It is certain that, just before the Restoration, he declared to the Regicides that he would be damned, body and soul, rather than suffer a hair of their heads to be hurt, and that, just after the Restoration, he was one of the judges who sentenced them to death.  It is certain that he was a principal member of the most profligate Administration ever known, and that he was afterwards a principal member oft the most profligate Opposition ever known.  It is certain that, in power, he did not scruple to violate the great fundamental principle of the Constitution, in order to exalt the Catholics, and that, out of power, he did not scruple to violate every principle of justice, in order to destroy them.  There were in that age some honest men, such as William Penn, who valued toleration so highly that they would willingly have seen it established even by an illegal exertion of the prerogative.  There were many honest men who dreaded arbitrary power so much that, on account of the alliance between Popery and arbitrary power, they were disposed to grant no toleration to Papists.  On both those classes we look with indulgence, though we think both in the wrong.  But Shaftesbury belonged to neither class.  He united all that was worst in both.  From the misguided friends of toleration he borrowed their contempt for the Constitution, and from the misguided friends of civil liberty their contempt for the rights of conscience.  We never can admit that his conduct as a mmember of the Cabal was redeemed by his conduct as a leader of Opposition.  On the contrary, his life was such that every part of it, as if by a skilful contrivance, reflects infamy on every other.  We should never have known how abandoned a prostitute he was in place, if we had not known how desperate an incendiary he was out of it.  To judge of him fairly, we must bear in mind that the Shaftesbury who, in office, was the chief author of the Declaration of Indulgence, was the same Shaftesbury who, out of office, excited and kept up the savage hatred of the rabble of London against the very class to whom that Declaration of Indulgence was intended to give illegal relief.

It is amusing to see the excuses that are made for him.  We will give two specimens.  It is acknowledged that he was one of the Ministry which made the alliance with France against Holland, and that this alliance was most pernicious.  What, then, is the defence?  Even this, that he betrayed his master’s counsels to the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and tried to rouse all the Protestant powers of Germany to defend the States.  Again, it is acknowledged that he was deeply concerned in the Declaration of Indulgence, and that his conduct on this occasion was not only unconstitutional, but quite inconsistent with the course which he afterwards took respecting the professors of the Catholic faith.  What, then, is the defence?  Even this, that he meant only to allure concealed Papists to avow themselves, and thus to become open