I conclude, therefore, that his Highness having admitted nothing in these oaths or articles, either to the prejudice of the true, or the equalizing or authorizing of the other, religion, but contained himself wholly within the limits of penal statutes and connivances, wherein the state hath ever challenged and usurped a directing power, &c.
Three points seem wanting to render the Lord Keeper's argument air-tight; —
- the proof that a king of England even then had a right to dispense, not with the execution in individual cases of the laws, but with the laws themselves in omne futurum; that is, to repeal laws by his own act;
- the proof that such a tooth-and-talon drawing of the laws did not endanger the equalizing and final mastery of the unlawful religion;
- the utter want of all reciprocity on the part of the Spanish monarch.
In short, it is pardonable in Hacket, but would be contemptible in any other person, not to see this advice of the Lord Keeper's as a black blotch in his character, both as a Protestant Bishop and as a councillor of state in a free and Protestant country.
Ib.
s. 152.
Yet opinions were so various, that some spread it for a fame, that, &c.
Was it not required of — at all events usual for — all present at a Council to subscribe their names to the act of the majority? There is a modern case in point, I think, that of Sir Arthur Wellesley's signature to the Convention of Cintra.
Ib.
s. 164.