Nothing serves more to show the dependence in which he considered himself to be upon Louis than these contemptible shifts to which he condescended, for the purposes of explaining and apologising for such parts of his conduct as might be supposed to be less agreeable to that monarch than the rest.  An English parliament acting upon constitutional principles, and the Prince of Orange, were the two enemies whom Louis most dreaded; and, accordingly, whenever James found it necessary to make approaches to either of them, an apology was immediately to be offered to the French ambassador, to which truth sometimes and honour was always sacrificed.

Mr. Hume says the king found himself, by degrees, under the necessity of falling into an union with the French monarch, who could alone assist him in promoting the Catholic religion in England.  But when that historian wrote, those documents had not been made public, from which the account of the communications with Barillon has been taken, and by which it appears that a connection with France was, as well in point of time as in importance, the first object of his reign, and that the immediate specific motive to that connection was the same as that of his brother; the desire of rendering himself independent of parliament, and absolute, not that of establishing popery in England, which was considered as a more remote contingency.  That this was the case is evident from all the circumstances of the transaction, and especially from the zeal with which he was served in it by ministers who were never suspected of any leaning towards popery, and not one of whom (Sunderland excepted) could be brought to the measures that were afterwards taken in favour of that religion.  It is the more material to attend to this distinction, because the Tory historians, especially such of them as are not Jacobites, have taken much pains to induce us to attribute the violences and illegalities of this reign to James’s religion, which was peculiar to him, rather than to that desire of absolute power which so many other princes have had, have, and always will have, in common with him.  The policy of such misrepresentation is obvious.  If this reign is to be considered as a period insulated, as it were, and unconnected with the general course of history, and if the events of it are to be attributed exclusively to the particular character and particular attachments of the monarch, the sole inference will be that we must not have a Catholic for our king; whereas, if we consider it, which history well warrants us to do, as a part of that system which had been pursued by all the Stuart kings, as well prior as subsequent to the restoration, the lesson which it affords is very different, as well as far more instructive.  We are taught, generally, the dangers Englishmen will always be liable to, if, from favour to a prince upon the throne, or from a confidence, however grounded, that his views are agreeable to our own notions of