The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-25 00:00:00

oachments

oath, which was order,

embers on their admission to Parliament :--

" I, -, do sincerely promise and swear, that
" I will he faithful and hear true allegiance to His
" Majesty King , and will defend him to the

" utmost of my power against all con

,spiracies and

" attempts whatever, which shall be made against
" his person, crown, or dignity ; and I will do my
" utmost endeavour to disclose and make known to
" His Majesty, his heirs, and successors, all trea-
" sons and traitorous conspiracies which may be
" formed against him or them ; and I do faithfully
"promise to maintain, support, and defend, to the
" utmost of my power, the succession of the crown,
" which succession, by an act intitled An act for
" the further limitation of the crown, and better

" securing the rights and liberties of the subject,'
" is, and stands, limited to the Princess Sophia,
" Electress of Hanover, and the heirs of her body,
" being Protestants ; hereby utterly renouncing and
" abjuring any obedience or allegiance unto any
" other person claiming or pretending a right to
realm ; and, I do further declare,
that it is not an article of my faith, and that I do

crown of tM

ounce, reject, an

abjure the opinion that

ces excommunicated

or deprived by the Pope,

Rome, may

subjects, or by

" do not believe that the Pope of
" other foreign prince, prelate, person, state, or po-
" tentate, hath, or ought to have, any temporal or

home, or any

" civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-emi-
" nence, directly or indirectly, within this realm.
" I do swear, that I will defend, to the utmost of

, power, the settlement of property within this
" realm, as established by the laws : and, I do
" hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure
" any intention to subvert the present Church
" establishment as settled by law within this realm ;
" and, I do solemnly swear, that I will never exer-
" cise any privilege to which I am, or may become,
" entitled, to disturb or weaken the Protestant re-
" ligion, or Protestant government, in the United

lom; and, I do solemnly, in the presence of

s, testily, ant

aeclare,

at I Uo make

" this declaration, and every part thereof, in the
" plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath,
" without any evasion, equivocation, or mental

" reservation whatever. So help me God."
This act has now been in operation for nearly a
quarter of a century; and after this lengthened ex-
perience, the question is fairly before us, how far
the oath has proved to be an effectual barrier to the
evils which were anticipated from thus opening the
doors of Parliament to Romish legislators. It is
now no longer a matter of opinion, but we have
facts to deal with, and by these should the policy of
that measure be tried. Was the oath of any avail,
when the Romanist members voted with Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, to appropriate the surplus revenues of
the Irish Church for secular purposes? Did it
bind those who swore by it, when they entered into
the Lichfield-House compact to support a Whig-
Radical Administration for the surrender of State
Patronage in Ireland ? Had DANIEL O'CONNELL
no mental reservation or equivocation, when he
agitated the Repeal of the Union, and endeavoured
by monster meetings to intimidate the Government
into further concessions, by which Ireland should
have been
Was the oath
whollybind
isnugr roe
nn d:lrre. de
itioi
sßHootsih
Apxr ise
Ts tus
y?
and others, in their ceaseless endeavours to remove
every remaining disability, and even to legalise the
idolatrous processions of Rome and similar mum-
meries ? Was the oath of any avail, when the POPE
OF ROME made the daring attempt to parcel out
England into dioceses, and was openly supported
in Parliament by men who had subscribed the fore-
.
Can We indeed point to any

going declaration

of N

~uRMAN

mho 0

n Uhurch—t

llaynooth. College, fo

ned the prison door to

owment of

Romish

of the

Romish hierarchy to the statutes for the Godless
Colleges ih Ireland—the advice to Queen VICTORIA,
when in Dublin, to receive deputations from Romish
bodies, and to reject one from a society because it
was exclusively Protestant—the measure to estab-

of Rome,

sh diplomatic relations with the Court