VII. CHAP. making proselytes. To be of his Church was, in his view, the first of all qualifications for office. To be of the national Church was a positive disqualification. He reprobated, it is true, in language which has been applauded by some credulous friends of religious liberty, the monstrous injustice of that test which excluded a small minority of the nation from public trust: but he was at the same time instituting a test which excluded the majority. He thought it hard that a man who was a good financier and a loyal subject should be excluded from the post of Lord Treasurer merely for being a Papist. But he had himself turned out a Lord Treasurer whom he admitted to be a good financier and a loyal subject merely for being a Protestant. He had repeatedly and distinctly declared his resolution never to put the white staff in the hands of any heretic. With many other great offices of state he had dealt in the same way. Already the Lord President, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Chamberlain, the Groom of the Stole, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Principal Secretary of State, the Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, the Chancellor of Scotland, the Secretary of Scotland, were, or pretended to be, Roman Catholics. Most of these functionaries had been bred Churchmen, and had been guilty of apostasy, open or secret, in order to obtain or to keep their high places. Every Protestant who still held an important post in the government held it in constant uncertainty and fear. It would be endless to recount the situations of a lower rank which were filled by the favoured class. Roman Catholics already swarmed in every department of the public service. They were Lords Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants, Judges, Justices of the Peace, Commissioners of the Customs, Envoys to foreign courts, Colonels of regiments, Governors of fortresses. The share which in a few months they had obtained of the temporal patronage of the crown was much more than ten times as great as they would have had under an impartial system. Yet this was not the worst. They were made rulers of the Church of England. Men who had assured the King that they held his faith sate in the High Commission, and exercised supreme jurisdiction in spiritual things over all the prelates and priests of the established religion. Ecclesiastical benefices of great dignity had been bestowed, some on avowed Papists, and some on half concealed Papists. And all this had been done while the laws against Popery were VII. still unrepealed, and while James had still a strong interest CHAP. in affecting respect for the rights of conscience. What then was his conduct likely to be, if his subjects consented to free him, by a legislative act, from even the shadow of restraint? Is it possible to doubt that Protestants would have been as effectually excluded from employment, by a strictly legal use of the royal prerogative, as ever Roman Catholics had been by Act of Parliament ? How obstinately James was determined to bestow on the members of his own Church a share of patronage altogether out of proportion to their numbers and importance is proved by the instructions which, in exile and old age, he drew up for the guidance of his son. It is impossible to read without mingled pity and derision those effusions of a mind on which all the discipline of experience and adversity had been exhausted in vain. The Pretender is advised, if ever he should reign in England, to make a partition of offices, and carefully to reserve for the members of the Church of Rome a portion which might have sufficed for them if they had been one half instead of one fiftieth part of the nation. One Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, the majority of the great dignitaries of the household, the majority of the officers of the army, are always to be Catholics. Such were the designs of James after his perverse bigotry had drawn on him a punishment which had appalled the whole world. Is it then possible to doubt what his conduct would have been if his people, deluded by the empty name of religious liberty, had suffered him to proceed without any check? Even Penn, intemperate and undiscerning as was his zea for the Declaration, seems to have felt that the partiality with which honours and emoluments were heaped on Roman Catholics might not unnaturally excite the jealousy of the nation. He owned that, if the Test Act were repealed, the Protestants were entitled to an equivalent, and went so far as to suggest several equivalents. During some weeks the word equivalent, then lately imported from France, was in the mouths of all the coffeehouse orators; but at length a few pages of keen logic and polished sarcasm written by Halifax put an end to these idle projects. One of Penn's schemes was that a law should be passed dividing the patronage of the crown into three equal parts, and that to one only of those parts members of the Church of Rome СНАР. should be admitted. Even under such an arrangement the members of the Church of Rome would have obtained near twenty times their fair portion of official appointments; and yet there is no reason to believe that even to such an arrangement the King would have consented. But, had he consented, what guarantee could he give that he would adhere to his bargain? The dilemma propounded by Halifax was unanswerable. If laws are binding on you, observe the law which now exists. If laws are not binding on you, it is idle to offer us a law as a security.* It is clear, therefore, that the point at issue was not whether secular offices should be thrown open to all sects indifferently. While James was King it was inevitable that there should be exclusion; and the only question was who should be excluded, Papists or Protestants, the few or the many, a hundred thousand Englishmen or five millions. Such are the weighty arguments by which the conduct of the Prince of Orange towards the English Roman Catholics may be reconciled with the principles of religious liberty. These arguments, it will be observed, have no reference to any part of the Roman Catholic theology. It will also be observed that they ceased to have any force when the crown had been settled on a race of Protestant sovereigns, and when the power of the House of Commons in the state had become so decidedly preponderant that no sovereign, whatever might have been his opinions or his inclinations, could have imitated the example of James. The nation, however, after its terrors, its struggles, its narrow escape, was in a suspicious and vindictive mood. Means of defence therefore which necessity had once justified, and which necessity alone could justify, were obstinately used long after the necessity had ceased to exist, and were not abandoned till vulgar prejudice had maintained a contest of many years against reason. But in the time of James reason and vulgar prejudice were on the same side. The fanatical and ignorant wished to exclude the Roman Catholic from office because he worshipped stocks and stones, because he had the mark of the beast, because he had burned down London, because he had strangled Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey; and the most judicious and tolerant statesman, while smiling at the delusions which imposed on the populace, was led, by a very different road, to the same conclusion. * Johnstone, Jan. 13. 1688; Halifax's Anatomy of an Equivalent. VII. The great object of William now was to unite in one body CHAP. the numerous sections of the community which regarded him as their common head. In this work he had several able and trusty coadjutors, among whom two were preeminently useful, Burnet and Dykvelt. James to Burnet. The services of Burnet indeed it was necessary to employ Enmity of with some caution. The kindness with which he had been welcomed at the Hague had excited the rage of James. Mary received from her father two letters filled with in, vectives against the insolent and seditious divine whom she protected. But these accusations had so little effect on her that she sent back answers dictated by Burnet himself. At length, in January 1687, the King had recourse to stronger measures. Skelton, who had represented the English government in the United Provinces, was removed to Paris, and was succeeded by Albeville, the weakest and basest of all the members of the Jesuitical cabal. Money was Albeville's one object; and he took it from all who offered it. He was paid at once by France and by Holland. Nay, he stooped below even the miserable dignity of corruption, and accepted bribes so small that they seemed better suited to a porter or a lacquey than to an Envoy who had been honoured with an English baronetcy and a foreign marquisate. On one occasion he pocketed very complacently a gratuity of fifty pistoles as the price of a service which he had rendered to the States General. This man had it in charge to demand that Burnet should no longer be countenanced at the Hague. William, who was not inclined to part with a valuable friend, answered at first with his usual coldness; "I am not aware, sir, that, since the Doctor has been here, he has done or said anything of which His Majesty can justly complain.' But James was peremptory: the time for an open rupture had not arrived; and it was necessary to give way. During more than eighteen ! months Burnet never came into the presence of either the Prince or the Princess: but he resided near them: he was fully informed of all that was passing: his advice was constantly asked: his pen was employed on all important occasions; and many of the sharpest and most effective tracts which about that time appeared in London were justly attributed to him. The rage of James flamed high. He had always been more than sufficiently prone to the angry passions. But none of his enemies, not even those who had conspired against VOL. II. СНАР. T his life, not even those who had attempted by perjury to l him with the guilt of treason and assassination, had e been regarded by him with such animosity as he now felt Burnet. His Majesty railed daily at the Doctor in unkin language, and meditated plans of unlawful revenge. E blood would not slake that frantic hatred. The insol divine must be tortured before he was permitted to Fortunately he was by birth a Scot; and in Scotland, bef he was gibbeted in the Grassmarket, his legs might dislocated in the boot. Proceedings were accordingly ins tuted against him at Edinburgh: but he had been naturalis in Holland: he had married a woman of fortune who was native of that province; and it was certain that his adopt country would not deliver him up. It was therefore det mined to kidnap him. Ruffians were hired with great su of money to perform this perilous and infamous service. order for three thousand pounds on this account was actual drawn up for signature in the office of the Secretary of Stat Lewis was apprised of the design, and took a warm intere in it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to conv the villain to England, and would undertake that t ministers of the vengeance of James should find a secu asylum in France. Burnet was well aware of his dange but timidity was not among his faults. He published courageous answer to the charges which had been broug against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it w intended to execute him without a trial: but his tru was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent blood woul not cry in vain, even against the mightiest princes of th earth. He gave a farewell dinner to some friends, and, aft the meal, took solemn leave of them, as a man who wa doomed to death, and with whom they could no longer safel converse. Nevertheless he continued to show himself in a the public places of the Hague so boldly that his friend reproached him bitterly with his foolhardiness.* July 28. Dec. 50, 1687 19 29 7 * Burnet, i. 726-731.; Answer to the danger to which he was exposed, the Criminal Letters issued out against will give the words of Lewis and Dr. Burnet; Avaux Neg. July 14, Johnstone. 17 24 1687, Jan. 18. 1688; Lewis to Barillon, Jan 9. 1688 Johnstone of Waristoun, Feb. 21. 1688; Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, Oct. 5. 1687. As it has been suspected that Burnet, who certainly was not in the habit of underrating his own importance, exaggerated "Qui que ce soit," say Lewis, "qui entreprenne de l'enlever Hollande trouvera non seulement un dans mes états, mais aussi toute l'assis retraite assurée et une entière protectio tance qu'il pourra désirer pour faire con duire surement ce scélérat en Angle terre." "The business of Bamfield (Bur |