the chief weight even in the Convocation.  Every bishop, every dean, every holder of a crown living, every head of every college which was subject to the royal power, would have belonged to the Church of Rome.  Almost all the places of liberal education would have been under the direction of Catholics.  The whole power of licensing books would have been in the hands of Catholics.  All this immense mass of power would have been steadily supported by the arms and by the gold of France, and would have descended to an heir whose whole education would have been conducted with a view to one single end, the complete re-establishment of the Catholic religion.  The House of Commons would have been the only legal obstacle.  But the rights of a great portion of the electors were at the mercy of the courts of law; and the courts of law were absolutely dependent on the Crown.  We cannot therefore think it altogether impossible that a House might have been packed which would have restored the days of Mary.

We certainly do not believe that this would have been tamely borne.  But we do believe that, if the nation had been deluded by the King’s professions of toleration, all this would have been attempted, and could have been averted only by a most bloody and destructive contest, in which the whole Protestant population would have been opposed to the Catholics.  On the one side would have been a vast numerical superiority.  But on the other side would have been the whole organization of government, and two great disciplined armies, that of James, and that of Lewis.  We do not doubt that the nation would have achieved its deliverance.  But we believe that the struggle would have shaken the whole fabric of society, and that the vengeance of the conquerors would have been terrible and unsparing.

But James was stopped at the outset.  He thought himself secure of the Tories, because they professed to consider all resistance as sinful, and of the Protestant Dissenters, because he offered them relief.  He was in the wrong as to both.  The error into which he fell about the Dissenters was very natural.  But the confidence which he placed in the loyal assurances of the High Church party, was the most exquisitely ludicrous proof of folly that a politician ever gave.

Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbours believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe.  Imagine a man acting on the supposition that he may safely offer the deadliest injuries and insults to everybody who says that revenge is sinful; or that he may safely intrust all his property without security to any person who says that it is wrong to steal.  Such a character would be too absurd for the wildest farce.  Yet the folly of James did not stop short of this incredible extent.  Because the clergy had declared that resistance to oppression was in no case lawful, he conceived that he might oppress them exactly as much as he chose, without the smallest