we had hitherto called policy and benevolence. Religious liberty
has never made such a stride as under the reign of his present
Majesty; nor is there any instance in the annals of our history,
where so many infamous and damnable laws have been repealed as those
against the Catholics which have been put an end to by him; and
then, at the close of this useful policy, his advisers discover that
the very measures of concession and indulgence, or (to use my own
language) the measures of justice, which he has been pursuing
through the whole of his reign, are contrary to the oath he takes at
its commencement! That oath binds his Majesty not to consent to any
measure contrary to the interest of the Established Church; but who
is to judge of the tendency of each particular measure? Not the
King alone: it can never be the intention of this law that the
King, who listens to the advice of his Parliament upon a read bill,
should reject it upon the most important of all measures. Whatever
be his own private judgment of the tendency of any ecclesiastical
bill, he complies most strictly with his oath, if he is guided in
that particular point by the advice of his Parliament, who may be
presumed to understand its tendency better than the King, or any
other individual. You say, if Parliament had been unanimous in
their opinion of the absolute necessity for Lord Howick's bill, and
the King had thought it pernicious, he would have been perjured if
he had not rejected it. I say, on the contrary, his Majesty would
have acted in the most conscientious manner, and have complied most
scrupulously with his oath, if he had sacrificed his own opinion to
the opinion of the great council of the nation; because the
probability was that such opinion was better than his own; and upon
the same principle, in common life, you give up your opinion to your
physician, your lawyer, and your builder.