and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a
course as may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believe
that his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not
suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy
of the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme could
be devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of
public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the
slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it
would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the
responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for
themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the
Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public
functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of
persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicion
of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing.
But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the Government, if one
nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while another
is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection
will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime
to the sovereign and his ministers. [92]

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity
of relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what
quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy
of the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in
his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered
himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to
the dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the
Jacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention would
effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the
Comprehension Bill a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a first
time, he had occasion to go down to Parliament for the purpose of giving
his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and
expressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existing
laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to public
employment. [93] It was wel