pretended
to have made an application, which he had never hazarded.

However, the ascertaining of this fact is by no means necessary for the
illustration, either of the general history or of James's particular
character, since it appears that the proposition, if made, was rejected;
and James is, in any case, equally convicted of insincerity, the only
point in question being, whether he deceived the French ambassador, in
regard to the fact of his having made the proposition, or to the
sentiments he expressed upon its being refused. 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