tolerance and charity, the zeal of the prelates for preserving the
integrity of the British constitution and the limiting of the royal power
flamed up into rebellion. They forswore themselves without scruple: the
disciples of Laud, the asserters of kingly infallibility and divine
right, talked of usurped power and English rights in the strain of the
very schismatics whom they had persecuted to the death. There is no
reason to believe that James supposed that, in issuing his declaration
suspending the penal laws, he had transcended the rightful prerogative of
his throne. The power which he exercised had been used by his
predecessors for far less worthy purposes, and with the approbation of
many of the very men who now opposed him. His ostensible object,
expressed in language which even those who condemn his policy cannot but
admire, was a laudable and noble one. "We trust," said he, "that it will
not be vain that we have resolved to use our utmost endeavors to
establish liberty of conscience on such just and equal foundations as
will render it unalterable, and secure to all people the free exercise of
their religion, by which future ages may reap the benefit of what is so
undoubtedly the general good of the whole kingdom." Whatever may have
been the motive of this declaration,--even admitting the suspicions of
his enemies to have been true, that he advocated universal toleration as
the only means of restoring Roman Catholics to all the rights and
privileges of which the penal laws deprived them,--it would seem that
there could have been no very serious objection on the part of real
friends of religious toleration to the taking of him at his word and
placing Englishmen of every sect on an equality before the law. The
Catholics were in a very small minority, scarcely at that time as
numerous as the Quakers and Anabaptists. The army, the navy, and nine
tenths of the people of England were Protestants. Real danger,
therefore, from a simple act of justice towards their Catholic fellow-
citizens, the people of England had no ground for apprehending. But the