the present occasion, serve the purposes of a faction at court; but history furnished them with examples of the purposes to which faction might convert such precedents. She who was the object of court favour to day might be sacrificed as its victim to-morrow; and it should be recollected, that her majesty was once the object of the favour and respect of those by a great portion of whom she was now most vehemently opposed.

He had viewed this question generally; he had looked at it as a question of law as a question of the discretion which might be vested in a government; and in every view which he took of it, he was convinced, that its sauction, on the present occasion, would be unjust and unconstitutional. He was equally indisposed to regard the popular favour, or the caprice of a court; the favour of the latter was as precarious as the arbitrio popularis auræ, described by the poet as belonging to the people. If discretion, unlimited and unrestrained, were to be admitted in deciding the rights of individuals, there could be no calculation of the consequences there could be no security against injustice, nor any protection against the most frightful misgovernment. If they degraded a Queen without law, or contrary to the statutes that secured her rights and privileges, there was no reason why they might not apply the same arbitrary principle to the degradation of a king. In reason and good sense, the same rule might be applied to both. He said again, that the proceeding of the privy council, in striking her majesty's name out of the Liturgy, and thus punishing her without trial, and degrading her against law, fixed his mind in a firm determination to oppose all the measures which should be built upon this act of injustice, or emanate from so impure a source. The subsequent proceedings confirmed him in this resolution; and the trial, if trial it might be called, before judical accusers and senatorial judges, but increased his feeling of aversion to the whole conduct of her enemies. The whole course of proceeding was illegal and unjust. On a proper occasion, he would prove, that the Milan commission, was illegal-that the mode in which the evidence was collected, was illegal-that the conduct of the privy council could only be compared to that of the star chamber-and that, as the trial began in rottenness and injustice, so the end had been highly oppressive and VOL. IV.

revolting. Entertaining this opinion, he was bound to oppose the conduct of ministers, and to denounce to the House the proceedings of the noble lord. His vote, thank God, was his own-bis sentiments were his own-and he would neither disguise their nature or withhold their expression [Loud cheering.] Long before the trial commenced-long before the threatening offer at St. Omer, he began to feel, that ministers were misconducting themselves towards her majesty; and, feeling so, he would have despised himself if he had concealed his feelings. The result could not but be anticipated. Those subsequent acts could not but be objectionable which were founded at first in gross illegality and monstrous injustice. Without any cause publicly assigned → without any trial-without any authority but the discretion of ministers-her majesty had been dethroned and insulted before foreign nations, and cashiered in the face of the country. Nay, more :"she was told, that she could not set her foot in the country of which she was Queen, without exposing herself to a still more dreadful fate. The threatening letter of the ministers, handed to her at St. Omer, contained at once an infamous bribe and a bill of impeachment, to induce her to stay away, and to deter her from demanding her rights. The principle of action disclosed in this conduct was fit for the reign of terror; it was becoming the most oppressive power in the most troubled times; it was worthy of a Pagan state; it had no parallel in Christian history. [Loud cheers.] By an illegal proceeding-by an act of caprice-the ministers of the Crown dethroned and cashiered the Queen, and then held out to her a threat of more dreadful punishment, if she ventured to visit the country in which she held so high a rank, or dared to claim the privileges to which she was entitled. In their threatening letter they, in effect, told her- We have dethroned you already, we have degraded you in the face of Europe; but if you venture to set your foot. upon British ground, we shall still farther degrade and punish you."

When he saw proceedings thus commenced in rottenness and injustice, marked at every stage by new acts of cruelty and oppression, his mind was made up, and he was determined to take his stand against them. If the bill of Pains and Penalties, of which he was supposed to know nothing to which he could scarcely allude, as

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ported the power of the Crown. His hon. and learned friend, and the noble lord who brought the measure before the House, had relied upon some clause which made it legal to alter the names of royal persons in the Liturgy. In the acts of Uniformity, which passed in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth, there was no such clause, and yet alterations were made. But then it was said, it was the change of the names of the royal family, and not the queen. He found in those changes the names of a king and queen, as well as the names of persons related to the royal family. Some names had been inserted, and others taken away. What passed in the reign of George 3rd? Did not his late majesty take out the duke of Cumberland's name from the Liturgy? His hon. and learned friend however, said, that if they left out the name of the Queen they might leave out the name of the king. His hon. and learned friend need not be under any alarm on that account, because the king himself only had the power of altering the names. It there fore was not to be supposed, that the king would leave his own name out. Taking the argument of his hon. and learned friend to be correct, and that the king and council had not the power to leave out names in the Liturgy, he might ask him, how he accounted for the alteration in the form of prayer which had so often taken place? Were not those alterations made on account of his late Majesty's illness, and upon the delivery of the Queen? If he had no power to make alterations in the form of the Liturgy, how came those things to be done, and to be considered legal? The learned doctor concluded, by begging the pardon of the House for having trespassed on its attention. He had promised, at the outset, not to detain them long, and he had endeavoured to express what had occurred to him in as short a compass as possible.

Mr. Martin, of Galway, begged leave, in the first instance to address himself to the consistency of the House, and to remind them of what occurred late in the last session. He appealed to the recollection of every gentleman, whether the question of the Liturgy was not repeatedly under consideration; and whether it was not, for the last time in that session, discussed in conjunction with a motion for an address to her majesty. The legal right of the Queen to be named in the Liturgy, was then hardly lisped by those

tongues which now vociferate with such emphasis, that right which it seemed they had then abandoned. In proof of an almost unanimous opinion on that subject (said Mr. Martin), we voted an address to her majesty, calling by implication on her majesty to acquiesce in the step taken by the king in council; and by which step, her majesty's name was not, on the death of the late king, ordered for insertion in the Liturgy; and praying her majesty to be assured, that by such conduct she would be exalted in our opinion. I do not affect to refute the eloquent expressions used by the member for Bramber in that address. I state the import only. To this address, unfortunately, after ineffectual negotiation, the Queen was recommended by some very mischievous counsellors to express a firm but respectful dissent. Thus stands the fact. It is very clear then, that in June last, we thought it not right to call on the king to retrace his steps, or to retract his opinion; and in accordance with this our opinion we voted the address. Let me ask, is it because the Queen was then influenced by counsellors alike the betrayers of her majesty and the people -is it for this reason, that we are to compliment her who rejected our interposition, at the expence of the administration who assented to the proposal of a gentleman generally opposed to the noble lord and his colleagues?-Mr. M. said, that when he heard that address read, he hardly expected, that without some modification, his majesty's ministers would have assented to it. That they did so, is to their immortal honour. It was on their parts a peace-offering; and is it a just return for such conduct to come to the resolution proposed by the noble lord. Some there be, who may think, almost in the words of the resolution, that her majesty's exclusion from the Liturgy, was not called for at the time by any strong state necessity. Notwithstanding this, Mr. M. asserted, that even those who are of that opinion, might vote for the adjournment, which was the previous question; and for this reason, that by so doing, they in no way give up their private opinion, though they decline to come to a solemn vote directly expressive of that opinion, inasmuch as such vote would, in substance, convey a recorded censure which is in the contemplation of but very few. Gentlemen opposite to me, say, insert the name of her majesty in the collects and Iitur

learned member for Oxford assumed, if he had not misunderstood it, that the right of the Queen to be prayed for was immutable, a right annexed to her station as Queen Consort. The immutable right the hon. and learned gentleman had grounded, at first, upon the words of the act of parliament; that ground however, had quickly been shifted, and the hon. gentleman said, "if that," meaning the act of parliament," does not give it, usage and prescription does." [Cries of "No, no."] He was in the judgment of the House whether those words had not fallen from his hon. and learned friend. Why, indeed, should the hon. and learned gentleman have mentioned usage, if he had not intended to rely upon it? But, both upon the act of parliament and upon the usage, the hon. and learned member should be met. First, he would contend, that the Act of Uniformity gave to the sovereign no star chamber jurisdiction, as it had been called; it did not even give any new right or privilege; all it contained was, a proviso securing those rights which were already from the time of Henry 8th, in existence. The hon. and learned member for Oxford had said, that the act of Charles 2nd, made the form of prayer annexed to it, part of the act itself. Granted. It was then insisted, that that act gave power only to alter and to change; giving no power to add or to omit. Now, it was only necessary to refer to that very form of prayer to find a blank, which, unless by the power of adding and omitting, could never be supplied. Instances upon instances, however, might be cited, in which, between the passing of the acts of Uniformity and the present day, omissions had taken place. The hon. member for Westminster had told the House, that from the year 1546 to the present period, there was no instance in which a queen consort had been omitted in the prayers of the church. It would be seen by the prayer-book used in the time of Philip and Mary, that a queen, not a queen consort but a queen regnant, had been in that situation; for during that reign the king was prayed for, and the queen though queen regnant was not. [Hear, hear, from the Opposition benches, and cries of " queen consort."] Queen consort did the honourable member say? That was the case of a queen regnant; and that queen was not prayed for. The book was to be found in the British Museum; and the form stood “pro rege, et princi

pibus suis." The hon. and learned member for Oxford had ascribed to the Act of Uniformity, that immutable right of the queen to be prayed for, which no king, it was insisted, had power to take away. He (the Attorney General) wished to see the enactment; he desired to have the clause laid before him, under which the immutable right was to be claimed. So far from the course having been uniform from the Reformation downwards, there had been repeated instances of deviation. In the reign of George 2nd, the name of Frederick, prince of Wales had been struck out of the form of prayer. In the commencement of the late reign, the same measure had been adopted with respect to the duke of Cumberland. The words of the act were certainly "to alter and change." The framers of that act had not probably the copia verborum of the hon. and learned member for Oxford, and did not think it necessary to employ variety of words where the meaning might be expressed by one; but the advisers of George 3rd, at the period alluded to, men upon whom the hon. and learned member, notwithstanding his aversion to antiradical and to monarchical administrations, would scarcely pass hasty censure, those advisers had recommended to the king, to strike the duke's name out of the Liturgy, he (the duke) being still in existence.

He would now come to that instance which he took to be an instance of the highest value, and which had been described to the House as an instance of no value at all-the measures pursued towards the queen of George 1st. Did the hon. and learned member really mean to contend, that the divorce mentioned by Coxe was a divorce actually annulling the marriage between the parties? Why, the very same page which spoke of the divorce, stated, that the queen was gazetted as duchess of Zell, and as duchess dowager of Hanover. It was said, that the second marriage, the marriage with the duchess of Kendal, was a good and valid marriage. Why then, was it not set up as a legal marriage? [Hear, from Mr. Wetherell.] He thanked the hon. and learned member for his cheers; he was no more disturbed by them than that hon. member had been by the cheers addressed to himself. The hon. and learned member said, that by the divorce of the queen, the second, the left-hand marriage, became valid. What historian had ventured so to treat it? But, to the more immediate question. If the