there many "Collective Wisdoms?" liam, have tolerated Protestants adIt is great difficulty for the King which vancing such claims as the Papists now of them he shall choose. Thus, this advance, or that any Roman Catholic Irish Surgeon is one " Collective Wis- priest that ever sold such indulgences, dom," and Dr Phillpotts is another, would have advised him to do so, inand between the two, suppose them to stead of whispering into his ear a hint be both Cabinet Ministers, how would about "the moral propriety” of anit be possible for any King on the face other St Bartholomew ? of this earth to choose? Were we King, we should, for the sake of a quiet life, take the advice of the Surgeon practising as a physician,-and to soothe Dr Phillpotts' feelings, make him a Bishop. Yet, instead of a Surgeon, Paddy, who, on his title-page, facetiously calls himself" By a Clergyman of the Church of England," should by rights have been a "Praste," and then, (that excellent song, "The Irish Wedding," is our authority,) he would have got not only "Praties dressed both ways, Both roasted and boiled," but of him also it would have been sung "The Praste got the snipe." This self-ordained clergyman of the Church of England, is, we know it, an Irish Surgeon, and what is still more inconsistent, apparently, with his assumed character-he is also a Papist, and as good a Papist too as ever kissed Pope's toe, or gave up his conscience to a priest. He then blarneys away, but not at all after the lively fashion of his imaginative countrymen, about the different varieties of oaths. Now there certainly is in Ireland a more amusing variety of oaths than in any other country we ever had the pleasure of travelling through in a jingle; but there is not in all the Green Isle, one single Coronation Oath. Had old Brian Borrou taken a Coronation oath, or "Malachi with the Collar of Gold," do you think those grim Milesians would have seen the moral propriety of surrendering their judgments to the Collective Wisdom of Connaught or Tipperary? Do make some allow ance for a man's being a King. It is a serious, a solemn business, being a King. A Coronation Oath is no joke. Come now, sir, you Surgeon, and you son of a Surgeon! do you think that any Roman Catholic King that ever bought indulgences for wholesale adulteries, and murders, would, in the face of such a Coronation Oath as was first administered to King Wil The Paddy then becomes illustrative, and compares the King with his Coronation Oath, to a trustee sworn faithfully to administer to a will. honest trustee is no lawyer; and the clauses in the will are so confused, and complicated, and contradictory, that they are enough to puzzle the devil, the greatest lawyer and conveyancer of any age or country. Instead, however, of consulting that Lord Chancellor, which under the rose many a trustee does, especially in orphan cases, the Surgeon informs us, that the trustee consults the family lawyer, and his advice he implicitly follows, as the administrator of the trust. Now, in the first place, does not the Surgeon know, that the King did this very thing-that he consulted Lord Kenyon? But, in the second place, cannot the Surgeon see, that there is no more resemblance between the two cases than between a horse-chesnut and a chesnut horse? The King was as good a judge in his case-and a far better too, than anybody could be for him,-for he had a profound and holy feeling, without which the spirit of an oath cannot be understood. Farther, what would the trustee have done had six lawyers on each side given a different interpretation of the said will? Cast lots? Suppose he had trusted to a knave or knaves, and robbed the widow and the fatherless? Or suppose that after all, one honest man more enlightened than all the rest, showed him, clear as heaven, that the will, instead of being confused and complicated, was as plain as a pikestaff? Farther, suppose, and it is the case in question, that the trustee partly admitted from the beginning, that he knew nothing at all about the matter; had no opinion, no judgment, no feeling, no fear, no uneasiness, no tremblings of a tender conscience, but handed the will over to the lawyer without reading what he knew it was impossible for him to understand? Does this apply to the King and his Coronation Oath ?-No. But to humour the Surgeon in his Killarney for Dublin, to lie in under fancy for the law, and indeed it is not easy to know whether he be a surgeon, a clergyman of the Church The grave absurdity of the Surof England, a Roman Catholic priest, geon's illustration will, we hope, exor an attorney-we shall put a case cuse the gay absurdity of ours. Each to him, which will instantly settle his of us writes in his own peculiar vein hash-the case of an English Pro--and though both may be bad in testant, a trustee, administering to a will, in which it is provided that the daughter of the testator, also an English Protestant, shall not marry an Irishman-particularly ODoherty. The young lady will no doubt think that very hard-for "there is none that makes love like a real Irishman," and the trustee may think the testa tor a very absurd defunct. But the testator has given his reason why his daughter shall be disinherited, if she marries ODoherty, namely, that he knows she never could be happy with the Adjutant. The trustee makes in quiry about the Ensign's character, and finds, that with the exception of a few debts, the amount of which it is difficult to come at, and a foolish rumour of his having another wife, the Standard Bearer is a most entirely unexceptionable match, and is the like liest man in all the world to make Miss MacGillicuddy happy; on which the trustee fulfils the testator's intentions, which could only be to make his daughter the happiest of women, though he knew not how to set about it, and had stood in the shape of a ghost in her way and his own light-by himself giving away the bride to the Hero of Talavera and Picardy. All the ODoherties-many of them as 'cute lawyers as ever drew or expounded a will, were clear for the marriage. The uncle had his doubts, but having consulted his conscience as to the moral propriety of surrendering his judgment, and of deferring to the Collective Wisdom of that body of men on whose counsels he had ordinarily confided, why then, to use the Surgeon's phraseology, for he is also a bit of a metaphysician," it is only the mind or intellectual faculty that is employed for the purpose" of ascertaining whether the ODoherty was qualified to make the MacGillicuddy happy or not; and having little or no mind of his own, and a bachelor wholly ignorant about such matters, the marriage is solemnized and consummated of course, and in due season the lady will leave the Lakes of itself, the contrast may be amusing. But the latter half of his answer is a sermon, on an excellent subject too, Christian Charity. A sermon on a working week-day is, we cannot help saying what we think, a very great bore indeed; and as this happens to be a working week-day-we never write articles on Sunday-we shall put off the perusal of it till the first rainy Sabbath on which we happen to have a cold and sore throat, in addition to our gout and rheumatism, and when it would therefore be more rash than pious to go to church. From a slight and hurried glance, we see the preacher remonstrates very seriously and solemnly with Dr Phillpotts on his extreme warmth and zeal in the cause of Protestantism and the Protestant Church. He conjures him to reflect how improper it is to be so severe on "six millions of his fellow Christians"-pretty Christians truly a few millions of them say we -not to trample on the fallen-not to recommend keeping all these millions down by the strong arm of the law, and so forth, recommending mildness, meekness, pity, pardon, allowance for human frailty, and for difference of opinion in affairs between a man's conscience and his God-including, of course, his priest-and throwing in a hint now and then, that as there have been such things as rebellions in Ireland, there may be again-" for that nuncios, bishops, and priests, are not the only powers that have led on the people of any country to acts of violence in defiance of laws, human and divine. I can myself testify that such acts were committed in Ireland by the Protestant army of a Protestant king, at the command of generals, colonels, and captains, all professing the Protestant Faith." So out jumps the truth, our friend the surgeon is-a Croppy. Yet it appears that our Irish preacher, on beginning to indite his answer, did not intend to preach, but merely to pamphletize. He begins with assuring Dr Phillpotts that it is no business of his to read hit a lecture on Christian Charity, and yet "He gives it like a tether, Fu' lang that day." a "How far," quoth Pound-text, minister of peace is righteously employed in raking together the polemical rubbish of former ages of bigotry and ignorance, at the risk of rekind ling the flame of religious discord, and with a view to deprive five or six millions of his Christian brethren of their natural rights, it is not my pro vince to decide." And pray, if it be not his province, whose is it? And pray, farther, if it be not, why do it? And pray, farther, if it be done, why not "let it be done quickly," instead of in a drawling discourse, nearly an hour by Shrewsbury, or any other well-regulated clock? He himself very soon begins to lose his own temper, and gets, if not mettlesome, yet almost within a hair-stroke of it, very nettlesome indeed, with Dr Phillpotts, on account of his Letters to Mr Canning, whom the preacher, widely and deeply read, no doubt, in the history of the whole world, calls "the ablest statesman of any age or country!""The good and gene rous of all parties must condemn attempts to raise a clamour against such an adversary; and I can scarcely doubt that the death of the distinguished individual whom they were meant to wound, has since awakened recollections in your breast sufficient to avenge the wrong. your Here we must pull up the preacher on Christian Charity, and insist on his paying some regard to Christian Truth. Dr Phillpotts opposed the principles advocated by Mr Canning in Parliament respecting the Catholic claims. He opposed them boldly, and like a man, in the spirit of an English divine, in the language of an English scholar. To the grief of all England, George Canning is-dead. And what are "the recollections which the death of that distinguished individual has since awakened in Dr Phillpotts' breast?" And are they such as to " avenge a wrong," nowhere committed but in the fretful fancy of this very paltry person? Let Dr Phillpotts speak for himself, and let the present preacher learn a lesson of Christian Charity-if he can-from the noble eulogy delivered by one of the most eminent churchmen over one, who was indeed one of the most eminent statesmen in England. "It can hardly, I hope, be necessary for me to assure you, in the outset, that I feel most strongly the delicate and solemn nature of the duty I incur, in thus venturing to comment on the obligation of my Sovereign's Oath. It is a subject, which, in itself, and under any circumstances, would demand from a religious mind, to be treated with the strictest and most scrupulous sincerity. But, if it were otherwise possible, in the heat of controversy, to forget this duty, the awful event, which has removed for ever from the scene of our contention the ablest and most dis tinguished of all the individuals engaged in it, could hardly fail to recall us to better thoughts,to admonish us, in a voice more eloquent even than his own, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.' short space, while I do justice to myself, "Bear with me, I entreat you, for a very in speaking of the eminent person to whom I have here alluded. I have been accused, in a late number of the Edinburgh Re view, of treating him with scurrility;' a charge, which, without stooping to confute it, I fling back on the head of my accuser. Had I ever addressed to Mr Canning any language, which a public man, on a pub. lic question, would have a right to comused towards him the smallest portion of plain of hearing,-much more, had I ever that coarse and unmanly ribaldry, which this very Review, as often as it suited its factious purposes, delighted to heap upon him, I should now feel, what it would perhaps be well for my accuser, if he himself were capable of feeling. As it is, no consideration, not even the call of selfdefence, shall prevail with me to violate the Sanctuary of the Tomb, or to recur to any parts of Mr Canning's character or conduct, but those on which I can offer an honest, however humble, tribute of respect all the best and noblest endowments of his to his memory. His genius, his eloquence, highly-gifted mind, devoted by him to the service of his country, during the long period of her greatest danger-he himself ever foremost, in office and out of office, in vindicating the righteousness of her cause, in cheering and sustaining the spirit of her gallant people, and elevating them to the level of the mighty exigence, on which their own freedom and the libermeanwhile, our Constitution at home from ties of the world depended;-protecting, the wild projects of reckless innovation,—— shaming and silencing, by his unequalled wit, those who were inaccessible to the rea after on your hands and sees er es ut he of that distinguished indivina" shipwreck of a good cons Dr Milner has, of course, attempts Dr Phillpotts righly observes, that ich has nothing to do with the change" which the Jesuite Intered, sect business) as on the whole they bght fit, and in particular, 66 that Claes I. gave his consent to the bill rauding Bishops from sitting in Fatament, in order, as it appear the treaty of Uxbridge, W a ground for evacuatting the dig tion of a lawful math, to a shaughin the muller, hot in the elukutustanáka. Milner's argument, theralists, when. But hear the tw Xche ad, ere be the vith can y of rgu ified er to ter to the estion vas it, tances, romote lave no s; and ent cone before y indicais on the lics) was season, by which prolikely to be at language Mr O’Conur friend the etter to Baron ›, in more full inciple which "Was the French Revolution," says Dr Milner," expected in those days? In one word, is it from the side of Popery, or from the opposite quarter of Jacobinism, that the Established Church is most in danger at the present day? If this question be answered in the manner in which it must be answered, then I apprehend the very obligation of maintaining this Church to the utmost of the Sovereign's power re-` quires a different line of conduct and pofitics from that which was pursued at his Majesty's accession to the Crown." that are under him to stand to its defence. If these should be either such fools, or rogues, or cowards, as to neglect their duty, and counsel him to yield to the requisition, while he has the means to resist it; he will not hesitate to send them about their business, and take some honest soundhearted fellows in their places." "It is possible," says Dr Phillpotts, that this may be so; and we only ask that Dr Milner and others will allow his Majesty to decide for himself, and according to his own conscience, what is the line of conduct, which the obligation of his oath, being equally valid as at the first, does now require. But Dr Milner under took, and his argument required him, to shew, when an oath, originally valid, becomes invalid;-and he ends with admitting of the oath in question, that it is as valid as ever!" "Suppose you had thought proper to exact an oath from your head steward, the purport of which was, that he would watch over and preserve every part of your property to the utmost of his power; and that some time afterwards, in your absence, a lawless mob, or a crew of pirates, had made a certain requisition of corn or cattle at his hands, to be complied with, under the threat of burning down your house, and despoiling your whole property, would you hold him bound by the letter of his oath, in such new and unforeseen circumstances? Would you not expect from his sense and integrity, that he should rather attend to, and be guided by, the spirit of it ? potts, "Most reasonable men," says Dr Phill. "would expect a person to be bound by the spirit of his oath, rather than by the letter, under all circumstances. In the supposed case, the steward must certainly comply with the requisition. But in the case which is really in question, matters, happily, have not yet gone so far. True, there is a lawless mob,' a' crew of pirates,' who tell us very plainly what they wish, and hope to do. But they have not yet got the means of doing it; and our steward has sense enough to see, and honesty enough to feel, that he is bound by his oath, not only not to supply the pirates with ships, and the mob with arms, but to take care to barricade our storehouse, and require all But Dr Milner goes on to shew, as he thinks, that the King's Coronation Oath need give very little trouble to anybody-for that a valid promissory oath may be evacuated by the abrogation of it by those who have proper authority, for this purpose, over the parties, or over the subject matter of the Parliament, as having competent the Oath. He is pleased to consider authority both over the Oath itself, and over the subject matter of it, the Church of England, to enable it to abrogate the Oath. That such an authority exists in Parliament, quoth he, in both those particulars, it would be treason to deny. "Then I am guilty of this treason," says Dr Phillpotts, " for I scruple not to deny both.” "By Parliament, I suppose, Dr Milner means the King in Farliament; for without the King, the Parliament has no authority, rather it has no existence what ever. But taking it as the King in Parliament, I venture to affirm, that his Majesty has no more right (his Majesty himself has nobly proclaimed the same truth) to abrogate the obligation of the Oath he has taken, than the meanest of his subjects has to absolve himself from the Oath of Allegiance. "The reason, which Dr Milner gives for his position, is the following:- The present Coronation Oath owes its authority and its very existence to Parliament.' The same,' he adds, must be said of the Church itself, in whose favour this Oath was devised;'-A sneer too contemptible to merit refutation, or any further notice." 6 We wish that we could follow our author in his exposure of the weakness of Mr Charles Butler's "Letter on the Coronation;" but our limitsalready transgressed-forbid—and we must bring our article to a close with weightier matter. The meaning of the Coronation Oath celebrated letter to Sir Hercules Langwas brought into discussion in Burke's rishe in 1792. He entered into an argument to prove that there was nothing in the Oath which forbade his Majesty to assent to any bill conferring on the Roman Catholics of Ireland the particular indulgences they then |