And their Majesties, as soon as affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavor to procure the said Roman Catholics such farther security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion.”  The ninth article is to this effect:—­“The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their Majesties’ government shall be the oath abovesaid, and no other,”—­viz., the oath of allegiance, made by act of Parliament in England, in the first year of their then Majesties; as required by the second of the Articles of Limerick.  Compare this latter article with the penal laws, as they are stated in the Second Chapter, and judge whether they seem to be the public acts of the same power, and observe whether other oaths are tendered to them, and under what penalties.  Compare the former with the same laws, from the beginning to the end, and judge whether the Roman Catholics have been preserved, agreeably to the sense of the article, from any disturbance upon account of their religion,—­or rather, whether on that account there is a single right of Nature or benefit of society which has not been either totally taken away or considerably impaired.

But it is said, that the legislature was not bound by this article, as it has never been ratified in Parliament.  I do admit that it never had that sanction, and that the Parliament was under no obligation to ratify these articles by any express act of theirs But still I am at a loss how they came to be the less valid, on the principles of our Constitution, by being without that sanction.  They certainly bound the king and his successors.  The words of the article do this, or they do nothing; and so far as the crown had a share in passing those acts, the public faith was unquestionably broken.  In Ireland such a breach on the part of the crown was much more unpardonable in administration than it would have been here.  They have in Ireland a way of preventing any bill even from approaching the royal presence, in matters of far less importance than the honor and faith of the crown and the well-being of a great body of the people.  For, besides that they might have opposed the very first suggestion of it in the House of Commons, it could not be framed into a bill without the approbation of the Council in Ireland.  It could not be returned to them again without the approbation of the King and Council here.  They might have met it again in its second passage through that House of Parliament in which it was originally suggested, as well as in the other.  If it had escaped them through all these mazes, it was again to come before the Lord Lieutenant, who might have sunk it by a refusal of the royal assent.  The Constitution of Ireland has interposed all those checks to the passing of any constitutional act, however insignificant in its own nature.  But did the administration in that reign avail themselves of any one of those opportunities?