derived its origin; and they are thus transmitted from the supreme head to all bodies corporate and bodies politic in the State. Every part of this imposing service has an express meaning connected with its insignia, regalia, symbols, and legal forms, establishing the connexion of the Christian faith, which alone gives the legal power. Blackstone, in his Commentaries, sufficiently defines the relative situation of the three great estates of the realm, as being present in the person of the King, the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal,—and the Commons, in latter ages representing the entire body of the people, under the Writ of Summons. The records of Parliament for twelve hundred years fully establish that the Constitution has arisen from this admission of privileged orders, and, that it is not the entire or undivided mass of the people which recognised these rights.

These views of religion, connected with civil government, are unexceptionable with all those who have at heart the real welfare of the State, and the general good of mankind; for true Christianity has nothing of tyranny in its composition, and wherever it has been fully established, Liberty has succeeded the reign of Despotism. In the words of an elegant author," they are founded on the mutual engagement, contracted in the sight of God, by the king, the priesthood, and the people, together with the powers given and received by all the assenting parties exhibiting in reality an instance of a religious and political compact, which modern writers have thought necessary to constitute a legal and perfect government. In this contract Religion points out both the rights and duties of the several contracting parties, and fills up a vast and dangerous chasm in politics, which all the intelligence of those who have founded rising kingdoms has never yet supplied without it." These are sentiments which redound to the honour of Christianity, and they show the value of sound philosophic reasoning, aided

by pious feeling and historical research, when compared with that crabbed and intractable sophistry, which aims at the perversion of all reason and all truth, even the blinding of our understanding, in matters of plain sense, to favour the speculative follies of the day. "Ciencia es locura si buen senso nola

cura," says the Spanish moralist!

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHRISTIAN COVENANT, THE BASIS OF THE SETTLED CONSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN, AS CONFIRMED BY THE NORMAN CONQUEST, UNDER ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY.

THE

"It is the ornament, and as if the soul of history, that the relation of events is illustrated by an exposition of the causes which produced them."-BACON.

THE various authors and ancient data, which have already been cited, sufficiently establish, that the government of England from the earliest period of its political history, has been a Christian monarchy; but that does not convey by implication, much less in words, the impression of an absolute sovereignty, existing by pure prescription in the crown, although it partakes of the prescriptive forms and prerogatives', necessary for the exercise of kingly rule, because, even under

In the exercise of constitutional law, the king is absolute, because he is the trustee of that law, and has to fulfil its executive duties and powers. Junius, the liberal writer, says,-" In the execution of those prerogatives which the law has given him, the king is irresistible and absolute, according to the forms of the constitution."-So again Lord Coke, "The highest prerogative of the crown is the right vested in the chief magistrate, for the choice of his responsible ministers."-See also Blackstone on the prerogatives of the crown.

the Norman feudal system, there existed a right of representation in the Barons, as there had previously done with the Saxons, in the senatores natu majores, or the eldest born inheritors of real estate; and the ancient consecration service fully bound the king to the maintenance of the privileged classes in the state, as it does at present; and gave them the needful security for their religion, laws, and independence: still, as the constitution had not yet fully expanded itself, and as the great body of the people were poor and uncultivated, some of the sovereigns of those times exercised an assumption of authority, which, in succeeding ages, became progressively more and more limited; yet, at the very height of the feudal system, they were amenable to the privileged orders, whenever those bodies thought fit to act in defence of the liberties of the people, and to perform their duty to the state independently; neither could the king legally perform any public act, without previous deliberation in council with his barons, whose voices, in majority, were needful for its confirmation, as was exemplified by the solemn proceedings of the baronial parliament, held at Lincoln, A.D. 1301, on the occasion of Edward the First claiming the crown of Scotland.

That ancient law authority, Fortesque, also fully settled this question, by telling the young prince, who had in design. the assumption of an absolute or arbitrary rule, that" by the law and the constitution of England, such an act would place the tenure of his crown in jeopardy,"—this soon brought the youthful sovereign to his senses, and gave a splendid specimen of the value, as well as the early importance of the privileged orders, at a period when the commons had attained to no authority in the state, and were not even acknowledged as an estate of parliament! Having commenced with the period of the Conqueror, it is not a matter of difficulty to

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show, that the monarchy of England became established by right of conquest, and the consequent usages of baronial law; and that the whole of our representative system emerged therefrom, all corporate rights and franchises proceeding from the first charter granted by William of Normandy to the citizens of London, and that they centered in the crown, i.e. the monarchy by prescriptive usage, to the time of King John; and from his act emanated the consolidated representative monarchy we at present possess, William the Third having restored all the ancient charters and borough privileges. The existence of the constitution is dependent, with its three estates, on this principle of monarchy, which Sir Dudley Digges, in the House of Commons, two centuries back, declared "had, by its antiquity, de jure, and by the exercise of kingly prerogative and authority, commensurate with antiquity, ever been sustained de facto." It is also on this principle, that the peers of parliament have, in latter times, stedfastly defended the kingly prerogative, and supported its free exercise, as that of the combined powers of the constitution, vested in the crown. The majority of the lords, by such proceeding, have shown a correct sense of honour, station, and duty-under their oaths, they stand pledged to defend the integrity of that monarchy, which is the result of a Christian compact, inseparable from the stability of the throne itself, as it is needful for the preservation of their own hereditary estate, and the just rights and liberties of all classes of the English people, conceded to them by Magna Carta!

More than forty years ago, were these views manfully sustained by Edmund Burke, the "ancient Whig," and, in the denouncing words of the French Convention, "the Orestes of the British Parliament," in his opposition to Charles James Fox and Mr. now Lord Grey, in his place in