other hand men who love liberty, and know that observed law is the foundation of liberty: who feel their duty to their sovereign and to God, and know that their actions ought to be guided by an abiding sense of duty: these men will vote for candidates who will uphold the Church in Ireland with all their power, and will spare their Queen the insult of a temptation to perjury, and withal will strive so to amend what is defective and redress what is wrong in the Church, that it may the better effect its high purpose of improving the Irish.

Probably two objections, which have a certain constitutional appearance, will be made to this; and it is as well to anticipate and answer them. The first, that Ireland was not united to Great Britain when the oath was framed; the second, that when Parliament makes an alteration the oath ceases to bind.

As to the first, it is certain that the Act of Union, by which Ireland ceased to have a separate parliament and laws and Church, was not passed till A.D. 1800, whereas the oath dates from the Revolution of A.D. 1688. But Ireland was not the less a part of "this realm" when the oath was drawn up than after the Act of Union; nor were its religion and its Church less included in "the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law," "and the bishops and clergy of this realm and the churches committed to their charge," than they are at the present day, when by the Act of Union there exists but one Church, "the United Church of England and Ireland." From the time of Henry II., A.D. 1172, Ireland has been, in the fullest sense of the word, a portion of "this realm." Its kings have been ours, and the securities of the settlement of A.D. 1688 belonged to it as well as to us. For argument's sake assume the contrary, and nothing is gained thereby; for in the year 1800 the two islands became one kingdom, the two Churches became one Church, and

thenceforth "this realm" meant, and means in state documents, "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland:" and "the bishops and clergy of this realm" mean the bishops and clergy of the United Church of England and Ireland; and "the churches committed to their charge, and rights and privileges appertaining unto them," include Ireland equally with England. There has not been such a thing as the "Irish Church," or the "Church of Ireland" since the Act of Union in the year 1800; from that date the Church in England and Ireland has been one. The common phrase "the Irish Church" is used for convenience in conversation, but is strictly wrong; yet Liberationists are endeavouring to use the error of thought to which this phrase gives rise, and to persuade people that they do not intend to touch the Church of England, but only that of Ireland. They condemn the one, and for the present belaud the other, as if they were two separate Churches, independent of each other, and could be treated in opposite ways without being mutually affected. They are not two, but one. Everything in the constitution and in the coronation oath, as settled in 1688, which relates to the religion or to the rights and privileges of "the Church of this Realm," relates to the one united Church of England and Ireland, and to it only.

The coronation oath was taken by the Queen in the year 1838, and thirty-eight years before that event the Church in Ireland was, beyond a doubt, brought within the scope of the oath by these solemn words of the Act of Union: "THAT THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, AS NOW BY LAW ESTABLISHED, BE UNITED INTO ONE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, TO BE CALLED THE UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, AND THAT THE DOCTRINE, DISCIPLINE, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE SAID UNITED CHURCH SHALL BE, AND SHALL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE FOR EVER, AS THE SAME ARE NOW BY LAW ESTABLISHED FOR THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND; AND THAT THE CONTINUANCE AND

PRESERVATION OF THE SAID UNITED CHURCH AS THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND SHALL BE DEEMED AND TAKEN TO BE AN ESSENTIAL AND FUNDAMENTAL PART OF THE UNION." It is clear, then, that the Queen solemnly swore to preserve the Protestant religion established by law in Ireland; the rights of all the clergy of the Church in that country; and also the rights and privileges of the churches in that country, and therein the rights of the laity to enjoy all the civil, social, political, and religious advantages coming to them from the liberality and piety of bygone ages or of their own.

Whatever advantages arise from churches, endowments, parsonages, and glebes, or Church educational foundations, belong to the people of Ireland, for whom they were intended; and the sovereign assured them of their continual peaceable enjoyment of them, and engaged, if need be, all the force of the empire to secure that enjoyment, when, in God's temple, before the world, she solemnly swore what has been already quoted. No religious man could doubt such a security as that; nor will we. The Presbyterians of Scotland agree with us in this matter, and their view is well expressed in a petition from the Provincial Synod of Galloway. That petition states, "That in the judgment of your petitioners the withdrawal of national countenance from the Irish branch of the United Church would be at once a grievous departure from the duty which this Christian state owes to the Christian Church, and a gross violation of the constitution of this kingdom, which has secured to the national Churches their rights and privileges by the most solemn guarantee that can be given the sovereign's oath."

But it will probably be objected, in the second place, that when Parliament makes an alteration, the obligation of the oath ceases. We are shocked at the wickedness which attributes to the Pope power to set a juror free from a solemn oath taken to God; but the claim of a power in Parliament

to dispense with the solemn obligation of an oath is an advance in profanity reserved for Liberationists. I should not have put such an objection into their mouths if it were not commonly heard. In the first place, what do they mean by "Parliament?" Not what a constitutional lawyer meansQueen, Lords, and Commons acting together, but usually a portion of the House of Commons, and in a few cases a portion of the two Houses, when part of the Upper House has been overawed by popular clamour of a noisy minority out of doors and the votes of a small majority of the Lower House. In a great constitutional question, it must be remembered that a mere majority of the House of Commons can hardly ever be a representation even of a majority of the people, still less of the thoughtful, educated part of the people, who alone can understand and appreciate such a question. It is notorious that majorities in borough elections are very frequently composed of the refuse of the constituencies, who are induced to vote by gold and other improper and illegal inducements. The votes of men thus returned to the House of Commons are purely contemptible when an organic constitutional change is to be made. We cannot allow the British constitution to be changed by men who represent illegal expenditure used to buy the votes of the worst class of voters. Nor does the possession of money enough to buy a majority of votes at an election qualify a man to judge of great political problems, as newspaper writers generally assume. Personal competency results from ability and well-directed study: that only is of value.

It is clear that the Queen, who is bound by the oath, cannot have any right to become a party to cancelling its obligation; or else we have the absurdity of an oath, framed on behalf of the nation to bind the sovereign, taken by the sovereign for that purpose, and yet liable to abrogation, if by court influence or other means a majority of the House of

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Lords and of the House of Commons can be induced to pass such a vote or votes as, by the Queen's concurrence therein, can abrogate the oath. Obviously, by the nature of the case, the sovereign, who is bound by an oath to act in a certain way for the advantage of the people, cannot have a right to employ the royal power to loosen the bond; and so Parliament, in the proper sense, cannot have any power in this matter. Then can the House of Lords and the House of Commons jointly do this, without the concurrence of the sovereign?—that is, not the unanimous vote of both Houses, which could never be obtained, but the vote of a mere majority of each House. Every one whose opinion is worth anything will reply to this question in the negative. The oath, and the settlement of which it formed part, originated in a revolution; and in the settlement of order out of revolution every individual man has a right to be individually consulted, and every corporation of men has a right to be consulted in its corporate capacity. It is absurd to talk of a mere majority of the powers constituted under such a settlement (especially when a large number of members are returned to the Lower House by illegal means) having a right to alter the settlement in its essential framework. They have a right to make such alterations as will adapt the settlement to altered circumstances if they arise, and the alterations bind the nation if they be generally approved, not otherwise; but if the essential principles are to be altered, if the essential framework is is to be changed, the whole nation, with free action to alter at its will, is the only power adequate to the work. Queen, Lords, and Commons must abdicate their functions and resign their powers and rights, and then the nation, in its complex character of individuals and corporations, may commence and reconstruct. In other words, there must be a revolution, before fundamental portions of the constitution can be altered.

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