of allegiance being professed in them to be due prospectively to the King's heirs, and of their countenancing the notions of its being due to the King in his personal and not in his political capacity, and by reason of the title to the Crown being treated in them as an inheritance of mere property; doctrines at variance with the spirit of the Revolution, and incompatible with the royal stations of William and Mary.

Other Oaths or solemn Declarations still more repugnant to Civil Liberty were newly imposed in the reign of Charles II. by the Corporation Act (13 Car. II. St. 2, c. 1), the Militia Act (13th and 14th Car. II. c. 3), the Act of Uniformity (13th and 14th Car. II. c. 4), the Five Mile Act (17th Car. II. c. 2).

By all these Acts the profession to be made is that "It is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the King," and that the deponent or declarant doth "abhor that traiterous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissioned by him." The theory of Non-resistance of which public profession was so required to be made was the same as that which was inculcated in Archbishop Tillotson's letter to Lord Russell after his condemnation, and in the famous Oxford Decree. Mr Macaulay's exposition of it is not too strong, viz. that "even if England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris, who, in defiance of law, and without pretence of justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to torture and death, all the remaining estates of the realm united would not be justified in withstanding his tyranny by physical force." Locke, in his Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, attributes the practice of exacting non-resisting tests to "a design of composing a distinct party from the rest of the nation of the high episcopal men, and of the old cavaliers, and of making it accredited that both monarchy and episcopacy were jure divino, and not to be bounded by any human laws." This letter was burned by the hangman.

A non-resisting test for the whole nation was escaped, in the House of Commons, by a majority of only three voices. And, in the year 1675, a Bill for imposing on the Members of both Houses a non-resisting test, by way of oath, with a clause of "not endeavouring the alteration of the government either in Church or State," passed the House of Peers after a debate which lasted seventeen days. A dispute concerning the jurisdiction of the Lords in matters of judicature led to a prorogation, which put an end to this extravagance of political testing, and saved the honor of Parliament after the Peers and Bishops had done their utmost for its prostitution1.

The Corporation Act and Act of Uniformity, besides professions of non-resistance, required declarations of belief in the invalidity of the Solemn League and Covenant, (a compact between the English and Scottish nations to which the King himself had been sworn, and which, acknowledging royalty, repudiated episcopacy) apparently, because most Members of Corporations and Incumbents of livings at the period of the Restoration stood under its obligation. By the orders of Parliament the Solemn League and Covenant, and the Engagement to the Commonwealth (which Sir Matthew Hale and most other distinguished acquiescers in the Restoration had taken), were burned by the common hangman. Of one of these conflagrations, Pepys writes, in his Diary, under the date of the 28th of May, 1661: "Got into a balcony over against the Exchange, and there saw the hangman burn, by vote of Parliament, two old Acts, the one for constituting us a Commonwealth, and the other I have forgot; which still do make me think of the greatness of this late turn, and what people will do to-morrow, against what

1 The details of this remarkable contest are related in Locke's Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, (4 vol. Parl. Hist. App. V.) written upon the occasion. The Protests against the Bill were signed, one by 12, another by 16 Peers. The King was present during the debates, in which the rival leaders were Lord Nottingham and Lord Shaftesbury. Lord Campbell's marginal abstract to his account of these transactions is, "Constitution saved by Shaftesbury."

they all, through profit and fear, did promise and practise this day."

It may seem to have been an act of fatuity to have attempted to annul the obligations of conscience by the instrumentality of the hangman, and to have made it a part of a new profession of political faith, that an old one equally solemn was devoid of obligation. The inimitable cavalier-satirist, in dialogues between Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralpho, might have taught the Parliament how frail are the trammels of State Oaths against sophistry to elude, or power to break them. Shakspere had pointed to a page of earlier history from which the same lesson might have been adduced, where he makes King Richard the Second say:

If thy offences were upon record,

Then should'st thou find one heinous Article,
Containing the deposing of a King,

And cracking the strong warrant of an oath.

The State Oaths and Declarations of Non-resistance could never have been expected to exclude from office or employment any persons not of sincerity, and tender consciences; and, when the hour of trial came, they were found totally ineffectual for quelling resistance, or maintaining an undeserving King upon his throne. They reflect discredit on the Constitution in the reign of Charles II., as being in their tenor subversive of civil liberty, whilst the Oaths especially were an impious invocation of the Supreme Being for the purpose of ratifying the moral and political subjugation and degradation of man by man. In the reign of Charles II. the doctrines of non-resistance and indefeasible right, obtained, for the first time in our history, a parliamentary sanction. But as non-resisting Tests were inconsistent with the Revolution which was founded upon resistance, those of the Acts of Uniformity and Militia were abolished at that epoch; and the non-resisting Test in the Corporation

Act was expunged from our Statute Book at the accession of the House of Brunswick'. Thus there is no longer any obligation of conscience, "binding our souls in secular chains," to regard the royal dignity merely as a descendible property; instead of viewing it as a trust for millions, subject to a right of resistance when rendered indispensably necessary by the Salus Populi.

1 1st W. and M. c. 8; 5th Geo. I. c. 6. See Sir Michael Foster's Fourth Discourse, and Mr Allen's Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative in England, tit. "Allegiance."

CHAPTER III.

PARLIAMENT.

N the reign of George III. there was a prosecution ordered

IN

by the House of Commons against Mr Reeves for being the author of a pamphlet, in which it was asserted that, according to the English Constitution, "the Monarch is the ancient stock from which have sprung those goodly branches of the Legislature the Lords and Commons, that, at the same time, give ornament to the tree, and afford shelter to those who seek protection under it. But these. are still only branches, and derive their origin and their nutriment from their common parent; they may be lopped off, and the tree is a tree still; shorn, indeed, of its honors, but not, like them, cast into the fire. The Kingly government may go on, in all its functions, without Lords or Commons; it has heretofore done so for years together, and, in our times, it does so during every recess of Parliament; but, without the King, his Parliament is no more." This disfigured portraiture of the English Constitution may be shewn to be incompatible with ancient laws and with the Bill of Rights and other bulwarks of liberty erected at and since the Revolution: it is to be inquired whether it bear not traits of resemblance to the Constitution in the reign of Charles the Second?

It is proposed to consider the English Constitution, with regard to Parliament, under the following heads, (1) The Holding of Parliament. (2) Impeachments. (3) Miscellaneous Matters relating to Parliament.