of subject or another, all are liable to be defective, and are liable to amendment. No distinction can be drawn as regards the duty and desire to make one class better adapted to their main purpose than another class.

Supposed alliance between Church and StateAnother and kindred notion embodied in the use of the words "Church and State," is that which implies, that there is or once was a species of alliance or high contract between the representatives of one body of citizens and the representatives of all the rest, whereby stipulations and conditions were settled between them. The ecclesiastics, that is to say, those persons whose profession is to minister in sacred things, are in no way distinguished from their fellow-citizens, except only in the duties they perform for the time being. All are alike bound by the general body of laws, and are preserved by the same great machinery of a free Parliament, incorruptible judges, trial by jury, a free press, habeas corpus, and the other prominent securities of life and property and reputation. That some of the property over which ecclesiastical persons have a limited control is protected by peculiar laws, burdened by peculiar trusts, and its misapplication corrected by peculiar courts, is of no importance, seeing that these minor arrangements are often the accidents of an accident, and the inheritance of obsolete methods in the policy of our ancestors. That these ecclesiastical persons are not allowed the same latitude of speculation and the same liberty to vary the creed which the legislature has fixed for them as the essential accompaniment of their profession, is also a matter affecting only their own class. All professions and vocations are protected alike by the law, whether one may be deemed more honourable or not in itself by those who select them or those who benefit by them. Vocations being voluntary give no essential precedence one over another, all being alike subject to one paramount control, namely, that of the law, which has been accepted or declared by Parliament, and which Parliament alone can amend.

Alleged submission of clergy.-Though therefore ecclesiastical persons and their property, and rights and wrongs are all bound by the same law-though that law may vary according to the subject and be administered to some

extent by peculiar courts, there is a widespread error which now and again recurs, namely, that because a statute of 25 Hen. VIII. c. 21 recited a submission of the clergy as one of its inducing considerations, this implied, that there was some antecedent rivalry and antagonism between the clergy on the one hand and the state or Parliament on the other hand, whereby they ratified some compact, on fixed and unalterable terms, like two independent national governments; and that those terms cannot be altered except by the two parties who originally exchanged them. This view is founded on the radical error, that Parliament could or ever did at any period of history enter into a negotiation with a small class of its subject citizens on terms which could not be freely altered by Parliament afterwards on its own authority. No one class can ever be so puissant as to parley on equal terms with Parliament-for the best of all reasons, that the one is weak and helpless and the other omnipotent. It is one of the peculiar advantages of our constitution that each and every class is subject to the paramount authority of Parliament. Whatever may be the wishes of any one class which seeks advantages, or is about to be subjected to further control, the moment that Parliament has spoken and has embodied in a statute a deliverance on the matter to be dealt with, the antecedent wishes, expectations, or grievances of that class are no longer to be appealed to, except simply so far as they sometimes assist the judges who have to interpret the ambiguities of that as well as other enactments. It is by this process, that each class is subdued in detail by the superior wisdom of that all powerful Senate which cannot be controlled, and which has the power to control all the component forces of the realm. And without this theory and this practice government would be impossible. any one class could set itself up and claim to dictate to the Parliament the conditions on which its rights, liberties, and property were to be held and enjoyed, or to dictate who were to be the judges to administer justice between man and man, or between class and class, or between the several members of any one class, Parliament would cease to be the great and irresistible power which keeps all the interests of the nation in their proper places, and to which every profession in its turn must bow submissively.

To assume that the clergy once had rights co-equal with Parliament, and settled and secured by some power before and above Parliament, and which still subsist in that body or any portion of it, or in so far as not expressly given over and parted with, is a dogma irreconcilable with every theory of government. There can be no settled government if any one portion of the people can set itself above the law and repudiate the authority of the sole organ which declares, adopts, and reforms that law. No divinity can hedge the Church, or the select number who constitute it, from the influence of one and the same all-powerful and paramount legislature.

Royal supremacy in Church affairs.-When it is said that the supremacy of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters in England is a first principle, this only means that it is nothing more than the elementary rule necessarily arising out of the very nature and constitution of all independent governments. That rule is, that if there is a sovereign, then that sovereign is the highest in authority and position, and has the same relative superiority over the ecclesiastical professions as over all the others. Yet this rule has been expanded into many words by statutes from the Constitutions of Clarendon to those of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, as if it required to be declared in express terms. The confusion of ideas about ecclesiastical jurisdiction so long propagated by the See of Rome required frequent manifestoes and abounding repetitions in statutes and canons, so as thoroughly to root out of the minds of legislatures, judges, and subjects the current traditions of the time.1 And even Coke and Hale think it necessary to say, that this rule, which is a maxim or truism, appears by records of unquestionable truth and authority, instead of merely stating, that it is self-evident and a necessary axiom or postulate for every government. Coke at the same time said, these acts were merely declaratory of the common law.2 A statute of Henry VIII. in 1536 made it compulsory on all officers, ecclesiastical and temporal, to take an oath renouncing the jurisdiction of the

1 Constit. Clar. (1184); 25 Ed. III. st. 6; 38 Ed. III. st. 2, c. 1; 16 Rich. II. c. 5; 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12; 25 Hen. VIII. c. 21; 1 Eliz. c. 1; 5 Eliz. c. 1; canons 1603, §§ 1, 2, 26, 37. 21 Hale, 75; Caudrey's Case, 5 Coke, 1.

See of Rome.1 So important was the truism deemed, that under Elizabeth any person who controverted it, either by advisedly preaching, or writing, or speaking to the contrary, was declared to be liable to forfeiture of goods.2 And it was punishable by præmunire to refuse to take the oath of supremacy. And the canons of 1603 treated the denial of the supremacy as a ground of excommunication. This supremacy of the Crown has never been defined by any statute or common law; but it is

3

1 28 Hen. VIII. c. 10, § 6.

4

2 1 Eliz. c. 1. A statute of Henry VIII., one of a series, in its recital sufficiently well expressed and recognised this fundamental law: "This, your Grace's realm, recognising no superior under God, but only your Grace, hath been and is free from subjection to any man's laws, but only to such as have been devised, made, and ordained within this realm for the wealth of the same, or to such other as by sufferance of your Grace and your progenitors the people of this your realm have taken at their free liberty, by their own consent, to be used amongst them, and have bound themselves by long use and custom to the observance of the same, not as to the observance of the laws of any foreign prince, potentate, or prelate, but as to the customed and ancient laws of this realm originally established as laws of the same by the said sufferance, consents, and custom, and none otherwise."-25 Hen. VIII. c. 21. The statute of 1340 had substantially expressed the same cardinal rule of jurisdiction.—14 Ed. III. st. 3. And COKE said it was settled by judges in the time of Edward III., that the Pope's excommunication could not prejudice any man in England.-Caudrey's Case, 5 Co. 1. BODIN, in France, under Henry IV., insisted on the doctrine that civil sovereignty was absolute. And GROTIUS, in 1613, contended that the Church had nothing but a persuasive authority.-2 Hall. Lit. 341 (ed. 1873.) By many the oath of supremacy was understood as merely negativing that of the Pope.-1 Hallam, Const. H. c. 3. "The Royal supremacy represents the same authority, and no more, in matters ecclesiastical, defined and limited by the ecclesiastical law, as it does in matters temporal, defined and limited by the municipal law."-Per Alderson, B., Memoirs, 225.

3 5 Eliz. c. 1.

4 When the bill for supremacy was in the House of Lords, in 1558, the ex-Chancellor Heath opposed it on the ground that the Pope's supremacy had been already acknowledged by all the bishops at four general councils. Moreover, the canonical laws of Christ's Church, to which they had been sworn at the font, were binding on them all, and by leaping out of Peter's ship they would hazard themselves to be overwhelmed in the waves of schism, of sects, and divisions. He also relied much on the disqualification of a woman

to be " supreme head." The arguments were all more or less

scriptural quotations and adaptations of vague expressions. He

obviously a word used merely as correlative to the law of the land, denoting that kind of tutelary supervision which is recognised in the coronation oath.1 In one respect indeed a statute was passed to declare, that the power of dispensing with statutes was no part of that complement of rights vested in the sovereign, and known under the title of this supremacy, though it had long been mistaken to be one of its chief ingredients.2 All statutes which imposed a penalty for holding any doctrine like that aimed at by the oath of supremacy were repealed in 1846, except as regards clergymen. The oath of allegiance and supremacy was re-written by the legislature in 1858;4 but all express mention of supremacy was dropped in 1868, and a general expression of allegiance was all that was deemed sufficient.5 In effect the supremacy of the Crown in all civil and ecclesiastical affairs is an elementary principle which does not require to be explained, but is merely assumed as an axiom under every kind of kingly government.

Meaning of the words "Church" and "Protestant Episcopal Church."-The word Church is used in two leading senses. In its most usual sense it includes all those who pursue as a profession the performance of various duties incidental to public worship as established by law, and it also includes that portion of the public who join in and profess the doctrines embodied in that mode of public worship. The other sense confines the word to those who are thus professionally engaged, without including the laity assumed throughout the unity of Christ's Church. -1 Somers' Tracts, 78.

1 1 Will. & M. c. 6; 6 Anne, c. 8. The coronation oath has sometimes been used as an argument against changes in the law relating to the Church. It was well agreed at the settling of the oath in 1689, that the words "Protestant Religion established by law" meant the same thing as "which is, or may be, established from time to time;" and no assurance exacted from a sovereign by the estates of the kingdom can bind him to refuse compliance with what may at a future time be the wish of those estates.-Macaulay, Hist. c. 11. The argument which sets up the Coronation Oath as an obstacle to changes in ecclesiastical laws was wholly repudiated by Lord Liverpool and by Canning.-16 Parl. Deb. (2) 1003; see also 197 Parl. Deb. (3) 82.

2 1 Will. & M. sess. 2, c. 2. Vic. c. 48, § 1 (repealed).

3 9 & 10 Vic. c. 59. 4 21 & 22 5 31 & 32 Vic. c. 72.