Implications of the Act of Union
A DISTINGUISHED legal authority has recently commented on the Protestant succession to the throne of the UK. David Walker, Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, has recently published a further volume in the series: A Legal History of Scotland. In it he argues strongly that the union between Scotland and England in 1707 was the result of a treaty rather than an Act, which has important implications for possible amendment of the treaty. This is because an international treaty can be altered only by the states which signed the treaty. However, Professor Walker argues, “By the Treaty of Union itself the participating states extinguished themselves as distinct political entities and united themselves for ever into a new entity, a kingdom to be represented by one and the same Parliament. Accordingly, from the date of the union, there were no longer in existence the only political entities which could agree to amend or cancel the treaty or protocol and still less by an Act of a Parliament which did not then exist.”
Professor Walker was quoted in the context of possible Scottish independence, which would clearly be impossible according to his argument. He also commented as follows, “There has also been some mention of the possibility of changing the rule about the Protestant succession to the crown. There’s a provision about that in the Treaty of Union and any attempt to do so, in my view, could not lawfully be done.” This legal impediment is obviously an important safeguard against any weakening of the Protestant constitution of the United Kingdom.
-K.D.M.
The countryside march and Sabbath desecration
ON March 1, more than a quarter of a million people, including farmers, gamekeepers, landowners, and agricultural workers, came from all over the country and gathered in London. They marched in the city to demonstrate peacefully against what they perceive to be threats by the Government to their way of life and the rural economy.
However justified they may have been in protesting, they were not justified in having their march on the Christian Sabbath. Far from it! The fact that in excess of 250,000 people from rural areas, where traditionally the Lord’s Day was better observed than in urban areas, should so trample it underfoot is a sad and clear sign of the low moral state of our land.
We need not wonder at this deplorable decline when the people are being led, on the whole, by spiritually blind leaders. Taking part in the march was Canon William Sayer, of Norwich Cathedral, who said in defending his own country activities, “I hunt with the Norfolk Beagles, support the North Norfolk Harriers and shoot.” How reminiscent of the worldly Moderate ministers of old who were a plague in the land. Another clergyman, the Rev. T. Hoare, is reported to have “cancelled his 9 am Sunday service” with the “tacit approval of the Bishop of Whitby”, in order to support his parishioners on the march. Doing evil that good may come, never did bring good in the long run, but rather the reverse. Protestors cannot bring real good to the countryside by transgressing the Fourth Commandment.