th us) administrator to a great
part of the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown.

Now let us deal a little fairly. We must admit that Protestant Dissent
was one of the quarters from which danger was apprehended at the
Revolution, and against which a part of the coronation oath was
peculiarly directed. By this unqualified repeal you certainly did not
mean to deny that it was the duty of the crown to preserve the Church
against Protestant Dissenters; or taking this to be the true sense of
the two Revolution acts of King William, and of the previous and
subsequent Union acts of Queen Anne, you did not declare by this most
unqualified repeal, by which you broke down all the barriers, not
invented, indeed, but carefully preserved, at the Revolution,--you did
not then and by that proceeding declare that you had advised the king to
perjury towards God and perfidy towards the Church. No! far, very far
from it! You never would have done it, if you did not think it could be
done with perfect repose to the royal conscience, and perfect safety to
the national established religion. You did this upon a full
consideration of the circumstances of your country. Now, if
circumstances required it, why should it be contrary to the king's oath,
his Parliament judging on those circumstances, to restore to his
Catholic people, in such measure and with such modifications as the
public wisdom shall think proper to add, _some part_ in these franchises
which they formerly had held without any limitation at all, and which,
upon no sort of urgent reason at the time, they were deprived of? If
such means can with any probability be shown, from circumstances, rather
to add strength to our mixed ecclesiastical and secular Constitution
than to weaken it, surely they are means infinitely to be preferred to
penalties, incapacities, and proscriptions, continued from generation to
generation. They are perfectly consistent with the other parts of the
coronation oath, in which the king swears to maintain "the laws of God
and the true profession of the Gospel, and to govern the people
according to the statutes in Parliament agreed upon, and the laws and
customs of the realm." In consenting to such a statute, the crown would
act at least as agreeable to the laws of God, and to the true profession
of the Gospel, and to the laws and customs of the kingdom, as George the
First did, when he passed the statute which took from the body of the
people everything whic