The Sun.
London, England, 1829-02-18 00:00:00

wall. They received a written paper, the joint
production of their Worships Sir George Farrant
And Mr. Conant, which turned out to be a decision
that they could decide nothing ; thus leaving the
parties, after all the turmoil and expense, to the de-
lectable alternative of remaining content with this
specimen of " summary justice," or opening their
purse-strings anew to try the effect of a less "sum-
mary" process of litigation. The decision itself is
curiously worded ; it states that " the Magistrates,
having examined the case, &c. are of opinion that,
under all the circumstances, they could not satis-
factorily to themselves decide a contention of so
much importance, and so materially affecting the
rights of two Noble Lords, they them efore decline
;Living judgment on the present occasion."-
1 his declaration of their Worships, we are told
in the report, " was received with evident sur-
prise by both parties;" and well it might. After
all their belligerent operations—their marching and
counter-marching—they remain in the position
which the drill-seijeant denotes by the words
---" as you were." Whether this result was pro-
duced by the lawyers so equally illuminating
by their respective lanterns the " opposite readings.'
of the "Building Act," as to leave it impossible
for the worthy Magistrates to consider one side
clearer than the other, or whether they were re-
solved, like some judicious politicians on a memo-
rable occasion, " not to give a triumph to either
party," it is very difficult to say : but inasmuch as
they state (after saying " the question is one mate-
rially affecting the rights of two Noble Lords"),
they therefore " decline giving judgment," it seemt
to be a fair inference that if the parties had been
only two simple commoners, the worthy Magistrates
would not have declined to give judgment. How
the circumstance of the parties being Lords should
make any difference in the principle of administering
justice we cannot understand—why their dignity
should stand in the way of an exposition of a clause
in the " Building Act," under the summary juris-
diction appointed for such purposes, is not easy for
men of ordinary capacity to imagine, unless we are
to suppose the Magistrates thought that a dispute
between two Peers, relative to a party wall, ought
riot to be decided by any tribunal inferior to the
House of Lords.—lbid.

The quibbling special pleading of Lord Holland
will scarcely succeed in convincing the British
people that the exclusion of Roman Catholics from
political power is not an essential part of the Consti-
t talon, as established at the glorious Revolution. His
Lordship's argument resolves itself simply into these
two assumptions, that as the disqualifying statutes
were passed some years before the Revolution, they
cannot be considered a part of the Constitution
established by this great National Act ; and that the
Protestant succession to the Throne was enacted and
established as a fundamental law of the British Mo-
narchy, in the view that it might serve as a substi-
tution for the disqualifying statutes, by which the
subjects of the Monarchy adhering to the faith of the
Church of Rome were already excluded from all
power in the State. We cannot accuse Lord
Holland of ignorance of the history of that
period, which he has no doubt very diligently
studied ; but we fear he must fall under the deeper
censure of perverting it for the purposes of the
moment, to an extent and with a degree of effron-
tery which his ardent zeal in the cause of inno-
vation can scarcely justify, even to his own impe-
tuous, fiery, but not uninstructed mind. We would
ask Lord Holland if he is prepared to apply univer-
sally such a rule of construction to the great
national Acts which embody the principles of
the Revolution, as would make those Acts sub-
versive of any constitutional doctrine that they did
not expressly recapitulate and confirm ? We
would ask him if any confirmation of the Statutes
of Exclusion as essential and fundamental laws of
the Monarchy, however strong or unequivocal,
could have added to the validity of that stronger
confirmation which they derive from the fact, that
the overt acts of treason to the fundamental laws
of the Monarchy most insisted on by the authors
of the Revolution, in jusitication of the exclusion of
the Stuart family, were the repeated violations
by James the Second of those very Statutes? If
the laws for the exclusion of Papists from political
power were not essential and fundamental laws of
the British Monarchy, and if the promoters of the
Revolution did riot intend to give them the strongest
possible contirmOtion—the confirmation of deeals
rather than of words—how can Lord Holland avoid
the conclusion that the expulsion of the Stuarts prin-
cipally for violating those laws, and manifesting an
intention to annul them, was one of the most iniquitous
and absurd proceedings of which men calling them-
selves rational patriots were ever guilty ? Lord Hol-
land must perceive that his explanation of the doc-
trines and principles of the Revolution degrades
that Act into a monstrous exhibition of folly, incon-
sistency, and crime. The Government established
by our wise and virtuous forefathers ut the Revo-
lution was a coherent Government : the proposed
measure withdraws from it the principle of cohesion.
Our forefathers erected a sound and consistent struc-
ture, composed of a Protestant King, Protestant
Ministers, and a Protestant Legislature. We are
now about to destroy it, and erect another in its
room, in which a Protestant King may for a time,
and it will probably be a brief one, occupy an isolated,
unprotected, unsanctioned, anomalous Throne, the
only remaining spectacle of conditional dignity and
of necessary faith—the only existing mark tit which
the scoffs of the infidel and the bigoted malignity of
the Papist can be levelled. And vet it is said that
the intended change is compatilsce with the prin-
ciples of the Constitution as established at the Revo-
lution. It fuss been foretold—and the prediction to our
judgment is infallible—that the admission of Papists
to the high places of our Government will bring into
comparissit the conflicting titles of the House of
Brunswick and the House of Savoy to the British
Throne. We have oftener than o;ice adverted to
this danger, but never had we a perception of it so
clear and distinct as when we heard the other night
Lord Holland attempt to reason the apprehension
away, by arguments so shallow that he must have
despised himself while he gave them utterance. It
would be high treason, forsooth, to consider the re-
presentative of that House as the King of England,
even if he were a Protestant. To be sure; and so
it was high treason to dispute the right of James 11.
io the Crown five minutea before he embarked for
the Continent ; and so it was high treason a week
or two afterwards to allow his right; and so it was
high treason in certain parts of this island during
the years 1713 and 1745 to recognize the right
of King George; and so it was high treason in
Paris during the hundred days to acknowledge the
tight of the Bonrhons to the throne of France ; and
so it is new high treason in some districts of South
America to dispute the Dictatorship of Bolivar.
But in what period of civil commotion has the law
of high treason been any thing but a weapon in the
hand of the party that happened for the moment
to be tire more powerful ? Or what is the value
to the law of high treason to avert civil commo-
tions, unlers the natural sense of right and the
habitual feelings and predilections of a people are
in usisori with it ? The objection of the friends
of the House of Brunswick to the projected in-
vasion of the Constitution is not that it will imme-
diateiy annul the law of high treason, by which
that family is protected in its regal inheritance
against the claims of the House of Savoy or any
other intruder, for they know es well as Lord
Holland that it will do no such thing. Their
objection is, that it tee& to dissever the habitual
sympathies, the conscientious convictions, the deep
and permanent sense of right of the whole people
from the provisions of that law, and that whenever
this disunion is accomplished, the law of High
Treason is utterly destitute of efficacy or value.
Who can make any tussophistiested man believe
that the descendant of James the First is rightly
disinherited, on account of his ancestors having
shown favour to Papists and to Popery, when the
Monarch actually seated upon the Throne, which
by tire natural law of succession ought to have been
his, is called upon by law to show favenr to Papists