centuries, enlisted on the very field of battle, in the service
of the conquerors. In a nation proud of its sturdy justice and
plain good sense, no party could be found to take a firm middle
stand between the worst of oppositions and the worst of courts.
When on charges as wild as Mother Goose's tales, on the testimony
of wretches who proclaimed themselves to be spies and traitors,
and whom everybody now believes to have been also liars and
murderers, the offal of gaols and brothels, the leavings of the
hangman's whip and shears, Catholics guilty of nothing but their
religion were led like sheep to the Protestant shambles, where
were the loyal Tory gentry and the passively obedient clergy? And
where, when the time of retribution came, when laws were strained
and juries packed to destroy the leaders of the Whigs, when
charters were invaded, when Jeffreys and Kirke were making
Somersetshire what Lauderdale and Graham had made Scotland,
where were the ten thousand brisk boys of Shaftesbury, the
members of ignoramus juries, the wearers of the Polish medal?
All-powerful to destroy others, unable to save themselves,
the members of the two parties oppressed and were oppressed,
murdered and were murdered, in their turn. No lucid interval
occurred between the frantic paroxysms of two contradictory
illusions.

To the frequent changes of the government during the twenty years
which had preceded the Restoration, this unsteadiness is in a
great measure to be attributed. Other causes had also been at
work. Even if the country had been governed by the house of
Cromwell or by the remains of the Long Parliament, the extreme
austerity of the Puritans would necessarily have produced a
revulsion. Towards the close of the Protectorate many signs