them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties
like these, it must be evident that, where his superstition was
concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour could bind him. To
trust him would thenceforth be impossible; and, if his people
could not trust him, what member of his Church could they trust?
He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually
treacherous. To his blunt manner, and to his want of
consideration for the feelings of others, he owed a much higher
reputation for sincerity than he at all deserved. His eulogists
affected to call him James the Just. If then it should appear
that, in turning Papist, he had also turned dissembler and
promisebreaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a
nation already disposed to believe that Popery had a pernicious
influence on the moral character?

On these grounds many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that
age, and among them the Supreme Pontiff, were of opinion that the
interest of their Church in our island would be most effectually
promoted by a moderate and constitutional policy. But such
reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious
temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities
under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a course
which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of
his time that those disabilities were essential to the safety of
the state. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three
years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty
years of subjection and degradation.

Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly raised
regiments. This breach of the law for a time passed uncensured: