to provide precautionary safeguards for the defence of monarchy. The destiny of law is directed towards contingent events. Who can doubt that, at least, facilities of invading monarchical interests are placed within the reach of the people by the Reform Bill? This, it must be admitted, is a dispassionate position to assume. Did the people, in the days of Charles I., possess, by right of law, power equal to that which is now their inheritance? To this, the answer is not sufficient, that this power will never be directed to the attainment of the same purpose. The law ought to remove from them the facility of suddenly grasping this power, and regulate, by counterbalancing restrictions, its constitutional exercise, that the possibility of so exerting it might be reserved against the last acts of despotism.

Our readers are aware, that in all the constitutional changes that have occurred in English history, though the power of the people has been gradually increasing, means have been devised to secure the monarchy against invasion-to defend the rights, and privileges, and power of the aristocracy, and protect the national religion. By Magna Charta, and several enactments of the three first Edwards and the second Richard, the privileges of the people were vastly increased. The termination of the houses of

rica, to escape the persecution of this "Mule animal," as he terms it ;-that America avoided it from its effects in England;-that the National Assembly abolished it, in imitation of her Transatlantic prototype. AND! that England will pursue the same course as America and France, when the changes in the representation, which he suggests, have taken place, and which the king's ministers, with enlarged capaciousness, have adopted. Surely the Clergy of England and Ireland are at least wiser in their generation, for not being patrons of the charter, which is to abrogate all their rights, privileges, and property.

His words are, "It appears from these, that the ill effects of the test laws, and Church establishment, begin to be much suspected; but the remedy of force can never supply the remedy of reason. In the progress of less than a century, all the unrepresented parts of England, of all denominations, which is at least a hundred times the most numerous, may begin to feel the necessity of a constitution, and then, all these matters will come regularly beore them."

And the same writer indited these words," But after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or, rather what is a monarch? Is it a thing-or is it a name or is it a fraud? Is it a contrivance of human wisdom, or of human craft, to obtain money from a nation under pretences? Is it a thing necessary to a nation? In America, it is considered as an absurdity; and in France, it has so far declined, THAT THE GOODNESS OF THE MAN, AND RESPECT FOR HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER, ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAT PRESERVE THE APPEARANCE OF ITS EXISTENCE!!!"+

If Mr. Paine be a political prophet, we, in the name of the Clergy of the united Church of England and Ireland, address to our beloved king, the words which an eloquent author inscribed to William III." Ne quid Detrimenti, capeat Respublica, ex nimia Cæsaris indulgentia, ORAMUS SUPPLICES."

York and Lancaster, were sealed with the same fortunes to the people; and up to the Revolution, the tyranny or adversity of the Stuart family, closed in the same result. But in all these precedents, the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the church, notwithstanding the clouds that occasionally hovered over them, were finally protected and preserved, though there was a vast accession of new rights and privileges conferred on the people. But now, while the Reform Bill imparts new powers, and of a boundless and unfathomable nature, to the people-while it tends to a considerable diminution of aristocratic weight-while it annihilates corporations, reared into existence as a counterpoise to popular frenzy-while it wipes out of the constitution all boroughs designed as a balance to the effects of the most unlimited electoral privileges while all those results confessedly flow from this measure, there is no countervailing security provided for the monarchy, the aristocracy, or the church. The popular power is vastly augmented the aristocratic is proportionally diminished. The latter is stripped, first, of many of its appendages; this is one addition to the people's sway. The people, also, have new privileges bestowed on them; this is a second contribution to their authority. And thus there is a two fold augmentation, the negative gift of what the aristocracy lose, and the positive addition of what the people acquire.

In the united Church of England and Ireland, and the uninvaded possession of her rights, property, and privileges, is provided the strongest barrier against encroachment upon the monarchy, or the farther diminution of aristocratic influence. This, no doubt, is an additional cause with the enemies of kingly government, and the admirers of republican institutions, to effect her abolition. In the degree that this is true, is the force of the obligation to preserve her interests unimpaired incumbent on those who are no admirers of a regal puppet and a democratical commonwealth. This Gallican epicene union of opposite principles, will surely not be carrie din this country into too exact similitude. The objection which naturally meets these reflections, that the clergy are now the opponents of the king's wishes, we refute with this answer: if the bishops and clergy of France had, with holy fortitude, stood between the natural pliancy of Lewis XVI. and the unreasonable demands of his people, what tongue could assert that they were enemies of monarchy, because they did not yield to the flexibility of their king? By the preservation, therefore, of the united church, as now constituted, no inducement of a higher price than the effect of this preservation secures, can be imagined to draw them into opposition to the interests of the crown. With the increased and multiplied power of the people on the one hand, and the diminished influence of the aristocracy on the other, where shall we find any controlling antipopular sway? Where shall we find one prominent protecting safeguard of the monarchy? In the affections of the people? It was here that a blameless and patriot king found his grave!

What party in the nation so interested to maintain the hereditary succession to the crown? What other party in the nation whose direct interest it is to maintain this succession? But the Protestant Church, severed from the State and independent of it, may become the prey of factious purposes; and, like the Roman Catholic, may not the power, which must ever belong to a large religious communiy, be insidiously directed against the interests of monarchy, of the constitution, and even of religion itself? "Touching the government of the church by bishops," said Charles I., "the common jealousie hath been that I am earnest and resolute to maintaine it, not so much out of pietie, as policy and reason of state. Wherein so far, indeed, reason of state doth induce me to approve that government above any other, as I find it impossible for a prince to preserve the state in quiet, unless he hath such an influence upon churchmen, and they such a dependence on him, as may best restraine the seditious exorbitances of ministers' tongues, who, with the keys of heaven, have so far the keys of the people's hearts, as they prevail much to let in or shut out both peace and loyalty."*

If, then, the perilous experiment of a sacrifice of the National Church be hazarded in Ireland-if Lord Grey's principle of no danger being perceptible in the erection into an Established Church, of the Roman Catholic religion, be ever complied with, what must be the efficacy of this precedent upon the Church in England? If not speedily annihilated, what a source of strife will its continuance, in defiance of the example of Ireland, furnish to revolutionists, infidels, and beggarly economists? If at last the Legislature yield, (and be it remembered, that legal sedition, and constitutional rebellion, and clamorous hypocrisy, are, in the present day, the acknowledged means of accomplishing every and any design,) and the Church in Ireland be overthrown, what will supply its place? Or, shorn of its constitutional prowess, what great bulwark remains in the nation in defence of monarchy? The aristocracy have lost at least their primitive capability of protection-the people will have prodigiously increased their means of opposition-and in present times, when Belshazzar's palsy has fallen upon the courts of Europe; and monarchs, in one eventful year, at the bidding of the weird sisters, apostacy and revolt, pass from their thrones to ignominy and exile, more numerous, indeed, than a poet's fancy, summoned from imagination's dreams, to scare the ambition of the thane of Cawdor is such a period the happy one selected for establishing the ominous precedent of the downfal of the Church in England, by extinguishing the last remaining defence of English interests and the British crown in Ireland? When the variety of interests that may lead men away from old constitutional cus

* ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ, Chap. xvii.

toms is considered-when the influence of the examples of other kingdoms is taken into account, caution cannot be too prudent in guarding against their infection. Of the variety of interests that may influence a nation in times of commotion, we shall adduce one example. We shall present it in the language of the noble lord who introduced the Reform Bill to the House of Commons. His lordship is speaking on the bill for excluding the Duke of York from the throne. "If the existing actual danger was so imminent, as to justify the strongest remedy, the obstacles to the exclusion bill were not, in their own nature, so insurmountable as they afterwards became by force of circumstances. The tenacity of the House of Lords to the principles of legitimacy, MIGHT have been overcome by the perseverance of the Commons, as it was afterwards at the Revolution, when they refused to declare the throne vacant; and with regard to the court, it was to be observed, that Charles had never been steady to any man, or any measure. It has even been said, that if he could have been assured of 600,000% from the Commons, he would have agreed to the exclusion of his brother. But they suspected his sincerity, probably with reason. The Duchess of Portsmouth was induced, partly by her fears of impeachment, and partly by her hopes of her son's succession, to be zealous in favour of the exclusion. The Duke of Monmouth promoted it, as an opening of his own designs on the crown; and the Prince of Orange, probably with like intentions, encouraged pensionary Fagel to send a strong memorial in its support. Lord Sunderland, Lord Essex, and Mr. Godolphin, secretly favoured it in the council. That the part taken by Lord Russell was of no trifling importance, is sufficiently plain from a passage in Sir William Temple, where he mentions, as one of two circumstances that had great influence on the House, the lead which Lord Russell took in promoting the Bill."*

And though no similar circumstances may ever arise in this nation-though never again may a like combination of events administer to the nation a necessity for introducing bills of exclusion and plans of limitation, yet, it were to deny all credence to the testimony of history, and to contradict all the acknowledged principles that actuate many men in all nations, to assert that any body of laws, no matter how purged of the dross of selfish or partial interests, will ever be so satisfactory as to leave no room for hope in the extermination of a kingly government; and as the first approach to its annihilation, the introduction of the precedent of an elective monarchy. And when we remember that Mr. Fox has declared, that "the Whigs, who consider the prerogatives of the crown as a trust for the people, naturally think it their duty rather to change the manager of the

• Lord John Russell's Life of Lord William Russell, Vol. i. p. 215, 216.

trust, than to impair the subject of it. IF THE PEOPLE BE THE

SOVEREIGN, AND THE KING THE DELEGATE, IT IS BETTER TO CHANGE THE BAILIFF THAN TO INJURE THE FARM."* When we remember that these words have received the honourable applause of the noble lord† who introduced the Reform measure. to the House of Commons-when we remember the language of Prince Eugene, already quoted, "that the Whigs were enemies to all regal government, and biassed in favour of a republic" and when we remember that Lord Grey is reported, in the public journals, to have declared, "that he learned his political principles in the school of Mr. Fox, the greatest statesman, as well as the most virtuous politician the country ever possessed"‡ —our exertions ought vigorously to be called into action, to secure the preservation, in this empire, of the united Church of England and Ireland, as being the only counterpoise against the imminent ascendant power of the Roman Catholic churchagainst the vast accession of influence to popular interests—as a barrier to the overflowing current of republican doctrines-and as the champion of the hereditary succession of the crown, and as a constitutional antidote to the epidemical mania of elective monarchies.

Before we conclude, we wish to recal our readers' recollection, for a few moments, to the history of Charles I. They are aware that the commissioners who attended him at the Isle of Wight, urged him to abandon episcopacy, and to allocate the revenues of the Church to the nation's use. The unhappy monarch, but a few short weeks before his death, when a spirit less brave and magnanimous would have shrunk from the extended arm of the executioner, nobly replied "That he would not consent to any measure, unless the propriety and inheritance of these lands, may still remain and continue to the Church and churchmen respectively, according to the pious intentions of the donors and founders thereof."|| And it ought not here to be forgotten, that though there was no lack of arguments or words, in reply to his most able defence of episcopacy, yet, when he

History of James II., Introductory Chapter, p. 38.

+ Life of Lord Wm. Russell, Vol. ii. p. 225.

Morning Chronicle, June 22d., 1831.

See Walker's Perfect Copies of the Treaty in the Isle of Wight; pp. 26, 31, 38, 42. Folio 1705.

"And let me take occasion to tell the readers this truth, very fit, but not commonly known, that in one of these conferences, the conscientious king was told by a faithful and private intelligencer, "that if he assented not to the Parliament's proposals, the treaty 'twixt him and them would break immediately, and his life would then be in danger-he was sure he knew it." To which his answer was, "I have done what I can to bring my conscience to a compliance with their proposals, and I cannot; and I will not lose my conscience to save my life."-Walton's Life of Bishop Saunderson, pp. 20, 21.