Church itself,"
and of the University.[197] Peel, therefore, came to the conclusion--to
which he had no difficulty in bringing his colleague, the
Prime-minister--that "it might be more for the real interests of the
Church and of religion to consent to an alteration in the law" than to
trust to the result of the debate in the House of Lords to maintain the
existing state of things. Accordingly, after several conferences with
the most influential members of the Episcopal Bench, he framed a
declaration to be substituted for the Sacramental test, binding all who
should be required to subscribe it--a description which included all who
should be appointed to a civil or corporate office--never to exert any
power or influence which they might thus acquire to subvert, or to
endeavor to subvert, the Protestant Church of England, Scotland, or
Ireland, as by law established. The declaration was amended in the House
of Lords by the addition of the statement, that this declaration was
subscribed "on the true faith of a Christian," introduced at the
instigation of Lord Eldon, who had not held the Great Seal since the
dissolution of Lord Liverpool's administration, but who was still looked
up to by a numerous party as the foremost champion of sound
Protestantism in either House.

Not that the addition of these words at all diminished the
dissatisfaction with which the great lawyer regarded the bill. On the
contrary, he believed it to be not only a weapon wilfully put into the
hands of the enemies of the Established Church, but a violation of the
constitution, of which, as he regarded it "the existing securities were
a part." He pointed out that "the King himself was obliged to take the
sacrament at his coronation;" and he argued from this and other grounds
that "the Church of England, combined with the state, formed together
the constitution of Great Britain; and that the acts now to be repealed
were necessary to the preservation of that constitution."

With every respect for that great lawyer, his argument on this point
does not appear sustainable. For the bill in question did not sweep away
securities for the Established Church, but merely substituted, for one
which long disuse and indemnity had rendered wholly inoperative, a fresh
security, which, as it would be steadily put in force, might fairly be
expected to prove far more efficacious. And it can hardly be contended
that it was not within the province of the Legislature to modi