mily then occupying the throne. And it is clear that no pretence,
drawn from the repealable nature of an English law, can avail to make
it less, or other than treason, for a person outside of Parliament to
propose the repeal of _this_ act as to any point affecting the
existing royal family, or at least, so many of that family as are
privileged persons known to the constitution. Now, then, this remark
instantly points to two classes of acts; one upon which to all men is
open the right of calling for Repeal; another upon which no such
right is open. But if this be so, then to urge the legality of calling
for a Repeal of the Union, on the ground that this union rests only
upon an act of Parliament, is absurd; because that leaves it still
doubtful whether this act falls under the one class or the other.

Why do we mention this? Because we think it exceedingly important that
the attention of parliament should be called to the subject, and to
the necessity of holding certain points in our constitution as
absolutely sacred. If a man or party should go about proclaiming the
unlawfulness, in a religious sense, of _property_, and agitating for
that doctrine amongst the lower classes by appropriate arguments--it
would soon be found necessary to check them, and the sanctity of
property would soon be felt to merit civil support. Possibly it will
be replied--"Supposing the revolutionary doctrines followed by overt
acts, then the true redress is by attacking these acts." Yet every
body feels that, if the doctrine and the acts continued to propagate
themselves, very soon both would be punished. In the case where
missionaries incited negro slaves to outrages on property, or were
said to do so, nobody proposed to punish only the overt outrages. So,
again, in the event of those doctrines being revived which denounced
all differences of rank, and the official distinctions of civil
government, it would be too late to punish the results after the bonds
of society were generally relaxed. Ministers are placed in a very
false position, continually taxing a man with proposing the repeal of
a law as if _that_ were an admitted crime, and yet also pronouncing
the proposed repeal of any law to be a privilege of every citizen.
They will soon find it necessary to make their election for one or
other of these incompatible views.

Meantime, in direct opposition to this uncertainty of the ministers,
the Irish Attorney-General has drawn the same argument