ever weary of repeating its warnings against narrow
judgments. A year ago we believed that the age of arbitrary severity was
past. In the interval we have seen the rebellion in India; the forms of
law have been suspended, and Hindoo rajahs have been executed for no
greater crime than the possession of letters from the insurgents. The
evidence of a treasonable animus has been sufficient to ensure
condemnation; and in the presence of necessity the principles of the
sixteenth century have been instantly revived.--April, 1858.

[402] Act of Supremacy, 26 Hen. VIII. cap. 1.

[403] To guard against misconception, an explanatory document was drawn
up by the government at the time of the passing of the act, which is
highly curious and significant. "The King's Grace," says this paper,
"hath no new authority given hereby that he is recognised as supreme
Head of the Church of England; for in that recognition is included only
that he have such power as to a king of right appertaineth by the law of
God; and not that he should take any spiritual power from spiritual
ministers that is given to them by the Gospel. So that these words, that
the king is supreme Head of the Church, serve rather to declare and make
open to the world, that the king hath power to suppress all such
extorted powers as well of the Bishop of Rome as of any other within
this realm, whereby his subjects might be grieved; and to correct and
remove all things whereby any unquietness might arise amongst the
people; rather than to prove that he should pretend thereby to take any
powers from the successors of the apostles that was given to them by
God. And forasmuch as, in the session of this former parliament holden
in the twenty-fifth year of this reign, whereby great exactions done to
the king's subjects by a power from Rome was put away, and thereupon the
promise was made that nothing should be interpreted and expounded upon
that statute, that the King's Grace, his nobles or subjects, intended to
decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything
concerning the articles of the Catholic faith, or anything declared by
Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary for his Grace's salvation
and his subjects'; it is not, therefore, meet lightly to think that the
self-same persons, continuing the self-same parliament, would in the
next year following make an act whereby the king, his nobles and
subjects, should so vary. And no man may with conscience jud