ropose a rider, declaring that the oath was
not meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the
ceremonial of the Church, provided always that episcopacy and a written
form of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was
exposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked,
would bind the King under pretence of setting him free. The coronation
oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his legislative
capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince can
misunderstand it. No prince can seriously imagine that the two Houses
mean to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws which
they may hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country.
Or if any prince should so strangely misapprehend the nature of the
contract between him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose
advice he may have recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this
rider should pass, it will be impossible to deny that the coronation
oath is meant to prevent the King from giving his assent to bills which
may be presented to him by the Lords and Commons; and the most serious
inconvenience may follow. These arguments were felt to be unanswerable,
and the proviso was rejected without a division, [100]

Every person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that the
statesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the King
in his legislative capacity, [101] Unhappily, more than a hundred
years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to be
seriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a mind,
honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, and
at once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the
ambition and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than those
which were brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. A
conjuncture singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and
justice might perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile,
and might have made the British islands one truly United Kingdom, was
suffered to pass away. The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two
generations of public men have since laboured with imperfect success
to repair the error which was then committed; nor is it improbable that
some of the penalties of that error may continue to afflict a remote
posterity.

The Bill by which the oath was settled pas