V. An Englishman's Second Protest

AN ENGLISHMAN'S PKOTEST. (Nineteenth Century, August 1888.)

VOL. in.

AN ENGLISHMAN'S PKOTEST.

Three months ago it was possible to write the following words: " The best example of a commonwealth which has lost its Catholic perfection without losing its traditional but imperfect Christianity, and has at the same time returned in great part to the natural order — that is, to the truths of natural religion and to the four cardinal virtues — may be said to be the British Empire."

But this British Empire was not the primitive Catholic monarchy of Alfred, in which Church and State were inseparable, and councils and parliaments sat simultaneously.

It was not the English monarchy of Henry the Seventh, in which, at least in public law, the unity of our spiritual and civil life was as yet unbroken.

It was not the monarchy of Elizabeth, of which Hooker could still write in his pleasant dream, that Church and State were coincident, and every member of the one was a member of the other.

It was not the monarchy of the Stuarts, or of William the Third, in which whole classes of men were excluded from civil rights and from legislative powers because of nonconformity with the legalised form of Christianity.

Neither was it the British Empire of George the Fourth, when civil rights and legislative powers were thrown open to Catholics and to Protestants, who for three centuries had endured proscription and persecution, to fine, imprisonment, and death, for their Christian conscience.

Nor, lastly, was it the monarchy and Empire of Victoria, when civil rights and legislative powers were extended in full to all who, believing in the divine and imperishable Theism of the Hebrew Commonwealth, gave their allegiance under the same Divine sanctions to the Christian Empire of Great Britain.

Hitherto the British Empire has rested upon a twofold Divine base, both natural and supernatural. It was built up by our Saxon, Norman, and English forefathers, first upon the unity of Christendom; and next, even they who saw this unity wrecked, or had a hand in wrecking it, preserved of the Law Christian all that it was still possible to save. Our old jurists used to say that " Christianity was part and parcel of the law of England;" and our feather-headed political doctors ridiculed as bigotry a dictum which has created Christendom. They no doubt had never studied the incorporation of the Christian into the Imperial law; and, to take one only instance, they were probably unconscious how the Christian law of marriage in its unity and indissolubility changed the face of the Roman world; and equally unconscious how to this dav the same Christian and Catholic law is the law of

England, notwithstanding the legal dissolutions of the Divorce Court.

But, lying deep below this Christian foundation of our Empire, there are the lights and the laws of the natural order: the truths known to man by the light of reason and by the instincts of humanity. The whole civil society of men in all its ages, apart from the commonwealth of Israel, the monarchies of Assyria and Persia, the liberties of Greek civilisation, the Imperial law and sway of old Rome, all alike rested upon the Theism of the natural order.

I may be asked: What is this Theism of the natural order? I answer: that God exists; that He is good, wise, just, and almighty; that He is our Law giver and our Judge; that His law, both eternal and positive, is the rule of our life; that we have reason by which to know it in its dictates of truth and of morals; that this law binds us in duties to Him, to ourselves, and to all men; that this law is the sanction of all personal, domestic, social, civil, and political life: in a word, without God there is no society of man, political, social, or domestic. Society springs from God, and lives by His pervading will. Deny the existence of God, and nine thousand affirmations are no more than nineteen or ninety thousand words. Without God there is no lawgiver above the human will, and therefore no law; for no will by human authority can bind another. All authority of parents, husbands, masters, rulers, is of God. This is not all. If there be no God, there is no eternal distinction of right and wrong; and if not, then no morals; therefore truth, purity, chastity, justice, temperance are names, conventions, and impostures.

There are two conditions possible to men and em pires. The one is the order of nature with its recognition of God, with its lights of reason and conscience, its laws and morality, its dictates of conscience and of duty, its oaths and sanctions of fidelity and truth. On this rested the great empires of the old world. It is the order of nature, but it is also Divine. There is another condition possible to individual men; and therefore, though hardly, to multitudes— that is, the state in which God and morality have passed out of the life and soul of man. This condition is not Divine; nor is it human, nor is it natural. I read its description in an inspired writer, and he says that such men are as the irrational creatures, the aXoya l who in the things they know naturally, in these they corrupt themselves. But this is not the order of nature as God made it. In creating man, He created human society from its first outlines of domestic life to its full imperial grandeur as the world has seen it in Rome, and we see it now in the Greater Britain. Where the lights and the laws of nature, and conscience, and morals are lost, men become herds or hordes, but are civilised men no longer.

Sir William Blackstone, after quoting Sir Edward Coke as saying, " The power and jurisdiction of Parliament is so transcendent and absolute that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds," goes on to say, " It can transcend the ordinary

1 II. 8. Peter ii. 12; S. Jndo 10.

course of laws; it can regulate the succession of the Crown; it can alter the established religion of the land; it can change and create afresh the Constitution of the kingdom." " So that it is a matter most essential to the liberties of this kingdom that such members be delegated to this important trust as are most eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their knowledge; for it was a known apophthegm of the great Lord Treasurer Burghley, that England could never be ruined but by a Parliament." Judge Blackstone further quoted the President Montesquieu, who foretold, that " as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the Constitution of England will in time lose its liberty and will perish: it will perish whenever the legislative power shall become more corrupt than the executive.":

The purity of Parliament depends, therefore, upon the eminent probity, fortitude, and knowledge of its members. And these qualities are tested, so far as is in man, by the oath or solemn declaration of allegiance by which every man intrusted with a share in the supreme power of legislation binds himself by a sanction higher than that of any mere human authority to be faithful to the commonwealth. The oath of the Catholic members of Ireland, and of the Christian members of England and Scotland, and the affirmation of the members of the Hebrew religion, and the affirmation of the members for Birmingham and for Manchester, all alike bind their conscience by the

1 Blackstone's Commentaries, by Robert Malcolm Kerr, vol. i. pp. 121, 129.

highest sanctions of the Divine law. So also, if there be any who, resting, as many in the last century did rest, on the Theism of the old world, and on the lights and laws of nature, affirm their probity and their allegiance under the sanctions which trained the prisca virtus of the Koman Commonwealth, of such men, under the obligations of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, enforced by the dictates of natural conscience and the eternal laws of morals, we feel sure. Their build and make is natural and human, in conformity with the common sense and patriotic traditions of the Christian civilisa tion of Europe, by which they were created and by which they are sustained, in a higher moral life than a defective belief can account for.

And such, three months ago, was the mixed foundation of the British Empire, a mingled system of gold and silver, brass and iron, and the good honest clay of the order of human nature as God made it, with its rights and laws, like our English mother earth, in which our secular oaks root deep and outlive genera tions and dynasties, but have not outlived the monarchy of England.

Thus far I have heard from my forefathers, and understood the English Constitution. It has a basis of two strata, both Divine: the one, the Law Christian; the other, the law of nature.

It knows nothing of a race of sophists who, profess ing to know nothing about God, and law, and right and wrong, and conscience, and judgment to come, are incapable of giving to Christian or to reasonable men the pledges which bind their moral nature with the obligations necessary for the command of fleets and armies, and legislatures and commonwealths. Men will not intrust to them the august and awful powers of Parliament described by Lord Coke. The dearest, and tenderest, and most vital interests of life, and home, and welfare, depend upon legislation. Ten thousand times rather would I vote for an upright member of the Hebrew race, whose commonwealth stands in history as the noblest and most human, as well as the most Divine, government of man, than for the young gentlemen who cannot make up their mind whether God exists or no, or whether in the body they adorn and pamper there be a soul which will have to answer for all they have culpably done, and all they have culpably failed to know.

When Parliament, to meet the scruples of those who so firmly believed in the Majesty of God, that they doubted the lawfulness of adjuring Him byway of oath, relieved them by accepting a declaration, it rested its.act on its profound belief of the reverence and fidelity of the Society of Friends to the Divine Lawgiver, Whom they feared to offend.

But let no man tell me that this respectful confidence is to be claimed by our Agnostics.

Much less by those, if such there be, who, sinking by the inevitable law of the human mind below the shallowness and timidity of Agnosticism, plunge into the great deep of human pride, where the light of reason goes out, and the outer darkness hides God, His perfections, and His laws.

No law of England has intrusted the powers of legislation to such men. Parliament has never yet weighed and voted the following resolution: " That the British Empire, having ceased to be Catholic, ceased to be Christian, and ceased even to be Theistic, has de scended below the level of the order of nature and the political civilisation of the cultured and imperial races of the pagan world." We Englishmen still believe that it rests upon a level which the old world in all its demoralisation never destroyed. The French pantomime of the last century voted out and voted in the " Supreme Being." Delicta majorum immeritus lues. The French people of to-day have no tradition and no basis. It was one of their own wisest sons who said, " SansDieu point de socicte." Where God and the unity of His Divine law cease to reign, there can be no common wealth.

But Parliament has never yet made such a law. There still stands on our Statute-book a law which says that to undermine the principles of moral obligation is punishable by forfeiture of all places of trust; 3 but there is no law which says that a man who publicly denies the existence of God is a fit and proper person to sit in Parliament, or a man who denies the first laws of morals, is eligible to make laws for the homes and domestic life of England, Scotland, and Ireland. A by-vote has furtively opened the door to one whoso notoriety relieves me of an odious duty. But Parliament has not yet confirmed that by-vote, and the moral sense of this great people has not yet been asked. Neverthe-

1 9 & 10 Will. III. c. 32. Kerr's Llackstonc, iv. 34, 35, note.

less, it has been heard; and I trust that there is still left in our statesmen at least the probity and the courage of Roman senators. One by-vote of a party majority, if not reversed, will lower for ever the basis of the British Empire. The evil it has wrought would be complete. It has laid down for ever that for the highest offices of man — namely, the making laws for man — it is no longer necessary for a man to be Catholic or Christian, or Jew or Theist. He may publicly deny and profane all these things. He may deny the existence of God, and therefore of Divine law, and therefore of all law except the human will and human passion. But as yet no statute of the Legislature has declared such men to be eligible to Parliament.

If, however, this by-vote be accepted, Lord Burgh-ley's forecast will be on the horizon. England will begin to be destroyed by its Parliament.

MR. BRADLAUGH, finding that the law would not allow of his taking his seat without taking the oath, presented himself on Tuesday night at the table of the House of Commons to be sworn. Sir Stafford Northcote anticipated his act by moving, " That having regard to the resolution of this House on the 23rd of June 1880, and to the reports and proceedings of the two Select Committees therein referred to, Mr. Bradlaugh be not permitted to go through the form of repeating the words of the oath prescribed by the Statutes of 29 Victoria, chapters 19 and 31; and 82 Victoria, chapter 72." In his speech he reminded the House that the courts of law had twice decided that a member elected to sit in the House must take the oath: and that to make affirmation instead of oath does not qualify a mem ber to take his seat; that Mr Bradlaugh had declared that to take an oath is a mere form: and that, therefore, he could not be admitted to swear.

The chief arguments on the other side were two. Mr. Bright said that the House was not warranted in taking cognisance of the religious or irreligious opinions of any man: and Mr. Gladstone said that whomsoever a constituency shall elect, the House must admit to swear.

We have here a declaration of principles unknown to the Constitution of England. They are as follows: First, that a man if he takes an oath thereby sufficiently fulfils the legal obligation of swearing, though he may at the same time declare that an oath is a mere form; that he does not believe in God; and that his act lays no obligation on his conscience. And, secondly, that there is no qualification necessary to sit in Parliament, and to make our laws, save only the election of a constituency; so that either the words " a fit and proper person " to sit in Parliament have no meaning, or that a man who derides an oath while he takes it, is " a fit and proper person."

On this we have to say:

First, that the sanctity of an oath is recognised in all our laws; not only by the laws which require an oath to be made, and by the law which in certain cases permits an affirmation in its stead, but also by the laws which forbid all persons except those authorised by office to require of any one to swear. The sanctity of an oath rests on a belief in the existence of God. The conscience is bound by the adjuration of God; and even when affirmation is admitted in the place of oath, it rests upon the same belief of the existence of God. To reduce an oath to a mere form is contrary both to revealed and to natural morality; and to destroy the sanctity and obligation of an oath is to undermine the foundations of private and public life.

Secondly, it is new to the Constitution that the

House of Commons cannot refuse to admit an unfit or improper person, if only ho shall have been elected by a constituency. This is a doctrine as monstrous as it is novel, and subverts Parliamentary government from its base.

Thirdly, it implies that no man is unfit or improper to make laws for Christian England and Catholic Ire land, if only he be a subject of the Crown, and not under conviction for crime.

Fourthly, it implies, further, a rejection of belief in God, and in natural morality, on which the civilisation of the old Roman world rested: declaring thereby that even a belief in Theism and in natural morals is not necessary as a foundation for the legislation of Christian England; or,

Fifthly, that England is Christian no longer; that its Christianity is the private opinion of individuals and is absolutely banished from its public life.

The general result of this is, that England nnd the British Empire have been descending steadily from level to level: from the unity of a Catholic State to a Christian but divided commonwealth; from a Christian commonwealth to a political order resting upon the lights, laws, and truths of natural religion and morality: and from this lowest level among men to what Mr. Bright on Wednesday well, but not wisely, called " a deep hole," that is, to the abyss, or to the great deep or bottomless pit of Positivism, Agnosticism, Atheism, where not only God is not, but is openly denied and blasphemed: where not only the moral law is not, but is deliberately denied to exist, and violations of it are justified in ways of which the pagan world was guilty, but, at least, it never defended, still less commended to men, but deplored, rebuked, and was ashamed of.

To this end we are being steadily conducted, and on this theory the Government are proceeding to admit Mr. Bradlaugh to the House of Commons.

To this we were brought by a side-vote obtained by Mr. Gladstone and the Government in the last Session. The courts of law have declared that vote to be, in its effect, illegal. It has never become law by the action of the Legislature and by the consent of the Crown. It is, therefore, not as yet the law of England. It is simply an exercise of the supreme power of the House of Commons to decide who may, or who may not, take his seat in the House. And this is the power for which we are contending. But it was this power which Mr. Gladstone's argument on Tuescjay night broadly denies. If any man elected at Northampton has thereby a right to sit in the House of Commons, the House has no power to decide who may take his seat on its benches. It has no power to decide whether any man is a fit and proper person to make our laws. Until now, one test of a fit and proper person to make laws for the Christian population of England and Scotland, and for the Catholic people of Ireland, is that he binds himself before the House, either by oath or by affirmation founded on the belief in God, and in the sanctity of such an act, to the due discharge of the office of legislating for a Christian people.

If this foundation is to be destroyed, let it be done openly, and not stealthily; directly, and not circuitously; after express enunciation and full debate; and more, not by a Parliament taken unawares, but by a Parliament freely and consciously elected to try and to decide the question whether England be, and shall continue to be, a Christian commonwealth, or a State stripped even of natural lights and of natural morals. We are hanging over this bottomless deep, and have a right to demand that the Government shall go to the country before it move again a hair's breadth in the path which it pursued last Session.

We must disencumber the question of the Parliamentary oath by separating it finally and altogether from the personality and idiosyncrasy of Mr. Bradlaugh. Some people think it unfortunate that the discussion should have been raised in connection with his election at Northampton. We, however, are glad it lias been raised in a form and with circumstances which render all evasion impossible. But for this accident, we believe that a change of the Constitution of England would have been niched or stolen from the Legislature, as other Acts have been, with little or no perception at the time of what was doing, till the work was done. Now, at least, we see that the change proposed will henceforward admit any man, not under arrest for crime, to make our laws, if only he can find a constituency to elect him. This is not as yet the law of the land.

What, then, is the nature of an oath or affirmation as now by law required?

An oath is an invocation of God in witness of truth; and that oath may be either in the form of assertion in evidence as to fact; or of promise, as in the oath of fidelity or allegiance. The practice of making oath in attestation of truth and fidelity is to be found in the

VOL. in. i whole history of the ancient world, Greek and Roman; in the laws of the Hebrew commonwealth; and in the laws and practice of the whole Christian world. There is not to be found a civilised nation of the ancient or modern world in which this practice has not been recognised as a test and security for the truth and fidelity of men. An oath does, indeed, presuppose a creed, as laughter presupposes humanity. To laugh is the act of an intelligent being, and to swear is the act of a man who believes in a Supreme Legislator and a Just Judge, before whom a perjurer or a traitor will be called to give account. Such has been the practice of all nations, in all ages, in their judicial and legislative acts. To depart from this is to change the whole basis, not only of Christian, or English, but of human society; it is to build, like the foolish builder, not upon the rock, but upon the sand. To this we will return hereafter. It is, therefore, altogether wide of the truth to say that the permission to make affirmation, instead of to take an oath, forms either precedent or argument for the case of those who deny the existence of God, and the obligation which the Divine Law lays upon the conscience. We are not a little surprised, and not at all favourably impressed, when we hear certain men argue in this fashion: "We believe in God; but we believe that He has forbidden us to swear. You, therefore, changed for our sakes the oath to an affirmation, and wo then bound ourselves by our most solemn act. Our conscience forbids us to offend God by an oath; but our affirmation is morally equivalent and equally binding. Therefore, let everybody, as we do, make only an affirmation, whether they believe with us in God and His law, or no. We, indeed, are theists; and they may be atheists. But that makes no difference: they and we ought to be placed on the same level." Certainly George Fox would not have accepted this equation.

This has been most unreasonably called making a "theistical test." We make nothing. We only refuse that the obligations of natural religion should be un made. If men secretly reject the belief of a Supreme Being, we cannot alter the laws which are founded upon the belief and practice of mankind, for the sake of meeting their abnormal state. Human society is founded upon its own lights, laws, instincts, and intui tions. It legislates for the common sense of men, not for anomalies and morbid exceptions. The Ten Command ments cannot be repealed because men break them. Laws must not give way because they are evaded or derided.

But it may be said: " Why not take a promise of allegiance without recognition of God as the Judge of truth and fidelity?" We answer: "Because we know of no obligation sufficient to bind men, except the acknowledgment of a Tribunal higher than man." In all mutual contracts between man and man, a promise presupposes a law of justice, and a Judge who will require its fulfilment. All the relations of human life, domestic, social, civil, political, rest upon this foundation. The mutual contracts of men need a higher sanction than mere human law. There can be no responsibility except either to God, or to the executioner. We must obey either for wrath or for conscience' sake. There is nothing between these. No laws or contracts will long hold out against the interests, and passions, and ambitions, and resentments of men, unless they be confirmed and sanctioned by a recognition of a Divine Legislator and a Divine Judge. The guillotine failed to hold together the French Republic, when the Eire Supreme had been abolished. Every stone in the whole fabric was loosened. All the rela tions of domestic and of civil life were dissolved. They depended no longer upon the will of God, but upon the will of man; and the will of man had no power over the wills of men, except as the penalty of death cuts short the contentions between them. There can be no law without a legislator; and no law of universal obligation, except that which comes from a Lawgiver to whom all must give account. So true it is, that " without God there is no human society." From Him come the symmetry, the cohesion, and the life of homes and of States.

We have already affirmed that never until now has this issue been raised in England. Before the high trust of making laws for us is committed to any man, the commonwealth has a right to know what manner of man he is. It makes no inquisition into his religious opinions. But it has not only a right, it is bound by a peremptory duty to see that those who are to make its laws are such as at least the Roman Senate would have admitted to such a supreme trust. To call this a " sentiment," is to trifle with us. We have a right to claim that any man who makes our laws about education, and public morals, and divorce, shall at least believe in God. If anybody be pleased to call this a "test," or a "sentiment," be it so. The English, Scotch, and Irish are a Christian people, and the Constitution of this Christian country ought not to be changed without a distinct appeal to the public opinion of the United Kingdom. The great majority of the people have already unequivocally declared for religious, as against mere secular education. So far as we have heard they are equally opposed to atheism. The Catholic population may be taken to be as one man against the Government in this matter. Mr. O'Don-nell, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and Mr. Arthur O'Connor have spoken as true representatives of the Catholics of Ireland, England, and Scotland. The great majority of the Church of England would most certainly vote in the same sense. As to the Nonconformists we are perplexed. They are, above all men, bound to uphold the religious character of our national life. But we have witnessed strange confusion in their ranks, and have seen with sorrow the hauling down of the old standard of zeal for truth, and the hoisting of the vane of political expediency. Nevertheless, we will believe, till we see the contrary, that they would stand for the rights of God over our national life and laws.

If this be so, then there would be a vast majority against the change which the Government desires to make; and we repeat that the question ought to be put to the test of a General Election. For this cause, we refuse to treat it as a Bradlaugh case, or as a Northjimpton case. It is an attempt to reduce the Legislature and Constitution of this country to a level lower than the Old World. It was sunk, indeed, but it was still pervaded hy a recognition of a Supreme Being as a law-giver and a judge. Such a change in our Constitution would be the breaking of the cables which hold us to our past. Until now the anchors have held us to the shore where the lights of revelation are still burning, and the laws of nature are still revered. While France and Germany have drifted towards the gulf of unbelief, we have been stayed in our descent. If the people of England, by their public voice, shall decree it otherwise, we shall from that day know where we are. But let the people be appealed to, and let the people decide; let no side- vote, nor sudden action, anticipate its verdict. Let the Government pass its Land Bill; and after that take the sense of the country on this perilous and fatal issue: " Do we, or do we not, as a nation, rest upon the laws of God? or do we hang over the great deep, in which there is neither a Divine light in the reason, nor a Divine law written upon the conscience of man?"

V. AN ENGLISHMAN'S PROTEST.

(Nineteenth Century 1880.)

I HAVE no inclination to renew the painful memories of Tuesday, the 21st, and Wednesday, the 22nd of February. They tarnish many names, and leave many a regret which will live long in history. The sum of the case is easy. The House of Commons vindicated its own authority. It expelled a member, and issued a new writ. While the parties are preparing for a new election, we will take a review of the arguments for and against Mr. Brad-laugh's claim to sit as member for Northampton.

The following list will be found, I believe, to contain a fair and accurate statement of the reasons urged by the speakers in Parliament and by the newspapers out of Parliament in support of Mr. Bradlaugh's claim to take his seat in the House of Commons. It is said:

1. That it is inquisitorial to inquire what a man elected to Parliament believes about the existence of God or of the sanctity and obligation of an oath.

2. That it is bigotry to require of any man a profession of belief in God as a condition to taking his seat in the House of Commons.

3. That election by a majority of any constituency constitutes the sole condition required for sitting in Parliament.

4. That as Mr. Bradlaugh was willing to take the oath the House was bound to receive it.

5. That Mr. Gladstone is correct in affirming that Mr. Bradlaugh has been deprived of his legal right to sit in the House.

6. That Sir Stafford Northcote and his followers, by their bigoted and inquisitorial intolerance, have led the House into this undignified conflict, out of which there is now no way of escape except by either letting Mr. Bradlaugh come to the table and take the oath, or by altering the law to include the case of those who believe neither the existence of God nor the sanctity of an oath.

Now, I believe these allegations to be all and sever ally false and dangerous to the commonwealth, and the reasons of my belief I will give as briefly as possible.

1. There was no inquisition as to Mr. Bradlaugh's private belief or unbelief. He had paraded it for years over the country. He had not been permitted to swear in a court of law when he offered to do so. He forced the knowledge of his unbelief upon the House of Commons by his own explicit declaration. There is no parallel between this paraded unbelief and the secret scepticism, or even infidelity, which may lie hid in the silence of other men. Such unbelief, for the most part, is not disbelief, but a negative and hesitating doubt which neither believes nor disbelieves. Such men take the oath; no man asks, or has a right to ask, as to their inward thoughts. They obtrude them on no man, and no man has authority to search their hearts. Even the law has no such authority; de internis non judicat lex. What likeness has all this to Mr. Brad-laugh's dogmatising infidelity, the literature of which has for years revolted the moral sense of the country before he forced it on the knowledge of the House of Commons?

2. Where, then, is the bigotry of refusing to allow a man who publicly denies the existence of God and the sanctity of an oath to kiss the Word of God, as the law of England explicitly holds it to be, and to make an oath which he believes to be not a form merely, but a farce? To co-operate materially or morally in such profanation would make the House of Commons a par taker in the act. To look on while it was perpetrated, and both to tender and to receive such an oath — and it is the House that does both these things — would be a direct material and moral co-operation in an act which would be only not perjury because it would also be blasphemy. If it be bigotry in the House of Commons to refuse to allow this, much more to share in this out rage on truth and conscience, the moral world must have been lately turned upside down.

3. They who affirm that Mr. Bradlaugh has a legal right to take his seat tacitly assume that the sole condition for sitting in the House of Commons is election by a constituency. This assumption is directly at variance with the law of England. The statute law requires of the elected that he should either swear or affirm. Mr. Bradlaugh could not make the affirmation, because none but Quakers and Moravians are admitted to do so. He could not swear, because by his previous declarations he had made himself incompetent to take an oath. He, therefore, could not fulfil the conditions of the statute law, which are two, and not one only — namely, election, and the oath or affirmation. The House of Commons has no power to tender or to receive the Parliamentary oath as if it were a nullity.

4. Further, this answers the pretence, that as Mr. Bradlau^h was willing to make the oath, the House was hound to receive it. The House is hound, indeed, to receive the oath; hut Mr. Bradlaugh's declaration iu the House, as well as out of it, destroyed the oath. His act was no oath; and the law which binds the House to receive the oath binds the House also not to receive that which is no oath. And here I cannot but express my wonder at the hesitation, unless the report be erroneous, of the Attorney-General to declare that Mr. Bradlaugh's parody of the oath was no oath and of no effect. An oath is an obligation imposed by one party upon another. The House is the administrator or imponent; the member assents, and assenting makes the oath. The imponent receives the oath so made. Who tendered or imposed the oath on Mr. Bradlaugh? The House had long ago refused either to tender or to accept his oath. The whole act was an outrage in morals and null in law.

5. This being so, it passes my comprehension how it can be said that Mr. Bradlaugh is deprived of his legal right. He has no such right until he has ful filled the conditions of the statute law. And he has created his own incompetency to fulfil it. All through these discussions it has been assumed that election, and election only, is the sole condition for sitting in Parliament. Such is not the law of the land.

6. The direct and inevitable conclusion is that Sir

Stafford Northcote and those who have supported him have heen defending two things sacred to Englishmen — the one, the law of the land; the other, the foundation of all law: that is, the religion of nature and the natural moral law, the existence of God and His moral attributes, which are written on the conscience of mankind.

They have been defending the law of the land, for by that law no elected member can sit in the House of Commons without the further condition or qualification of making the oath or the affirmation. Mr. Bradlaugh can make neither: legally, he cannot make the affirmation; and, morally and legally, he cannot make the oath.

By the law of England at this moment, the propagation of atheism is an indictable offence; by the law of England, therefore, the existence of God is affirmed. The Legislature has never yet departed from this broad base of the civil order and social life of man. It has admitted an affirmation for those who so profoundly believe in God that they fear to offend Him by swearing in the form of an oath. It has admitted the Jewish race, whose whole existence rests upon the belief in God. It has never inquisitorially dived into the hearts or intellects of men who, responsible to their own conscience, fulfil the conditions of the law. Beyond this it has never gone; and without departing from all its traditions and shifting its base, not only from the rock to the sand, but from the rock to the quicksand, it can never go. But it is this that we are invited now to do; and we are invited to do it expressly and explicitly for the relief of the tender consciences of those who do not helieve in the existence of God. They do not believe in your oath, there fore you must alter it.

We answer we will not change our whole moral life for the sake of those who will not believe. Let them look to themselves. They must rise to the commonwealth. The commonwealth will not lower itself to them. To do this would be not only to condone, but to recognise atheism by law. We are invited to do this, forsooth, on the principles of religious liberty. We are denounced for refusing to do this on the score of bigotry. Then religious liberty is the liberty to have no religion. Is, then, to deny the existence of God a religious creed, and one among the religions of the world? Comte taught us that society cannot exist without religion, nor religion without a worship, nor worship without an object. But as there is no God, the object must be created: and he created the abstract idea of humanity, and bid us fall down be fore it. The commonwealth of England has not as yet opened its gates to these intellectual aberrations. Our laws rest upon the belief of a Supreme Lawgiver, on whose justice all just laws repose, and by whose will all laws are controlled and tested. So long as they are conformed to that supreme legislation, they are just; if by a hair's breadth they deviate from it, they are so far null and of no obligation. Bracton says " the king himself ought not to be subject to man, but subject to God and to the law; for the law makes the king;" " for a king can do nothing on the earth — since he is the minister and vicar of God — except that which he may do of right."

Such is the law of the land. We are asked to declare that the law knows nothing of God, nor of an eternal law; that human laws rest on the human will alone, and human society rests on itself — that is, on man without God. Its foundation is the abyss. The Parliamentary oath is in this true and ancient sense, if men so please to call it, a religious test; but it is no new test, no new bigotry. It is the tradition of our ancient jurisprudence: the witness of our dependence upon a judgment and a justice which are supreme. I say this is the law of the land at this moment. And our whole history — Saxon, Norman, English, Catholic, non-Catholic — would prove it by an exuberance of evidence. But I will take one only proof. We are invited to change the law. The law itself is a witness for the existence of God, and you want to efface that witness. This we refuse absolutely and altogether. Nolumus leges Anglice mutari. If you want to change them you must overwhelm us. By argument you never will, without being forced to accept the last extremities of atheistic politics. You may overwhelm us by numbers and tumult, and the turbulence of the people misled by a despotic Liberalism. They, therefore, who have broken from party ties, to resist the desecration not only of an oath but of our whole legislation, have been standing for the defence of the law of the land.

But they have been doing more than this. They have been standing in defence of the foundation of all law; for there can be no political order among men without a moral law, and there can he no moral law without a recognition of the personal relations hetween God and man, and man and man. From these rela tions all laws and obligations spring. When we are told that this is a violation of constitutional and religious liberty, we answer, constitutional liberty is not legislation without morals, and religious liberty is not the equalisation of Theism and atheism. If the public law of the Commonwealth be atheist, Theism is only tolerated; and if Theism be only tolerated, atheism is supreme. The law would know no God; and the Commonwealth, resting on that law, would rest on the belief in God no longer.

I do not believe for a moment that the people of England, Scotland, and Ireland are prepared for this apostasy. I believe the religious sense of the country would indignantly repel this national effacement of God from its laws and its life. We are not yet ripe for de crees to abolish or to restore the Eire Supreme. And what the people of the United Kingdom would not do must not be done by a side-vote, or by a resolution, or by a party majority, on which the country has had no opportunity for declaring its will. No Government, without violence to the conscience of the great majority of the people, could propose in this Parliament such a change of the law. They ought to dissolve and go to the country. If, after such an appeal, the people should decide that the commonwealth of England shall be shifted from belief in God and His laws to the dark and pathless wild of unbelief, the work and the responsibility will not be ours, but theirs who perpetrate it — which may God avert from os and from the future of our country!