As was mentioned in the preceding chapter, Pitt found himself unable to fulfil the hopes which, in his negotiations with different parties in Ireland, he had led the Roman Catholics to entertain of the removal of their civil and political disabilities.  So rigorous were those restrictions, both in England and Ireland, that a Roman Catholic could not serve even as a private in the militia; and a motion made in 1797 by Mr. Wilberforce—­a man who could certainly not be suspected of any leaning to Roman Catholic doctrine—­to render them admissible to that service, though it was adopted in the House of Commons, was rejected by the House of Lords.  But Pitt, who on that occasion had supported Wilberforce, did not confine his views to the removal of a single petty disability, but proposed to put the whole body of Roman Catholics on a footing of perfect equality with Protestants in respect of their eligibility to every kind of office, with one or two exceptions.  And during the autumn of 1800 he was busily engaged in framing the details of his measure, in order to submit it to his royal master in its entirety, and so to avoid disquieting him with a repetition of discussions on the subject, which he knew to be distasteful to him.  For, five years before, George III. had consulted the Chief-justice, Lord Kenyon, and the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott (afterward Lord Eldon), on the question whether some proposed concessions to Dissenters, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, did not “militate against the coronation oath and many existing statutes;” and had received their legal opinion that the tests enacted in the reign of Charles II., “though wise laws, and in policy not to be departed from, might be repealed or altered without any breach of the coronation oath or Act of Union” (with Scotland).[150] Their opinions on the point were the more valuable, since they were notoriously opposed to their political convictions, and might be supposed to have carried sufficient conviction to the royal mind.  But his Majesty’s scruples were now, unfortunately, revived by the Lord Chancellor, who, strange to say, was himself a Presbyterian; and who treacherously availed himself of his knowledge of what was in contemplation to anticipate the Prime-minister’s intended explanations to the King.  He fully succeeded in his object of fixing the King’s resolution to refuse his assent to the contemplated concessions (which, by a curious confusion of ideas, his Majesty even characterized as “Jacobinical"[151]), though not in the object which he had still more at heart, of inducing the King to regard him as the statesman in the whole kingdom the most deserving of his confidence.  The merits of the question will be more appropriately examined hereafter.  It is sufficient to say here that Pitt, conceiving himself bound by personal honor as well as by statesman-like duty to persevere in his intended measure, or to retire from an office which no man is justified in holding unless he can discharge its functions in accordance with his own judgment of what is required by the best interests of the state, resigned his post, and was succeeded by Mr. Addington.