in office and out of office, in vindicating the righteousness of her cause, in cheering and sustaining the spirit of her gallant people, and elevating them to the level of the mighty exigence, on which their own freedom and the liberties of the world depended;-protecting, meanwhile, our Constitution at home from the wild projects of reckless innovation,-shaming and silencing, by his unequalled wit, those who were inaccessible to the reasoning of his lofty philosophy :These great deservings, be the judgment of posterity on other matters what it may, will ensure to him a high and enduring place in the proudest record of England's glory.

His saltèm accumulem donis, et fungar inani
Munere.

But I will not longer delay addressing myself to the subject before me.

The Church of England an essential part of the British Constitution.

Those who have inquired into the history of the British Constitution, will testify to the close connexion of civil and religious polity, which has ever subsisted in it. From the very earliest period, the monarchy of England has always pre

sented itself, as a government which regards its subjects in the full dignity of their real nature, -as religious creatures;-as beings, whose interests are not limited to this transitory scene, but reach onwards to an infinitely higher and more enduring state. Accordingly, instead of making religion the handmaid of civil policy, instead of adopting and endowing it, merely as an useful auxiliary to secure the submission of subjects, and give a new sanction to the authority of rulers, the English Lawgiver has always regarded Religion as having, by right, a paramount place and dignity in the great scheme of national polity. Hence it is, that the Gospel is reverently acknowledged to be part of the common law of the land. Hence, too, it is, that as the Gospel supposes all Christians to be members of the Church of Christ, and that Church to be a society under the government of certain rulers appointed by God himself to their high office,-the law of England, from the first conversion of this nation to the faith of Christ, not only has always recognized the State of England, inasmuch as it is a Christian State, to be also the particular Church of England; but it has, by consequence, regarded the Governors of the Church as an essential part of this Christian State. Whatever may have been the

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practice of other countries, and whatever may have been the language of private individuals even here, both the language, and the practice, of our law have been uniform and constant on this particular. In the words of the law itself;* By divers sundry old authentic Histories and "Chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed, that this Realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, "governed by one supreme Head and King, "having the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Imperial Crown of the same; unto whom a 66 Body Politick, compact of all Sorts and Degrees of People, divided in terms, and by names of Spiritualty and Temporalty, ben bounden and

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owen to bear next to God, a natural and hum"ble obedience."-"When any cause of the Law "Divine happened to come in question, &c., that part of the said Body Politick called the Spiritualty

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being sufficient and meet of itself to declare "and determine all such doubts, and to admi"nister all such Offices and Duties, as to their "rooms spiritual doth appertain,"-" and the law temporal was and yet is administered by sundry judges of that other part of the said Body Politick called the Temporalty."

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* 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12.

To endow the Spiritualty with temporal dignities, was no essential part of the duty of the Christian legislature: but in England, from the earliest times, "the King's most noble Proge

nitors, and the Antecessors of the Nobles of "this Realm, have sufficiently endowed the said "Church both with honours and possessions."

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Thus the Clergy," to speak again in the language of the Law, 8 Eliz. c. 1., being one "of the great States of the Realm," have always been called to bear a distinguished part in the great Council of the Nation. In all the accounts which remain to us of the Mysel Synoth, the Great Assembly, or, as it was at other times called, Wittenagemote, the Assembly of the Wise Men of the Realm, we find the Bishops mentioned among its chief members. Ina, King of West Saxons, A. D. 702, caused the great Council of his Realm to be convened, consisting ex episcopis, principibus, proceribus, &c.* Egbert, who united the Heptarchy into one Kingdom, assembled at London his Bishops and greatest Peers, pro concilio capiendo adversus Danicos Piratas. Canutus, on the death of Edmund Ironside, omnes Episcopos et duces, necnon et principes cunctosque opti

* Spelman, p. 402.

mates gentis Angliæ Londoniæ congregari jussit. Edward the Confessor granted his charters to the Church of Westminster, cum consilio et decreto Archiepiscoporum, Episcoporum, Comitum, aliorumque Optimatium.

And it is particularly worthy of remark, that they had this their seat in the Parliament, or Great Council of the Realm, not by reason of the tenure of their temporal possessions, (for hitherto their lands were held by them in frankalmoigne,) but simply and merely as spiritual lords: so that even "the Guardians of the Spi"ritualties, in the times of vacancy," as Selden* tells us," and the Vicars-general of Bishops be"yond sea," had sometimes place and suffrage in the House of Lords, in the ages following.† Meanwhile, the charters of our early sove

* Titles of Honour, Selden's Works, vol. iii. p. 748. After the conquest, a new title to these seats accrued to the Bishops by the change of the tenure of their lands from But this, as we have seen,

frank-almoigne to military tenure. was not the foundation or origin of their seats, but only conferred a new right to them. Before, they sat ratione officii ; thenceforward, both by right of office, and in respect of their possessions. And so plain is their right at common law to sit in the House of Lords, that when Henry VIII. erected six new Bishoprics, these new Bishops took their seats, without any Act of Parliament empowering them to do so, but simply by their common law right, ratione offici.