om being a measure of
persecution, it was a measure of relief. Our readers will, no doubt, be
curious to know how this bold position was sustained. In this wise: the
penalties prescribed for the Catholics in Elizabeth's reign were much
greater in amount than those which the Bill proposed to inflict on the
Catholics of King George's time; therefore the Bill was an indulgence and
not a persecution--a mitigation of penalty, not a punishment. Let us
reduce the argument to plain figures. A Catholic in the reign of
Elizabeth is declared liable to a penalty of twenty pounds, but out of
considerations of humanity or justice the penalty is not enforced. The
descendant and heir of that same Catholic in the reign of George the
First is fined fifteen pounds, and the fine is exacted. He complains,
and he is told, "You have no right to complain; you ought to be grateful;
the original fine ordained was twenty pounds; you have been let off five
pounds--you have been favored by an act of indulgence, not victimized by
an act of persecution." Lord Cowper had not much trouble in disposing of
arguments of this kind, but his speech took a wider range, and is indeed
a masterly exposure of the whole principle on which the measure was
founded. On May 22, 1723, sixty-nine peers voted for the third reading
of the Bill, and fifty-five opposed it. Lord Cowper, with twenty other
peers, entered a protest against the decision of the House, according to
a practice then common in the House of Lords, and which has lately fallen
into complete disuse. The recorded protests of dissentient peers form,
we may observe, very important historical documents, and deserve, some of
them, {218} a careful study. Lord Cowper's protest was the last public
act of his useful and honorable career. He died on the 10th of October
in the same year, 1723. Some of his enemies explained his action on the
anti-Papist Bill by the assertion that he was a Jacobite at heart. Even
if he had been, the fact would hardly have made his conduct less
creditable and spirited. Many a man who was a Jacobite at heart would
have supported a measure for the punishment of Roman Catholics if only to
save himself from the suspicion of sympathy with the lost cause.

[Sidenote: 1723--Charges against Atterbury]

This, however, was but an episode in the story of the Jacobite plot and
the measures taken to punish those who were engaged in it. Committees of
secrecy were appointed by Parlia