few people then living might remember, the Gunpowder treason.  Oates’s account of the burning of London was in itself not more improbable than the project of blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, a project which had not only been entertained by very distinguished Catholics, but which had very narrowly missed of success.  As to the design on the King’s person, all the world knew that, within a century, two kings of France and a prince of Orange had been murdered by Catholics, purely from religious enthusiasm, that Elizabeth had been in constant danger of a similar fate, and that such attempts, to say the least, had not been discouraged by the highest authority of the Church of Rome.  The characters of some of the accused persons stood high; but so did that of Anthony Babington, and that of Everard Digby.  Those who suffered denied their guilt to the last; but no persons versed in criminal proceedings would attach any importance to this circumstance.  It was well known also that the most distinguished Catholic casuists had written largely in defence of regicide, of mental reservation, and of equivocation.  It was not quite impossible that men whose minds had been nourished with the writings of such casuists might think themselves justified in denying a charge which, if acknowledged, would bring great scandal on the Church.  The trials of the accused Catholics were exactly like all the state trials of those days; that is to say, as infamous as they could be.  They were neither fairer nor less fair than those of Algernon Sydney, of Rosewell, of Cornish, of all the unhappy men, in short, whom a predominant party brought to what was then facetiously called justice.  Till the Revolution purified our institutions and our manners, a state trial was merely a murder preceded by the uttering of certain gibberish and the performance of certain mummeries.

The Opposition had now the great body of the nation with them.  Thrice the King dissolved the Parliament; and thrice the constituent body sent him back representatives fully determined to keep strict watch on all his measures, and to exclude his brother from the throne.  Had the character of Charles resembled that of his father, this intestine discord would infallibly have ended in a civil war.  Obstinacy and passion would have been his ruin.  His levity and apathy were his security.  He resembled one of those light Indian boats which are safe because they are pliant, which yield to the impact of every wave, and which therefore bound without danger through a surf in which a vessel ribbed with heart of oak would inevitably perish.  The only thing about which his mind was unalterably made up was that, to use his own phrase, he would not go on his travels again for anybody or for anything.  His easy, indolent behaviour produced all the effects of the most artful policy.  He suffered things to take their course; and if Achitophel had been at one of his ears, and Machiavel at the other, they could have given him no better advice than to let