be
capable of reigning in England, and that, if the Sovereign should marry
a Papist, the subject should be absolved from allegiance. Burnet boasts
that this part of the Bill of Rights was his work. He had little reason
to boast: for a more wretched specimen of legislative workmanship will
not easily be found. In the first place, no test is prescribed. Whether
the consort of a Sovereign has taken the oath of supremacy, has signed
the declaration against transubstantiation, has communicated according
to the ritual of the Church of England, are very simple issues of
fact. But whether the consort of a Sovereign is or is not a Papist is
a question about which people may argue for ever. What is a Papist?
The word is not a word of definite signification either in law or in
theology. It is merely a popular nickname, and means very different
things in different mouths. Is every person a Papist who is willing to
concede to the Bishop of Rome a primacy among Christian prelates? If so,
James the First, Charles the First, Laud, Heylyn, were Papists, [522] Or
is the appellation to be confined to persons who hold the ultramontane
doctrines touching the authority of the Holy See? If so, neither Bossuet
nor Pascal was a Papist.

What again is the legal effect of the words which absolve the subject
from his allegiance? Is it meant that a person arraigned for high
treason may tender evidence to prove that the Sovereign has married
a Papist? Would Whistlewood, for example, have been entitled to an
acquittal, if he could have proved that King George the Fourth had
married Mrs. Fitzherbert, and that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Papist? It
is not easy to believe that any tribunal would have gone into such a
question. Yet to what purpose is it to enact that, in a certain case,
the subject shall be absolved from his allegiance, if the tribunal
before which he is tried for a violation of his allegiance is not to go
into the question whether that case has arisen?

The question of the dispensing power was treated in a very different
manner, was fully considered, and was finally settled in the only way in
which it could be settled. The Declaration of Right had gone no further
than to pronounce that the dispensing power, as of late exercised, was
illegal. That a certain dispensing power belonged to the Crown was a
proposition sanctioned by authorities and precedents of which even Whig
lawyers could not speak without respect; but as to the precise extent