In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son.  He was not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name and profession, because both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance.  This, however, we waive.  We will concede that Charles was a good Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his case and that of James.

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year.  There is a certain class of men, who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses.  In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what is accidental:  they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defective.  If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous delight.  If some good end has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that

“Their labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil.”

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these people are utterly insensible.  The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing with them.  One sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint.  One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom.  These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which it has produced.  Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America.  They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy.  But mention the miseries of Ireland.  Then William is a hero.  Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men.  Then the Revolution is a glorious era.  The very same persons, who, in this country never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George’s Channel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and