Hence the real cause of the objection which has been entertained by millions of persons in the Empire to the suggested alteration of the King’s Coronation oath. The British King is a Constitutional monarch,--and the words “Defender of the Faith” imply that he is equally Defender of the Constitution. He agrees, when he is crowned King of England, to uphold that Constitution,--he therefore tacitly rejects all that might tend to undermine it,--all secret methods of tampering with political, governmental or financial matters relating to the State. The wording of the Coronation Oath is, and must be distinctly offensive to thousands of excellent persons who are Roman Catholics,--nevertheless, in the times when it was so worded, the offending terms were made necessary by the conduct of the Roman Catholics themselves. Those times, we are assured, are past. We have made progress in education,--we are now broad-minded enough to be fair to foes, as well as to friends. We should, therefore, in common courtesy to a rival Church, consent to have this irritating formula altered. Perhaps we should,--but is it too much to ask our Roman Catholic brethren that they also should, if they wish for tolerance, exhibit it on their own side? When Queen Victoria died, was it not quite as offensive on the part of Pope Leo to publicly state that he “could not be represented at the funeral of a Protestant Queen”--as it may be for our King to publicly repudiate the service of the Mass? Nothing could have been more calculated to gratuitously wound the feelings of a great People than that most unnecessary announcement made from an historical religious centre like the Vatican, at a time of universal grief for the death of a good Monarch. If the Pope’s act was according to the rule of his Church, the King’s oath is according to the rule of the British Constitution. No one could accuse the Pope of any particularly “Christian” feeling in declining to be represented at the last obsequies of the best Queen that ever reigned--no one can or would ever conscientiously accuse an English King of “religious intolerance” when he takes the oath as it is set down for him. Both acts are matters of policy. We have seen the foremost peer of England, the Duke of Norfolk, forgetting himself so far on one occasion as to drag his religious creed into the political arena, and publicly expressing the hope on behalf of all English Catholics that the Pope may soon regain temporal power (which means, to put it quite plainly, that the British Constitution should be disintegrated and laid under subjection to Rome): the natural consequence of such conduct is that an enormous majority of perfectly sensible broad-minded people doubt whether it is wise to leave an entirely loose rein on the neck of the papal Pegasus. Tolerance and equity on the one side must be met by tolerance and equity on the other, if a fair understanding is to be arrived at. And when the professors of any religious Creed still