March 12. 1833. CORONATION OATHS. LORD GREY has, in Parliament, said two things: first, that the Coronation Oaths only bind the king in his executive capacity; and, secondly, that members of the House of Commons are bound to represent by their votes the wishes and opinions of their constituents, and not their own. Put these two present stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who will pretend to assert ?—But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become either Trullibers or salaried placemen.”. Church and State, p.90. together, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional monarchy of England remains. It is clear that the Coronation Oaths would be no better than Highgate oaths. For in his executive capacity the king cannot do any thing, against the doing of which the oaths bind him; it is only in his legislative character that he possesses a free agency capable of being bound. The nation meant to bind that. March 14. 1833. DIVINITY. - PROFESSIONS AND TRADES. DIVINITY is essentially the first of the professions, because it is necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some at some times. I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract existence, but in their applicability to man. Every true science bears necessarily within itself the germ of a cognate profession, and the more you can elevate trades into professions the better. March 17. 1833. MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY. WHAT solemn humbug this modern political economy is! What is there true of the little that is true in their dogmatic books which is not a simple deduction from the moral and religious credenda and agenda of any good man, and with which we were not all previously acquainted, and upon which every man of common sense instinctively acted? I know none. But what they truly state, they do not truly understand in its ultimate grounds and causes; and hence they have sometimes done more mischief by their half-ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about, and deductions from, well-founded positions, than they could have done by the promulgation of positive error. This particularly applies to their famous ratios of increase between man and the means of his subsistence. Political economy, at the highest, can never be a pure science. You may demonstrate that certain properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge-builder can ever reduce into brick and mortar; but an abstract conclusion in a matter of political economy, the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, is not a truth, but a chimera - a practical falsehood. For there are no theorems in political economy-but problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; the question is, how to do so and so with them. Political philosophy, indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even those ends are all practical; and if you desert the conditions of reality, or of common probability, you may show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but the utmost you can produce will be a Utopia or Oceana. You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8d. to 6d. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian and patriot a hundred-fold? All is an endless fleeting abstraction; the whole is a reality. NATIONAL DEBT. PROPERTY TAX. WHAT evil results to this country, taken at large, from the National Debt? I never could get a plain and practical answer to that question. As to taxation to pay the interest, |