THE CORONATION OATH, CONSIDERED, WITH REFERENCE TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. BY CHARLES THOMAS LANE, Esq. "This Coronation Oath is the very touchstone and symbol of your government!" LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. HATCHARD AND SON, M.DCCC.XXVI. 2 THE CORONATION OATH, &c. AMONG the many important considerations involved in that momentous problem, the Catholic Question, the nature and extent of the obligation imposed upon the Sovereign by the Coronation Oath, has been the subject of deep and interesting discussion. Apart from the intrinsic importance which must attach itself to this Oath, in the mind of every sincere friend to the institutions which it binds the Sovereign to support, the question whether it should operate as a bar to the admission of Roman Catholics to political power, has given rise to circumstances investing it with additional and extraordinary interest. At no period, probably, since those memorable events from which this Oath took its present form, has the attention of the public been so strongly B drawn to the subject. While, from that high quarter, where it must necessarily be a matter of the nearest and deepest interest, the Oath has been deliberately pronounced to be an insuperable obstacle to the concession of the demands of the Roman Catholics; it has, on the other hand, been assailed in every mode by which its operation might be narrowed, its effect weakened, and a way paved for its total abrogation. The difficulty attending the interpretation of a rule of action, which is, from the nature of the subject, general in its terms, has, in the present case, been in no small degree enhanced by the introduction into the discussion, of irrelevant matter, and of modes of interpretation inapplicable to the subject, and by appeals to the passions, when the dispassionate exercise of the judgment alone could tend to the eludication of the truth. When a rule of action has once been prescribed by a competent authority, and the agent, whose conduct is the subject of the rule, has bound himself by the most solemn obligation, to a strict observance of it, it is futile to discuss the propriety of originally imposing it. Whatever objections may present themselves to the expediency of the measure, or however strong may be the grounds upon which those objections may be refuted, the only useful or rational subject of inquiry is, the nature and extent of the existing obligation. If it appear from that in |