f perfect equality with Protestants in respect of their
eligibility to every kind of office, with one or two exceptions. And
during the autumn of 1800 he was busily engaged in framing the details
of his measure, in order to submit it to his royal master in its
entirety, and so to avoid disquieting him with a repetition of
discussions on the subject, which he knew to be distasteful to him. For,
five years before, George III. had consulted the Chief-justice, Lord
Kenyon, and the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott (afterward Lord Eldon),
on the question whether some proposed concessions to Dissenters,
Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, did not "militate against the
coronation oath and many existing statutes;" and had received their
legal opinion that the tests enacted in the reign of Charles II.,
"though wise laws, and in policy not to be departed from, might be
repealed or altered without any breach of the coronation oath or Act of
Union" (with Scotland).[150] Their opinions on the point were the more
valuable, since they were notoriously opposed to their political
convictions, and might be supposed to have carried sufficient conviction
to the royal mind. But his Majesty's scruples were now, unfortunately,
revived by the Lord Chancellor, who, strange to say, was himself a
Presbyterian; and who treacherously availed himself of his knowledge of
what was in contemplation to anticipate the Prime-minister's intended
explanations to the King. He fully succeeded in his object of fixing the
King's resolution to refuse his assent to the contemplated concessions
(which, by a curious confusion of ideas, his Majesty even characterized
as "Jacobinical"[151]), though not in the object which he had still more
at heart, of inducing the King to regard him as the statesman in the
whole kingdom the most deserving of his confidence. The merits of the
question will be more appropriately examined hereafter. It is sufficient
to say here that Pitt, conceiving himself bound by personal honor as
well as by statesman-like duty to persevere in his intended measure, or
to retire from an office which no man is justified in holding unless he
can discharge its functions in accordance with his own judgment of what
is required by the best interests of the state, resigned his post, and
was succeeded by Mr. Addington.

Addington's ministry was made memorable by the formation of the Northern
Confederacy against us, and its immediate and total overthrow by
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