Now, we admit that if the premises can be made out, the conclusion follows.  If it can be shown that James did sincerely wish to establish perfect freedom of conscience, we shall think his conduct deserving of indulgence, if not of praise.  We shall not be inclined to censure harshly even his illegal acts.  We conceive that so noble and salutary an object would have justified resistance on the part of subjects.  We can therefore scarcely deny that it would at least excuse encroachment on the part of a king.  But it can be proved, we think, by the strongest evidence, that James had no such object in view, and that, under the pretence of establishing perfect religious liberty, he was trying to establish the ascendency and the exclusive dominion of the Church of Rome.

It is true that he professed himself a supporter of toleration.  Every sect clamours for toleration when it is down.  We have not the smallest doubt that, when Bonner was in the Marshalsea, he thought it a very hard thing that a man should be locked up in a gaol for not being able to understand the words, “This is my body,” in the same way with the lords of the council.  It would not be very wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity, because he assures you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat.  The doctrine which from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words, and stripped of rhetorical disguise is simply this:  I am in the right, and you are in the wrong.  When you are the stronger you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth.  But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error.

The Catholics lay under severe restraints in England.  James wished to remove those restraints; and therefore he held a language favourable to liberty of conscience.  But the whole history of his life proves that this was a mere pretence.  In 1679 he held similar language, in a conversation with the magistrates of Amsterdam; and the author of the “Continuation” refers to the circumstance as a proof that the King had long entertained a strong feeling on the subject.  Unhappily it proves only the utter insincerity of all the King’s later professions.  If he had pretended to be converted to the doctrines of toleration after his accession to the throne, some credit might have been due to him.  But we know most certainly that, in 1679, and long after that year, James was a most bloody and remorseless persecutor.  After 1679, he was placed at the head of the government of Scotland.  And what had been his conduct in that country?  He had hunted down the scattered remnant of the Covenanters with a barbarity of which no other prince of modern times, Philip the Second excepted, had ever shown himself capable.  He had indulged himself in the amusement of seeing the torture