the counsels of statesmen. The idea had not
yet arisen in the minds of Englishmen--even of men as able as
Walpole--that liberty meant anything more than liberty for the expression
of one's own opinions, and for the carrying into action of one's own
policy. Those who were in power immediately made it their business to
strengthen their own hands, and to prevent as far as possible the growth
of opinions, the expression of ideas, unfavorable to themselves. Yet at
such a time there were not wanting advocates of the administration to
write that it was "indeed the peculiar happiness and glory of an
Englishman that he must first quit these kingdoms before he can
experimentally know the want of public liberty." Most people, even
still, read history by the light of ideas which prevailed up to the close
of George the First's reign. We are all ready enough to admit that in
our time it would not be a free system which suppressed or prevented the
expression of other men's opinions, or which attached any manner of penal
consequence to the profession of one creed or the adhesion to one party.
But most of us are, nevertheless, ready enough to describe one period of
English history, the reign perhaps of one sovereign, as a period of
religious liberty, and another season, or reign, as a time when liberty
was suppressed. Some Englishmen talk with enthusiasm of the spirit of
Elizabeth's reign, or the spirit of the reign of William the Third, and
condemn in unmeasured terms the spirit which influenced James the Second,
and which would no doubt have influenced James the Second's son if he had
come to the throne. But any one who will put aside for the moment his
own particular opinions will see that in both cases the guiding principle
was exactly the same. Never were there greater acts of political and
religious intolerance committed than during the reign of Elizabeth and
during the reign of William the Third. The truth is that the modern idea
of constitutional and political liberty did not {145} exist among English
statesmen even so recently as the reign of William the Third. At the
period with which we are now dealing it would not have occurred to any
statesman that there could be a wiser course to take than to follow up
the suppression of the insurrection of 1715 by making more stringent than
ever the laws already in existence against the religion to which most of
the rebels belonged.

[Sidenote: 1716--The Triennial Bill]

The G