by the Book being "annexed" to
the statute? Physically, it was attached by strings
to the parchment on which the Act was engrossed.
Was it legally a part of the statute? Was it a
schedule? The procedure in Parliament, I submit,
makes against this opinion. Can the schedule of a
Bill in Parliament be amended otherwise than by the
vote of the two Houses? But when a mistake was
found in the Book annexed, it was corrected, as we
have seen, not by the clerk under authority of Parliament,
but by three bishops under authority of Convocation.
Could any part of a Bill in Parliament
have been so amended? The matter was trivial;
there was the less reason for abnormal measures;
and Parliament has always been jealous about small
matters of procedure, and never more so than at that
period. I submit that the Book annexed cannot be
regarded as an integral part of the statute.

But if the Prayer-book is thus external to the
statutes which require its use, can its meaning be
affected by any of the provisions of those statutes?
If the wisdom of Parliament had enacted on some
occasion that Aldrich's Logic and the Elements of
Euclid should be read in the Universities, would it
follow that the rules of the syllogism and the axioms
of geometry are to be interpreted by "the principles
of construction which apply to statutes"? Or since
geography is by statutory authority taught in our
elementary schools, are we to infer that the world
revolves on its axis subject to the British Constitution?

The Prayer-book is a liturgical document, and surely
it should be interpreted by the principles which apply
not to statutes, but to liturgies in general.

If the Acts of Uniformity are not laws for regulating
divine worship, what are they? I should call
them, briefly, laws of persecution. They were intended
to enforce on all men by criminal process the
observance of the Church's forms. That is persecution,
I suppose, if anything can be so called. I shall
not indulge in any moral reflexions on persecution.
They may be taken for granted. I shall only note
the dry fact that within thirty years of the last enactment
the whole purpose of the statutes was destroyed
by the Act of Toleration. A good part of them has
been formally repealed, as may be seen by a glance
at their text as printed in the Revised Statutes.
What remains? A singular ruin. The effect of the
law has been turned upside down. It was intended
only to restrain dissenters; dissenters