period a third great reaction took place. The excesses of tyranny restored to the cause of liberty the hearts which had been alienated from that cause by the excesses of faction. In 1681, the King had almost all his enemies at his feet. In 1688, the King was an exile in a strange land.

The whole of that machinery which had lately been in motion against the Papists, was now put in motion against the Whigs→→ browbeating judges, packed juries, lying witnesses, clamorous spectators. The ablest chief of the party fled to a foreign country and died there. The most virtuous man of the party was beheaded. Another of its most distinguished members preferred a voluntary death to the shame of a public execution. The boroughs on which the government could not depend were, by means of legal quibbles, deprived of their charters; and their constitution was remodelled in such a manner as almost to insure the return of representatives devoted to the court. All parts of the kingdom emulously sent up the most extravagant assurances of the love which they bore to their sovereign, and of the abhorrence with which they regarded those who questioned the divine origin, or the boundless extent of his power. It is scarcely necessary to say, that in this hot competition of bigots and slaves, the University of Oxford had the unquestioned pre-eminence. The glory of being farther behind the age than any other class of the British people, is one which that learned body acquired early, and has never lost.

Charles died, and his brother came to the throne; but though the person of the sovereign was changed, the love and awe with which the office was regarded, were undiminished. Indeed it seems that, of the two princes, James was, in spite of his religion, rather the favourite of the High Church party. He had been specially singled out as the mark of the Whigs, and this circumstance sufficed to make him the idol of the Tories. He called a parliament. The loyal gentry of the counties, and the packed voters of the remodelled boroughs, gave him a parliament such as England had not seen for a century-a parliament beyond all comparison the most obsequious that ever sate under a prince of the House of Stuart. One insurrectionary movement, indeed, took place in England, and another in Scotland. Both were put down with ease, and punished with tremendous severity. Even after that bloody circuit, which will never be forgotten while the English race exists in any part of the globe, no member of the House of Commons ventured to whisper even the mildest censure on Jeffries. Edmund Waller, emboldened by his great age and his high reputation, attacked the cruelty of the military chiefs; and this is the brightest part of his long and checkered public

life. But even Waller did not venture to arraign the still more odious cruelty of the Chief Justice. It is hardly too much to say that James, at that time, had little reason to envy the extent of authority possessed by Louis XIV.

By what means this vast power was in three years broken down-by what perverse and frantic misgovernment the tyrant revived the spirit of the vanquished Whigs, turned to fixed hostility the neutrality of the trimmers, and drove from him the landed gentry, the Church, the army, his own creatures, his own children is well known to our readers. But we wish to say something about one part of the question, which in our own time has a little puzzled some very worthy men, and upon which the author of the Continuation' before us pours forth, as might be expected, much nonsense.

James, it is said, declared himself a supporter of toleration. If he violated the constitution, he at least violated it for one of the noblest ends that any statesman ever had in view. His object was to free millions of his countrymen from penal laws and disabilities which hardly any person now considers as just. He ought, therefore, to be regarded as blameless, or at worst, as guilty only of employing irregular means to effect a most praiseworthy purpose. A very ingenious man, whom we believe to be a Catholic, Mr Banim, has written a historical novel, of the literary merit of which we cannot speak very highly, for the purpose of inculcating this opinion. The editor of Sir James Mackintosh's Fragment assures us, that the standard of James bore the nobler inscription, and so forth;-the meaning of which is, that William, and the other authors of the Revolution, were vile Whigs, who drove out James for being a Radical,—that the crime of the King was his going farther in liberality than his subjects, -that he was the real champion of freedom, and that Somers, Locke, Newton, and other narrow-minded people of the same sort, were the real bigots and oppressors.

Now, we admit that if the premises can be made out the conclusion follows. If it can be shown that James did sincerely wish to establish perfect freedom of conscience, we shall think his conduct deserving, not only of indulgence, but of praise. We shall applaud even his illegal acts. We conceive that so noble and salutary an object would have justified resistance on the part of subjects. We can therefore scarcely deny that it would justify encroachment on the part of a king. But it can be proved, we think, by the strongest evidence, that James had no such object in view; and that, under the pretence of establishing perfect religious liberty, he was establishing the ascendency and the exclusive dominion of the Church of Rome.

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It is true that he professed himself a supporter of toleration. Every sect clamours for toleration when it is down. We have not the smallest doubt that, when Bonner was in the Marshalsea, he thought it a very hard thing that a man should be locked up in a jail for not being able to understand the words, This is my body,' in the same way with the lords of the council. It would be thought strange logic to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity, because he assures you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane, because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat. The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words, and stripped of all rhetorical disguise, is simply this,-I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to per

secute error.

The Catholics lay under severe restraints in England. James wished to remove those restraints, and therefore he held a language favourable to liberty of conscience. But the whole history of his life proves that this was a mere pretence. In 1679 he held similar language, in a conversation with the magistrates of Amsterdam; and the author of the Continuation,' refers to this circumstance as a proof that the King had long entertained a strong feeling on the subject. Unhappily it proves only the utter insincerity of all the King's later professions. If he had pretended to be converted to the doctrines of toleration after his accession to the throne, some credit might have been due to his professions. But we know most certainly that in 1679, and long after that year, James was a most bloody and remorseless persecutor. After 1679, he was placed at the head of the government of Scotland. And what had been his conduct in that country? He had hunted down the scattered remnant of the Covenanters, with a barbarity of which no prince of modern times, Philip the Second excepted, had ever shown himself capable. He had indulged himself in the amusement of seeing the torture of the Boot' inflicted on the wretched enthusiasts whom persecution had driven to resistance. After his accession, almost his first act was to obtain from the servile parliament of Scotland, a law for inflicting death on preachers at conventicles held within houses, and on both preachers and hearers, at conventicles held in the open air. And all this he had done for a religion which was not his own. All this he had done, not in defence of truth against error, but in defence of one damnable error against another, in defence of the Episcopalian

against the Presbyterian apostasy. Louis XIV. is justly censured for trying to dragoon his subjects to heaven. But it was reserved for James to torture and murder for the difference between two roads to hell. And this man, so deeply imbued with the poison of intolerance, that rather than not persecute at all, he would persecute men out of one heresy into another this man is held up as the champion of religious liberty! This man, who persecuted in the cause of the unclean panther, would not, we are told, have persecuted for the sake of the milk-white and immortal hind!

And what was the conduct of James at the very time when he was professing zeal for the rights of conscience? Was he not even then persecuting to the very best of his power? Was he not employing all his legal prerogatives, and many prerogatives which were not legal, for the purpose of forcing his subjects to conform to his creed? While he pretended to abhor the laws which excluded dissenters from office, was he not himself dismissing from office his ablest, his most experienced, his most faithful servants, on account of their religious opinions? For what offence was Lord Rochester driven from the treasury? He was closely connected with the Royal House. He was at the head of the Tory party. He had stood firmly by James in the most trying emergencies. But he would not change his religion, and he was dismissed. That we may not be suspected of overstating the case, Dr Lingard, a very competent, and assuredly not a very willing witness, shall speak for us. The king,' says that able but partial writer, was disappointed: he complained to Barillon of the obstinacy and insincerity of the treasurer; and the latter received from the French envoy a very intelli'gible hint that the loss of office would result from his adhesion 'to his religious creed. He was, however, inflexible, and James, ' after a long delay, communicated to him, but with considerable 'embarrassment and many tears, his final determination. He ' had hoped, he said, that Rochester, by conforming to the Church ' of Rome, would have spared him the unpleasant task: but kings 'must sacrifice their feelings to their duty.' And this was the king who wished to have all men of all sects rendered alike capable of holding office. These proceedings were alone sufficient to take away all credit from his liberal professions; and such, as we learn from the despatches of the Papal Nuncio, was really the effect. Pare,' says D'Adda, writing a few days after the retirement of Rochester, 'pare che gli animi sono inaspriti della ' voce che corre tra il popolo, d'esser cacciato il detto ministro per non essere Cattolico, percio tirarsi al esterminio de Protestanti.' Was it ever denied that the favours of the Crown were

constantly bestowed and withheld purely on account of the religious opinions of the claimants? And if these things were done in the green tree, what would have been done in the dry? If James acted thus when he had the strongest motives to court his Protestant subjects, what course was he likely to follow when he had obtained from them all that he asked?

Who again was his closest ally? And what was the policy of that ally? The subjects of James, it is true, did not know half the infamy of their sovereign. They did not know, as we know, that, while he was lecturing them on the blessings of equal toleration, he was constantly congratulating his good brother Louis on the success of that intolerant policy which had turned the fairest tracts of France into deserts, and driven into exile myriads of the most peaceable, industrious, and skilful artisans in the world. But the English did know that the two princes were bound together in the closest union. They saw their sovereign, with toleration on his lips, separating himself from those states which had first set the example of toleration, and connecting himself by the strongest ties with the most faithless and merciless persecutor who could then be found on any continental throne.

By what advice again was James guided? Who were the persons in whom he placed the greatest confidence, and who took the warmest interest in his schemes? The ambassador of France, -the Nuncio of Rome,-and Father Petre the Jesuit. These were the people who showed the greatest anxiety that the king's plan might succeed. And is not this enough to prove that the establishment of equal toleration was not that plan? Was Louis for toleration? Was the Vatican for toleration? Was the order of Jesuits for toleration? We know that the liberal professions of James were highly approved by those very governments, by those very societies, whose theory and practice it notoriously was to keep no faith with heretics, and to give no quarter to heretics. And are we, in order to save James's reputation for sincerity, to believe that all at once those governments and those societies had changed their nature, had discovered the criminality of all their former conduct, had adopted principles far more liberal than those of Locke, of Leighton, or of Tillotson? Which is the more probable supposition,-that the King who had revoked the edict of Nantes, the Pope under whose sanction the Inquisition was then imprisoning and burning, the religious order which, in every controversy in which it had ever been engaged, had called in the aid either of the magistrate or of the assassin, should have become as thorough-going friends to religious liberty as Dr Franklin or Mr Jefferson afterwards were,