non-residence, by one law, and force them, by another, to pay their curates a certain sum? But how, above all, could he emancipate the Catholics, in respect of four-fifths of their disabilities; giving them the right to vote for members of Parliament, while he only withheld the right to sit in that assembly? Giving the publication of the very words of the oath, is candid and useful in the controversy; for the unlettered reader, who sees the Reverend Editor's preface, and the Royal Author's doubts, would be apt to suppose that the latter had, in the year 1761, sworn to refuse his assent

to all bills for relieving his Catholic subjects, and to turn out whatever minister advised him on the subject.

The Monarch's letters begin with one to Lord Kenyon, in the following words. The composition, so greatly admired by Dr Phillpotts, we say nothing of; but we much question the fairness, if not the constitutionality, of secretly consulting a Chief-Justice and an Attorney-General, instead of a Cabinet Minister, upon the policy to be pursued on a great question of state.

"No. 1.-TO THE LORD KENYON.

"Queen's House, March 7, 1795. "The question that has been so improperly patronised by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in favour of the Papists, though certainly very properly silenced here, yet it seems not to have been viewed in what seems to me the strongest point of view-its militating against the Coronation Oath and many existing statutes. I have, therefore, stated the accompanying queries on paper, to which I desire the Lord Kenyon will, after due consideration, state his opinion in the same manner, and should be glad if he would also acquire the sentiments of the Attorney-General on this most serious subject. GEORGE R."

In answer to the questions accompanying this note, Lord Kenyon, with the concurrence of the Attorney-General, afterwards Lord Eldon, stated, in substance, that the passing a law in favour of the Catholics was a perfectly lawful measure, and that no oath bound, or could bind, the King to refuse his consent to any such law. The letter of Mr Pitt, dated January 31, 1801, is a most plain and able exposition of his sentiments upon the subject, in general, of the Catholic claims, and we deem its insertion here next to a duty :

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Downing-street, Saturday, Jan. 31, 1801. "Mr Pitt would have felt it, at all events, his duty, previous to the meeting of Parliament, to submit to your Majesty the result of the best consideration which your confidential servants could give to the important questions respecting the Catholics and Dissenters, which must naturally be agitated in consequence of the Union. The knowledge of your Majesty's general indisposition to any change of the laws on this subject, would have made this a painful task to him; and it is become much more so, by learning from some of his colleagues, and from other quarters, within these few days, the extent to which your Majesty entertains, and has declared, that sentiment.

"He trusts your Majesty will believe that every principle of duty, gratitude, and attachment, must make him look to your Majesty's ease and satisfaction, in preference to all considerations, but those arising from a sense of what, in his honest opinion, is due to the real interest of your Majesty and your dominions. Under the impression of that opinion, he has concurred in what appeared to be the prevailing sentiments of the majority of the Cabinet-that the admission of the Ca

tholics and Dissenters to offices, and of the Catholics to Parliament, (from which latter the Dissenters are now excluded) would, under certain conditions to be specified, be highly advisable, with a view to the tranquillity and improvement of Ireland, and to the general interest of the United Kingdom.

"For himself, he is, on full consideration, convinced that the measure would be attended with no danger to the Established Church, or to the Protestant interest in Great Britain or Ireland: that, now the Union has taken place, and with the new provisions which make part of the plan, it could never give any such weight in office, or in Parliament, either to Catholics or Dissenters, as could give them any new means (if they were so disposed) of attacking the Establishment:—that the grounds, on which the laws of exclusion now remaining were founded, have long been narrowed, and are since the Union removed; that those principles, formerly held by the Catholics, which made them be considered as politically dangerous, have been for a course of time gradually declining, and, among the higher orders particularly, they have ceased to prevail. That the obnoxious tenets are disclaimed in the most positive manner by the oaths, which have been required in Great Britain, and still more by one of those required in Ireland, as the condition of the indulgences already granted, and which might equally be made the condition of any new ones. That if such an oath, containing (among other provisions) a denial of the power of absolution from its obligations, is not a security from Catholics, the sacramental test is not more so. That the political circumstances under which the exclusive laws originated, arising either from the conflicting power of hostile and nearly balanced sects, from the apprehension of a Popish queen or successor, a disputed succession, and a foreign Pretender, and a division in Europe between Catholic and Protestant powers, are no longer applicable to the present state of things. That with respect to those of the Dissenters, who, it is feared, entertain principles dangerous to the Constitution, a distinct political test, pointed against the doctrine of modern Jacobinism, would be a much more just and more effectual security than that which now exists, which may operate to the exclusion of conscientious persons well affected to the state, and is no guard against those of an opposite description, That with respect to the Catholics of Ireland, another most important additional security, and one of which the effect would continually increase, might be provided, by gradually attaching the popish clergy to the government, and for this purpose making them dependent for a part of their provision (under proper regulations) on the State, and by also subjecting them to superintendence and control :-That, besides these provisions, the general interests of the Established Church, and the security of the constitution and government, might be effectually strengthened by requiring the political test, before referred to, from the preachers of all Catholic or Dissenting congregations, and from the teachers of schools of every denomination.

"It is on these principles Mr Pitt humbly conceives a new security might be obtained for the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this

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