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blockheads;a wolf in sheep's clothing being all very well, but an ape in old woman's clothing intolerable, and if we must have maundering, let it at least be free from malignity. We have now been alluding, and perhaps at rather unnecessary length, to certain poor creatures of the press; but if their cant be as disgusting as may be, the cant of clever men in another rank and station is much more odious. There, for example, is Mr Henry Brougham, a man of great talents and acquirements. His friends hoist him up on their shoulders a yard and a half towards the skies, as the most powerful prose-writer of the age. We shall grant, for the tithe of a moment, that he is so, and that Edmund Burke, as a political author, is far inferior to Henry Brougham. He is made to take his stand on the political articles in the Edinburgh Review. If none of these be of his composition, then he not only is not the greatest prose-writer of the age, but he is no prose-writer at all; for his separate pamphlets have not been better than those of William Huskisson, who does not stand, as far as we have heard, at the head of our literature. If many of the most powerful of them be his composition, and we shall not attribute anything weak and washy to his pen, then he has shewn himself a most insolent insulter of the Church of England, and of many, most of her illustrious living sons. His vituperation has been foul-mouthed indeed, coarse, and vulgar, and certainly either most ignorant or most unprincipledin meaning and in manner disgraceful, or rather impossible in a high-minded English gentleman, not more when libelling his Church than his King. Yet, on some public occasions-ay, before all England-all the world has Mr Brougham, when it suited some temporary purpose to do so, pronounced flaming panegyrics on the character of the self-same Church and the self-same sons of that Church, as the impregnable bulwark, and invincible champions of religion. Hopes he then her speedy overthrow, or her everlasting duration? Desires he to see bestial hoofs kicking down her altars, or her altars, for ever sacred, under the shadow of angelic wings?

But the divines of the Church of England have never been faint-hearted in the presence of the enemy; at all

times they have been ready to buckle on their armour; their weapons are well tempered, and they know how to wield them well, both in defence and assault. There are men among them now, not to be cowed in controversy, like the mannikins whom the dread of Mr Brougham's sarcasm makes mum as so many mice when a grimalkin is in the room. The silence of the scholar's study is not disturbed by the senseless cry of-hear! hear! hear! at every new blast of bombast and rodomontade, nor by shouts of laughter-immense laughter-at wit that has evapo◄ rated in the process of printing, or by humour as dry as the ink. His words on paper are as the words of a common man-often of a very common man indeed-his logic is quite chap-fallen now-his arguments, when left to stand on their own legs, are found to be of the halt and the lame-and-perorations that would have left the learned gentleman on his breech, in cheers from the whole House, continuing for several minutes, are perused in a succession of small, uneasy, uncomfortable yawns, subsiding into sleep. Alas, for the fame-the glory of Oratory- Rhetoric- Eloquence! What would have been a most magnificent speech, and able for four-fivesix-or seven hours,

"The applause of listening senates to command,"

as an article in the Edinburgh Review, is sometimes felt to be scarcely worth ten guineas a-sheet.

Although, then, Mr Brougham is a dangerous antagonist, especially to those who, from constitutional timidity or retired habits, are out of all measure annoyed with being held up alternately in mock eulogy and real satire, in sudden vicissitudes of hot and cold, wet and dry weather, blown from the "highest heaven of his invention," in presence of a full House; still there seems no necessity for falling down in a fainting or hysterical fit, on the first frown of his formidable visage. There are several instances of his face having been survived; of people having stood unscathed by his thunder; the electric fluid, attracted by the ethereal spear in the hand of a champion of the Truth, having descended it, as if it had been a conducting-rod, and with fear of change perplexing moles. Dr Phillpotts, for ex

ample, writes away merrily without the fear of this Bugaboo before his eyes; and cares no more for "certainly, the First Man in the House," than he does for any other woman-born man of terrestrial origin. That the Doctor, after several years' warfare with the Briareus and Garagantua of the Blue and Yellow, should positively and bona fide be alive, in good flesh and blood, even to this very day, must be incomprehensible to people imperfectly skilled in the properties of animal poisons. The truth is, that the bite of very few serpents is mortal. There are herbs of sovereign virtue growing in almost every garden, and loving no site so well as a crevice in some old cathedral or abbey-wall, where the air smells wooingly, a single leaf of which, applied to the wound, does with gentle lip extract the venom, as Queen Eleanor did from the wound of her Lord the King. Dr Phillpotts, therefore, though frequently bitten, is still Rector of Stanhope, and Dean of Chester; nor, mark our words, will the great Boa Constrictor himself bite him out of a bishoprick. To speak plainly, he is in talents Mr Brougham's equal-his temper, though warm-and a cold temper is an atmosphere in which noble thoughts cannot breathe, nor noble feelings burn-is always under the control of a manly mind and gentlemanly manners, which is more than can be always truly said of the gentleman on the opposite side of the House. He is one of the best scholars in England, altogether worthy to be named along with Wrangham and Copplestone, and Blomfield; and hence, his clear, classical, forceful style, is far superior indeed to that of Mr Brougham, who, by the by, has kept perpetually waxing more and more pedantic ever since the Thesis he read as Rector to the little red-gowned radicals in the common-hall of Glasgow College, so that now 'tis impossible to read a page of him either in speech or article, without being tempted to exclaim, "The Schoolmaster is abroad!"

By his talents, attainments, and station, Dr Phillpotts is entitled to speak before the people of England on all affairs affecting the well-being of Church and State. He has often so spoken, and always with prodigious effect both on friends and foes. He is one of the most eminent men of his day, and one of the most influential.

On his first appearance in the field, a run of course was made at him by all the strength of the party. Thus have we seen at " the foot-ball play," in Ettrick Forest, one single strong agile shepherd touch the globe with his toe, and after having upset in the heather or on the greensward some half-dozen players who had tried to trip him up, away he goes with the leaping leather, that, in a succession of airy and rainbow curves, keeps seeking the sky, till, amidst the acclamations of thousands seated on the hills, he makes it spin beyond the goal.

His "Letter to an English Layman on the Coronation Oath," is one of his most powerful productions. He has taken a most comprehensive view of the whole subject-one of mighty moment indeed at the present juncture— and has brought to the discussion great stores of historical knowledge, which never on any one single occasion has he employed with the view of displaying his learning; for he is as familiar with all our best constitutional authorities as a Quidnunc with the newspapers, and has evidently had more difficulty in selecting than in collecting his materials. Along with his letter, we have read Mr Lane's most excellent Treatise on the Coronation Oath. They reflect strong light on each other; and we shall endeavour to exhibit, frequently in the form of an abstract or abridgement, nor yet scrupling to use their very words where that is necessary, some of their most important reasonings and statements.

Dr Phillpotts begins with speaking of the Church of England as an essential part of the British Constitution. Those who have inquired into the history of the British Constitution, will testify to the close connexion of civil and religious polity which has ever subsisted in it.

"From the very earliest period, the monarchy of England has always presented itself, as a government which regards its subjects in the full dignity of their real nature, as religious creatures-as beings, whose interests are not limited to this transitory scene, but reach onwards to an infinitely higher and more enduring state. the handmaid of civil policy, instead of Accordingly, instead of making religion adopting and endowing it, merely as an useful auxiliary to secure the submission of subjects, and give a new sanction to the authority of rulers, the English Lawgiver has always regarded religion as having,

by right, a paramount place and dignity in the great scheme of national polity. Hence it is, that the Gospel is reverently acknowledged to be part of the common law of the land. Hence, too, it is, that as the Gospel supposes all Christians to be members of the Church of Christ, and that Church to be a society under the government of certain rulers appointed by God himself to their high office, the law of England, from the first conversion of this nation to the faith of Christ, not only has always recognised the State of England, inasmuch as it is a Christian State, to be also the particular Church of England; but it has, by consequence, regarded the Governors of the Church as an essential

part of this Christian State. Whatever may have been the practice of other countries, and whatever may have been the language of private individuals even here, both the language, and the practice, of our law have been uniform and constant on this particular."

To endow the Spirituality with temporal dignities, was no essential part of the duty of the Christian legislature; but in England, from the earliest times," the King's most noble proge nitors, and the antecessors of the nobles of the realm, have sufficiently endowed the said Church both with honours and possessions." The clergy, being "one of the great states of the realm," have always been called to bear a distinguished part in the great council of the nation. In all the accounts which remain to us of the Mysel Synoth, the great assembly, or, as it was called at other times, Wittenagemote, the assembly of the wise men of the realm, the Bishops are mentioned among its chief members. Ina, King of West Saxons 702-Egbert, who united the Heptarchy into one kingdom-Canute, on the death of Edmond Ironside Edward the Confessor-all, in convening the Great Council of the Realm, or on other equal occasions, thus recognised the Spirituality; and Dr Phillpotts rightly remarks, that they had thus their seat in the Parliament, or Great Council of the Realm, not by reason of the tenure of their temporal possessions, (for hitherto their lands were held by them in frankalmoigne,) but simply and merely as spiritual lords. The charters, too, of our early sovereigns are as precise in promising protection to the rights of the Church, as in assuring those of the temporality; and as their charters recognised the rights of the Church, VOL. XXIV.

so also, which more immediately belongs to his present inquiry, did the oaths which were taken by them at their Coronation. Henry II., Richard I., Henry III., all swore to respect and protect the Church and its ministers. But without seeking to ascertain the exact expressions in which every one, in succession, of our early Princes, swore to the maintenance and protection of the Church's rights, Dr Phillpotts gives the fixed and regular form in which all the Kings of England, from Edward II. to Henry VIII. inclusive, pledged their faith to the Church and people of England. Whether by any and by what actions Henry VIII. violated his oath, is not a question, our author boldly says, in which

the honour of the Reformed Church of England is at all involved. And certainly, no fault is to be found with the statutes by which he cut off the usurpations of the Pope. Lord Coke, too, has triumphantly proved, and so have many others, that Henry's assertion of his right to Ecclesiastical Supremacy was most properly and truly a resumption of the ancient, legal and recognised right of the English Crown. On the death of Henry VIII. it appears from the council-book, cited by Burnet, not only that many of the ceremonies of the Coronation were altered, in order to accommodate them to the change of laws, but also that there was some small amendment of the Coronation Oath. In that amended form it was taken by Edward VI.

Mary, having been crowned according to the ancient ceremonial, used the ancient form of the Coronation Oath, which (with one alteration introduced into it under James I.) appears to have been observed at the coronation of every succeeding sovereign, James II. included. The present Coronation Oath is in terms prescribed by 1 William and Mary, c. 6. In that form it still continues to be taken, and therefore it includes the full meaning expressly put upon it by the act of Union, 5th Anne, c. 8; and the sovereign must understand himself, and be understood by others, to swear that he will, to the utmost of his power, maintain and preserve, inviolably, within the kingdoms of England and Ireland, the Protestant reformed religion, established by law, and the settlement of the Church of England; and the doctrine, worship, dis

B

cipline, and government thereof, as by law established."

It is not possible for us to quote at full length the various successive forms of the Coronation Oath; but we have said enough to shew the utter absurdity of the notion vulgarly entertained of it—and that too by many erudite persons-that it is a form, composed in some remote age, used in compliance with ancient custom, and designed, in conjunction with various other ceremonies and observances, merely to heighten the solemnity of a coronation. Here Mr Lane is excellent.

"As a formal investiture of the Crown is not necessary to establish the title of the successor to it, no political importance it is imagined can attach to any part of a ceremony which may be altogether dispensed with. The Oath may indeed throw a religious character around the moral obligation to govern rightly, incidental to the taking of the kingly office; but the terms of it are thought to be no more worthy of notice in the discussion of any constitutional question, than any of the particulars of the

• Pomp and feast

- and antique pageantry'

of the splendid ceremonial of which it forms a part.

"We see how little in matters that most vitally concern them, men in general examine either the grounds or the consequences of their opinions. We need not therefore be surprised at the existence of a notion, which testifies much ignorance to be prevalent, of what it becomes every man living under the British Constitution to know. The Roman Catholic question involves unhappily many points, which more strongly force themselves upon the attention, and affect the passions of men; which more effectually touch the springs of hu

man conduct than this. Hence it has not been sufficiently considered under what circumstances the present Coronation Oath originated; by whom it was framed; by what authority it was instituted; how deeply connected is its history with that of the liberties of England; with events the most interesting to us; the most remarkable that the page of history pre

sents!

"He that thus treats the Coronation

Oath, does in effect affirm that the legislative proceedings of the Revolution exhibit an instance of unparalleled and unaccountable folly. He affirms, that they whose duty it was to fix upon its base the tottering Constitution of England-they to whom devolved the care of interests the most important with which we can con

ceive accountable beings to be charged, turned from the glorious work before them to consider-nay,

Sat in the Council House
Early and late, debating to and fro'

a matter beneath the notice of statesmen at He affirms that, in that awful hour, upon any time-the composition of an idle form! the due employment of which rested the immediate safety of the State, and its security in after-times against the dangers from which it had just been rescued,they who repeatedly declared that their whole thoughts were bent, and their whole proceedings designed to secure the Religion and Liberties of their country-so belied their professions, so trifled with their sacred charge, as for the first time to employ the Legislative Power in the establishment of what is of no political importance-an oath which means no more than the oaths in use before it was established, and above all, which has nothing to do with the consideration of matters, that the lawgivers who framed it declared to be to them objects of the greatest solicitude! Can any rational person think it probable that this is a correct view of the matter? It must surely bear upon its face demonstrative evidence of its falsity and absurdity to every mind, which long-indulged prejudice, and the misrepresentations of faction, have not rendered proof and bulwark against sense!" "

Mr Lane's object, in his Treatise, is to suggest a mode of interpreting the Coronation Oath, which seems to be the only one consistent with the principles laid down for the investigation of truth in similar cases; and to demonstrate by reference to indisputable authorities, (many of them the same, of course, as those referred to by Dr Phillpotts, who speaks with high praise of Mr Lane's Treatise, although he had not seen it till after the printing of great part of his own Letter,) the nature and extent of the obligation which it imposes upon the sovereign. This object he effects, by establishing the following positions: First, That the intention of the Legislature, in establishing the Coronation Oath at the Revolution, is the criterion by which we are to judge of the nature and extent of that obligation. Secondly, That it appears, from the public declarations of the several branches of the Legislature at that time, that one principal object they had in view in all their proceedings, was to secure the country in future from the danger of having the Esta

blished Religion undermined or overturned by Roman Catholic influence. Thirdly, That the Legislature, by its acts and proceedings in carrying that object into effect, extended and permanently established the principle, that it is necessary, to the preservation of the Constitution in Church and State, that the government of this country be in the hands of Protestants exclusively; and, fourthly, That the Coronation Oath was at the same time remodelled and established by law, principally as a means of binding the Sovereign to maintain, in the exercise of all his political functions, the same principle of government.

We shall not attempt to follow this learned and judicious writer through all his reasonings and statements, but ask at once, with him, what were the intentions of the Legislature in esta blishing the Coronation Oath? Why, was not security against Popery the especial object of the Revolution? It is observed by Dr Phillpotts, that one of the favourite paradoxes of this liberal age has been, that the misconduct of James, which led to the Revolution, was caused merely by his impatience of all restraint on the royal prerogative, not properly his religion; that his religion was no more than an instrument employed by him in aid of his designs against the civil liberties of his subjects-not the dominant principle-which made it at once his duty and his glory to trample on all their liberties, both civil and religious. But the illustrious actors in that great emergence, uniformly in all their proceedings, testified their dread and abhorrence of the religion of James. It was Popery, no less than Slavery, that was the object of their jealous and vigilant hostility. In all the records of the Revolution, this sentiment is expressed over and over again, with unceasing earnestness and anxiety, that there is an intimate union be tween the Protestant religion and the civil freedom of this country, and that upon this union hang the vital interests of the State. We know, says Mr Lane, that all men of the slightest political consideration, of different parties in politics and religion, joined in the transactions of the Revolution. But whether we refer to the acts of the Legislature at large, or of the different branches of it,-to the public declarations of the political associa

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tions of the time, or of the leading individuals engaged in the Revolution, we find that upon this fundamental principle all parties (except, of course, the adherents of James) were united. What are the words of the famous association," signed at first at Exeter by so many of the nobility and gentry, on the landing of the Prince of Orange, and afterwards by almost all persons of note? That they would depart from it, until their religion, their laws, and their liberties, were so far secured to them in a free Parlia ment, that they should be in no danger of falling again under Popery or Slavery." They therefore addressed the Prince of Orange, urging the propriety of calling together a Free Parliament-" as the best means tending to such an establishment, or that their religion, laws, and liberties, might not be in danger of being again subverted." In accordance with these views, many of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, having met in conference, stated, in their first declaration, "that they would assist in obtaining such a Parliament, wherein their laws and liberties, and properties, might be secured, and the Church of England in particular, with a due liberty to Protestant Dissenters; and, in general, that the Protestant religion and inte rest over the whole world might be supported and encouraged;" and this was followed by an address to the same effect from the city of London. And what was the first measure of the Convention Parliament, after having resolved that James had violated his contract with his people, and had abdicated the throne? The memorable Declaration of Rights, of which the whole preamble expresses the convic tion of the framers of it, that there is an inseparable connexion between the national or Protestant religion, and national liberty. "Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil councillors, judges, and ministers, employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom," and more to the same effect. From a comparison, then, of this preamble with the history of the reign of this base and bigoted Prince, it will be found that all the illegal proceedings mentioned in it, had immediate relation to his

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