sitively blubbered over its hard fate in having to stand so many
attacks from its enemies. The King received, on one of his birthdays,
a delegation from the prelates of the Irish Church, and to them he
poured out his assurances that nothing should ever induce him to
abandon that Church to its ungodly foes. He reminded the prelates that
he was growing an old man, that his departure from this world must be
near at hand, that he had nothing left now to live for but the rightful
discharge of his duties as a Protestant sovereign, and he bade them to
believe that the tears which were bedewing his countenance were the
tears of heartfelt sympathy and sorrow. The King nevertheless did not
get into any quarrel with his ministers on the subject of the Irish
Church, and when any documents bearing on the question were presented
to him for signature he ended by affixing his name and did not allow
his tears to fall upon it and blot it out. The Duke of Cumberland,
too, stood by the Irish Church to the best of his power. A member of
the House of Lords has a privilege which is not accorded to a member of
the House of Commons--he can enter on the books of the House his
written protest against the passing of any measure which he has not
been able to keep out of legislation. The Duke of Cumberland entered
his protest against some of the resolutions taken with regard to the
Irish State Church, and he declared that the sovereign who affirmed
such resolves must do so in defiance of the coronation oath. That
coronation oath had not been brought into much prominence since the
days of George the Third, when it used to be relied upon as an
impassable barrier to many a great measure of political justice and
mercy. The Duke of Cumberland was not exactly the sort of man who
could quicken it anew into an animating influence, and King {220}
William did what his ministers advised him to do, and the world went on
its way. The King, however, liked his ministers none the more because
he did not see his way to quarrel with them when they advised him to
make some concessions to public feeling on the subject of the Irish
tithes. Thus far, indeed, the concessions were not very great, and the
important fact for this part of our history is only that the tithe
question brought up the far more momentous question which called into
doubt the right to existence of the Irish State Church itself. The
Government went no farther, for the time, than to offer the