of Indulgence had been put forth by his brother with
the advice of the Cabal. That Declaration, when compared with the
Declaration of James, might be called modest and cautious. The
Declaration of Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The Declaration
of James dispensed also with all religious tests. The Declaration of
Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate their worship in
private dwellings only. Under the Declaration of James they might build
and decorate temples, and even walk in procession along Fleet Street
with crosses, images, and censers. Yet the Declaration of Charles had
been pronounced illegal in the most formal manner. The Commons had
resolved that the King had no power to dispense with statutes in matters
ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxious instrument to be
cancelled in his presence, had torn off the seal with his own hand, and
had, both by message under his sign manual, and with his own lips from
his throne in full Parliament, distinctly promised the two Houses that
the step which had given so much offence should never be drawn into
precedent. The two Houses had then, without one dissentient voice,
joined in thanking him for this compliance with their wishes. No
constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more
clearly, or with more harmonious consent.

The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in his excuse the
judgment of the Court of King's Bench, on the information collusively
laid against Sir Edward Hales: but the plea is of no value. That
judgment James had notoriously obtained by solicitation, by threats,
by dismissing scrupulous magistrates, and by placing on the bench
other magistrates more courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally
regarded by the bar and by the nation as unconstitutional, went only
to this extent, that the Sovereign might, for special reasons of state,
grant to individuals by name exemptions from disabling statutes. That he
could by one sweeping edict authorise all his subjects to disobey whole
volumes of laws, no tribunal had ventured, in the face of the solemn
parliamentary decision of 1673, to affirm.

Such, however, was the position of parties that James's Declaration of
Indulgence, though the most audacious of all the attacks made by the
Stuarts on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very
portion of the community by which all the other attacks of the Stuarts
on public freedom had been most strenuousl