+

of which we cannot speak very highly, for the | we know most certainly that in 1679, and ong purpose of inculcating this opinion. The edi- after that year, James was a most bloody and tor of Sir James Mackintosh's Fragment as- remorseless persecutor. After 1679 he was sures us that the standard of James bore the placed at the head of the government of Scotnobler inscription, and so forth; the meaning land. And what had been his conduct in that of which is, that William and the other authors country? He had hunted down the scattered of the Revolution were vile Whigs, who drove remnant of the Covenanters with a barbarity out James for being a Radical-that the crime of which no prince of modern times, Philip the of the king was his going farther in liberality Second excepted, had ever shown himself cathan his subjects-that he was the real cham- pable. He had indulged himself in the amusepion of freedom, and that Somers, Locke, ment of seeing the torture of the "Boot" inNewton, and other narrow-minded people of flicted on the wretched enthusiasts whom perthe same sort, were the real bigots and op- secution had driven to resistance. After his pressors. 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 de fence of the Episcopalian against the Presby terian 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 the 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 un clean panther, would not, we are told, have persecuted for the sake of the milk-white and immortal hind!

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, on 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.

It is true that he professes 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 the truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error.

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 preroga tives, 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 The Catholics lay under severe restraints in overstating the case, Dr. Lingard, a very comEngland. James wished to remove those re- petent, and assuredly not a very willing wit straints, and therefore he held a language ness, shall speak for us. The king," says favourable to liberty of conscience. But the that able but partial writer, "was disappointed; whole history of his life proves that this was he complained to Barillon of the obstinacy and a mere pretence. In 1679 he held similar lan- insincerity of the treasurer; and the latter reguage in a conversation with the magistrates ceived from the French envoy a very intelliof Amsterdam, and the author of the "Con-gible hint that the loss of office would result tinuation" refers to this circumstance as a from his adhesion to his religious creed. He 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

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 | ever been engaged, had called in the aid either who wished to have all men of all sects ren- of the magistrate or of the assassin, should have dered alike capable of holding office. These become as thorough-going friends to religious proceedings were alone sufficient to take away liberty as Dr. Franklin or Mr. Jefferson afterall credit from his liberal professions; and wards were, or, that a Jesuit-ridden bigot such, as we learn from the despatches of the should be induced to dissemble for the good Papal Nuncio, was really the effect. "Pare," of the church? says D'Adda, writing a few days after the retirement of Rochester, "pare che gli animi soni inaspriti della voce che corre tra il popolo, d'esser cacciato il detto ministro per non essere Cattolico, percio tirarsi al estermino dé 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.

The game which the Jesuits were playing was no new game. A hundred years before, they had preached up political freedom, just as they were now preaching up religious freedom. They had tried to raise the republicans against Henry the Fourth and Elizabeth, just as they were now trying to raise the Protestant Dissenters against the Church Establishment. In the sixteenth century, the tools of Philip the Second were constantly teaching doctrines that bordered on Jacobinism,-constantly insisting on the right of the people to cashier kings, and of every private citizen to plunge his dagger in the heart of a wicked ruler. In the seventeenth century, the persecutors of the Huguenots were crying out against the tyranny of the Established Church of England, and vindicating with the utmost fervour the right of all men to adore God after their own fashion. In both cases they were alike insincere. In both cases the fool who had trusted them would have found himself miserably duped. A good and wise man would doubtless disapprove of the arbitrary measures of Elizabeth. But would he have really served the interests of political liberty, if he had put faith in the professions of the Romish casuists, joined their party, and taken a share in Northumberland's revolt, or in Babington's conspiracy? Would he not have been assisting to establish a far worse and more loathsome tyranny than that which he was trying to put down? In the same manner, a good and wise man would doubtless see very much to condemn in the conduct of the Church of England under the Stuarts. But was he therefore to join the king and the Catholics against that Church? And was it not plain, that, by so doing, he would assist in setting up a spiritual despotism, compared with which the despotism of the establishment was as a little finger to the loins,-as chastisement with whips to chastisement with scorpions ?

English people. Had Louis kept his word? And was not one such instance of treachery enough for one generation?

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 Louis had a far stronger mind than James. that the establishment of equal toleration was He had at least an equally high sense of honour. not that plan? Was Louis for toleration? Was He was in a much less degree the slave of his the Vatican for toleration? Was the order of priests. He had promised to respect the edict Jesuits for toleration? We know that the li- of Nantes as solemnly as ever James had proberal professions of James were highly ap-mised to respect the religious liberty of the proved 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

The plan of James seems to us perfectly in telligible. The toleration, which, with the concurrence and applause of all the most cruel persecutors in Europe, he was offering to his people, was meant simply to divide them. This is the most obvious and vulgar of political artifices. We have seen it employed a hundred times within our own memory. At this mo ment we see the Carlists in France hallooing on the "extreme left” against the "centre left." Four years ago the same trick was practised in England. We have heard old buyers and sellers of boroughs,men who had been seated

in the House of Commons by the unsparing we believe, the chief weight even in the Convo ase of ejectments, and who had, through their whole lives, opposed every measure which tended to increase the power of the democracy, -abusing the Reform Bill as not democratic enough, appealing to the labouring classes, execrating the tyranny of the ten-pound householders, and exchanging compliments and caresses with the most noted incendiaries of our times. The cry of universal toleration was employed by James just as the cry of universal suffrage was lately employed by some veteran Tories. The object of the mock democrats of our time was to produce a conflict between the middle classes and the multitude, and thus to prevent all reform. The object of James was to produce a conflict between the Church and the Protestant Dissenters, and thus to facilitate the victory of the Catholics over both.

cation. Every bishop, every dean, every holder of a crown living, every head of every college which was subject to the royal power, would have belonged to the Church of Rome. Almost all the places of liberal education would have been under the direction of Catholics. The whole power of licensing books would have been in the hands of Catholics. All this immense mass of power would have been steadily supported by the arms and by the gold of France, and would have descended to an heir, whose whole education would have been conducted with a view to one single end,--the complete re-establishment of the Catholic religion. The House of Commons would have been the only legal obstacle. But the rights of a great portion of the electors were at the mercy of the courts of law, and the courts of law were abso

think it altogether impossible that a house might have been packed which would have re. stored the days of Mary.

We certainly do not believe that this would have been tamely borne. But we do believe that, if the nation had been deluded by the king's professions of toleration, all this would have been attempted, and could have been averted only by a most bloody and destruc tive contest, in which the whole Protestant population would have been opposed to the Catholics. On the one side would have been a vast numerical superiority. But on the other side would have been the whole organi zation of government, and two great disciplined armies, that of James and that of Louis. We do not doubt that the nation would have achieved its deliverance. But we believe that the struggle would have shaken the whole fa bric of society, and that the vengeance of the conquerors would have been terrible and unsparing.

We do not believe that he could have suc-lutely dependent on the crown. We cannot ceeded. But we do not think his plan so utterly frantic and hopeless as it has generally been thought; and we are sure that, if he had been allowed to gain his first point, the people would have had no remedy left but an appeal to physical force,--an appeal, too, which would have been made under the most unfavourable circumstances. He conceived that the Tories, hampered by their professions of passive obedience, would have submitted to his pleasure; and that the Dissenters, seduced by his delusive promises of relief, would have given him strenuous support. In this way he hoped to obtain a law, nominally for the removal of all religious disabilities, but really for the excluding of all Protestants from all offices. It is never to be forgotten, that a prince who has all the patronage of the state in his hands can, without violating the letter of the law, establish whatever test he chooses. And, from the whole conduct of James, we have not the smallest doubt that he would have availed himself of his power to the utmost. The statute-book might But James was stopped at the outset. He declare all Englishmen equally capable of hold- thought himself secure of the Tories, because ing office; but to what end, if all offices were they professed to consider all resistance as sinin the gift of a sovereign resolved not to em- ful-and of the Protestant Dissenters, because ploy a single heretic? We firmly believe that he offered them relief. He was in the wrong not one post in the government, in the army, as to both. The error into which he fell about in the navy, on the bench, or at the bar-not the Dissenters was very natural. But the con one peerage, nay, not one ecclesiastical bene-fidence which he placed in the loyal assurances fice in the royal gift, would have been bestowed of the High Church party was the most exquion any Protestant of any persuasion. Even sitely ludicrous proof of folly that a politician while the king had still strong motives to dis- ever gave. semble, he had made a Catholic Dean of Christ Only imagine a man acting for one single Church, and a Catholic President of Magdalen day on the supposition that all his neighbours College. There seems to be no doubt that the believe all that they profess, and act up to what See of York was kept vacant for another Ca- they believe. Imagine a man acting on the tholic. If James had been suffered to follow supposition, that he may safely offer the deadthis course for twenty years, every military liest injuries and insults to everybody who man, from a general to a drummer, every offi- says that revenge is sinful; or that he may cer of a ship, every judge, every king's coun- safely intrust all his property without security cil, every lord-lieutenant of a county, every to any person, who says that it is wrong to justice of the peace, every ambassador, every steal. Such a character would be too absurd minister of state, every person employed in the for the wildest farce. Yet the folly of James royal household, in the custom-house, in the did not stop short of this incredible extent. post-office, in the excise, would have been a Because the clergy had declared that resistance Catholic. The Catholics would have had a to oppression was in no case lawful, he conmajority in the House of Lords, even if that ceived that he might oppress them exactly as majority had been made, to use Sunderland's much as he chose, without the smallest danger phrase, by calling up a whole troop of the of resistance. He quite forgot that when they Auards to that House. They would have had, | magnified the royal prerogative, that preroga

The very great length to which this article has already been extended, renders it impossible for us to discuss, as we had meant to do, the characters and conduct of the leading English statesmen at this crisis. But we must offer a few remarks on the spirit and tendency of the Revolution of 1688.

The editor of this volume quotes the Declaration of Right, and tells us, that by looking at it, we may "judge at a glance whether the authors of the Revolution achieved all they might and ought, in their position, to have achieved whether the Commons of England did their duty to their constituents, their country, posterity, and universal freedom." We are at a loss to imagine how even this writer can have read and transcribed the Declaration of Right, and yet have so utterly misconceived its nature. That famous document is, as its very name imports, declaratory, and not remedial. It was never meant to be a measure of reform. It neither contained, nor was designed to contain, any allusion to those innovations which the authors of the Revolution considered as desirable, and which they speedily proceeded to make. The Declaration was merely a recital of certain old and wholesome laws which had been violat

tive was exerted on their side-that when they | vast royal power which three years before had preached endurance, they had nothing to en- seemed immovably fixed, vanished at once dure that when they declared it unlawful to like chaff in a hurricane. resist evil, none but Whigs and Dissenters suffered any evil. It had never occurred to him that a man feels the calamities of his enemies with one sort of sensibility, and his own with quite a different sort. It had never occurred to him as possible that a reverend divine might think it the duty of Baxter and Bunyan to bear insults, and to lie in dungeons without murmuring; and yet, when he saw the smallest chance that his own prebend might be transferred to some sly Father from Italy or Flanders, might begin to discover much matter for useful meditation in the texts touching Ehud's knife and Jael's hammer. His majesty was not aware, it should seem, that people do sometimes reconsider their opinions, and that nothing more disposes a man to reconsider his opinions than a suspicion that, if he adheres to them, he is very likely to be a beggar or a martyr. Yet it seems strange that these truths should have escaped the royal mind. Those Churchmen who had signed the Oxford declaration in fayour of passive obedience had also signed the thirty-nine articles. And yet the very man who confidently expected that, by a little coaxing and bullying, he should induce them to renounce the articles, was thunderstruck when he found that they were disposed to softened by the Stuarts; and a solemn protest against down the doctrines of the declaration. Nor did it necessarily follow that even if the theory of the Tories had undergone no modification, their practice would coincide with their theory. It might, one should think, have crossed the mind of a man of fifty, who had seen a great deal of the world, that people sometimes do what they think wrong. Though a prelate might hold that Paul directs us to obey even a Nero, it might not, on that account, be perfectly safe to treat the Right Reverend Father in God after the fashion of Nero, in the hope that he would continue to obey on the principles of Paul. The king indeed had only to look at home. He was at least as much attached to The principle on which the authors of the the Catholic Church as any Tory gentleman or Revolution acted cannot be mistaken. They clergyman could be to the Church of England. were perfectly aware that the English institu Adultery was at least as strongly condemned tions stood in need of reform. But they also by his Church as resistance by the Church of knew that an important point was gained if England. Yet his priests could not keep him they could settle, once for all, by a solemn from Arabella Sedley. While he was risking compact, the matters which had, during several his crown for the sake of his soul, he was risk-generations, been in controversy between the ing his soul for the sake of an ugly, dirty mistress. There is something delightfully grotesque in the spectacle of a man who, while living in the habitual violation of his own known duties, is unable to believe that any temptation can draw any other person aside from the path of virtue.

the validity of any precedent which might be set up in opposition to those laws. The words, as quoted by the writer himself, ran thus: "They do claim, demand, and insist upon all and singular the premises as their undoubted rights and liberties." Before a man begins to make improvements on his estate, he must know its boundaries. Before a legislature sits down to reform a constitution, it is fit to ascertain what that constitution really is. This was all that the declaration intended to do; and to quarrel with it because it did not directly introduce any beneficial changes, is to quarrel with meat for not being clothing.

Parliament and the crown. They therefore most judiciously abstained from mixing up the irritating and perplexing question of what ought to be the law, with the plain question of what was the law. As to the claims set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for debate. Whigs and Tories were generally James was disappointed in all his calcula- agreed as to the legality of the dispensing tions. His hope was, that the Tories would power, and of taxation imposed by the royal follow their principles, and that the Noncon- prerogative. The articles were therefore ad formists would follow their interests. Exactlyjusted in a very few days. But if the Parlia the reverse took place. The Tories sacrificed the principle of non-resistance to their interests: the Nonconformists rejected the delusive offers of the king, and stood firmly by their principles. The two parties whose strife had convulsed the empire during half a century, were united for a moment; and all that

ment had determined to revise the whole con stitution, and to provide new securities against misgovernment, before proclaiming the new sovereigns, months would have been lost in disputes. The coalition which had delivered the country would have been instantly dis solved. The Whigs would have quarreded

Irish.

himself to what should appear to be the fixed and deliberate sense of his Parliament. The security for the performance was this-that he had no claim to the throne except the choice of Parliament, and no means of maintaining himself on the throne but the support of Parliament. All the great and inestimable reforms which speedily followed the Revolution were implied in those simple words,-"The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, assembled at Westminster, do resolve that William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared King and Queen of England."

with the Tories, the Lords with the Commons, | this-that William would in all things conform the Church with the Dissenters; and all this storm of conflicting interests and conflicting theories would have been raging round a vacant throne. In the mean time, the greatest power on the continent was attacking our allies, and meditating a descent on our own territories. Dundee was raising the Highlands. The authority of James was still owned by the If the authors of the Revolution had been fools enough to take this course, we have little doubt that Luxembourg would have been upon them in the middle of their constitutionmaking. They might probably have been interrupted in a debate on Filmer's and Sydney's theories of government, by the entrance of the musketeers of Louis's household; and have been marched off, two and two, to frame imaginary monarchies and commonwealths in the Tower. We have had in our time abundant experience of the effects of such folly. We have seen nation after nation enslaved, because the friends of liberty wasted on discussions upon abstract points the time which ought to have been employed in preparing for vigorous national defence. The editor, apparently, would have had the English Revolution of 1688 end as the Revolutions of Spain and Naples ended in our days. Thank God, our deliverers were men of a very different order from the Spanish and Neapolitan legislators! They❘ might, on many subjects, hold opinions which, in the nineteenth century, would not be considered as liberal; but they were not dreaming pedants. They were statesmen accustomed to the management of great affairs. Their plans of reform were not so extensive as those of the lawgivers of Cadiz; but what they planned, they effected! and what they effected, that they maintained against the fiercest hostility at home and abroad.

And what were the reforms of which we speak? We will shortly recount some which we think the most important; and we will then leave our readers to judge whether those who consider the Revolution as a mere change of dynasty, beneficial to a few aristocrats, but useless to the body of the people, or those who consider it as a glorious and happy era in the history of the British nation and of the human species, have judged more correctly of its nature.

First in the list of the benefits which our country owes to the Revolution we place the Toleration Act. It is true that this measure fell short of the wishes of the leading Whigs. It is true also that, where Catholics were concerned, even the most enlightened of the leading Whigs held opinions by no means so liberal as those which are happily common at the present day. Those distinguished statesmen did, however, make a noble, and, in some respects, a successful struggle for the rights of conscience. Their wish was to bring the great body of the Protestant Dissenters within the pale of the Church, by judicious alterations in the liturgy and the articles; and to grant to those who still remained without that pale the most ample toleration. They framed a plan of comprehension which would have satisfied a great majority of the seceders; and they proposed the complete abolition of that absurd and odious test which, after having been for a century and a half a scandal to the pious, and a laughing-stock to the profane, was at length removed in our own time. The immense power of the clergy and of the Tory gentry frustrated these excellent designs. The Whigs, however, did much. They succeeded in obtaining a law, in the provisions of which a philosopher will doubtless find much to condemn, but which had the practical effect of enabling almost every Protestant nonconformist to follow the dictates of his own conscience without molestation. Scarcely a law in the statute-book is theoretically more objectionable than the Toleration Act. question whether in the whole of that mass of legislation, from the Great Charter downwards, there be a single law which has so much diex-minished the sum of human suffering,-which has done so much to allay bad passions,which has put an end to so much petty tyranny and vexation,-which has brought gladness, peace, and a sense of security to so many private dwellings.

Their first object was to seat William on the throne; and they were right. We say this without any reference to the eminent personal qualities of William, or to the follies and crimes of James. If the two princes had interchanged characters, our opinion would have still been the same. It was even more necessary to England at the time that her king should be a usurper than that he should be a hero. There could be no security for good government without a change of dynasty. The reverence for hereditary right and the doctrine of passive obedience had taken such a hold on the minds of the Tories that, if James had been restored to power on any conditions, their attachment to him would in all probability have revived, as the indignation which recent oppression had produced faded from their minds. It had become indispensable to have a sovereign whose title to his throne was strictly bound up with the title of the nation to its liberties. In the compact between the Prince of Orange and the Convention, there was one most important article which, though not pressed, was perfectly understood by both parfies, and for the performance of which the country had securities far better than all the vows that Charles I. or Ferdinand VII. ever took in the day of their weakness, and broke in the day of their power. The article was

But we

The second of those great reforms which the