"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain 1 2 3 the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, 4 and the Protestant Reformed Religion _established by_ 5 _law_? And will you preserve unto the _bishops_ and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to _their_ charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of them?--All this I promise to do." Here are the coronation engagements of the king. In them I do not find one word to preclude his Majesty from consenting to any arrangement which Parliament may make with regard to the civil privileges of any part of his subjects. It may not be amiss, on account of the light which it will throw on this discussion, to look a little more narrowly into the matter of that oath,--in order to discover how far it has hitherto operated, or how far in future it ought to operate, as a bar to any proceedings of the crown and Parliament in favor of those against whom it may be supposed that the king has engaged to support the Protestant Church of England in the two kingdoms in which it is established by law. First, the king swears he will maintain to the utmost of his power "the laws of God." I suppose it means the natural moral laws.--Secondly, he swears to maintain "the true profession of the Gospel." By which I suppose is understood _affirmatively_ the Christian religion.--Thirdly, that he will maintain "the Protestant reformed religion." This leaves me no power of supposition or conjecture; for that Protestant reformed religion is defined and described by the subsequent words, "established by law"; and in this instance, to define it beyond all possibility of doubt, he swears to maintain the "bishops and clergy, and the churches committed to their charge," in their rights present and future. The oath as effectually prevents the king from doing anything to the prejudice of the Church, in favor of sectaries, Jews, Mahometans, or plain avowed infidels, as if he should do the same thing in favor of the Catholics. You will see that it is the same Protestant Church, so described, that the king is to maintain and communicate with, according to the Act of Settlement of the 12th and 13th of William the Third. The act of the 5th of Anne, made in prospect of the Union, is entitled, "An act for securing the Church of England as by law established." It meant to guard the Church implicitly against any other mode of Protestant religion which might creep in by means of the Union. It proves beyond all doubt, that the legislature did not mean to guard the Church on one part only, and to leave it defenceless and exposed upon every other. This church, in that act, is declared to be "fundamental and essential" forever, in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, so far as England is concerned; and I suppose, as the law stands, even since the independence, it is so in Ireland.