tant Dissenters admitted in a proper
manner to civil office. At that point their Highnesses must stop. They
could not but entertain grave apprehensions that, if Roman Catholics
were made capable of public trust, great evil would ensue; and it was
intimated not obscurely that these apprehensions arose chiefly from the
conduct of James. [261]

The opinion expressed by the Prince and Princess respecting the
disabilities to which the Roman Catholics were subject was that of
almost all the statesmen and philosophers who were then zealous
for political and religious freedom. In our age, on the contrary,
enlightened men have often pronounced, with regret, that, on this one
point, William appears to disadvantage when compared with his father in
law. The truth is that some considerations which are necessary to the
forming of a correct judgment seem to have escaped the notice of many
writers of the nineteenth century.

There are two opposite errors into which those who study the annals of
our country are in constant danger of falling, the error of judging the
present by the past, and the error of judging the past by the present.
The former is the error of minds prone to reverence whatever is old, the
latter of minds readily attracted by whatever is new. The former
error may perpetually be observed in the reasonings of conservative
politicians on the questions of their own day. The latter error
perpetually infects the speculations of writers of the liberal school
when they discuss the transactions of an earlier age. The former error
is the more pernicious in a statesman, and the latter in a historian.

It is not easy for any person who, in our time, undertakes to treat of
the revolution which overthrew the Stuarts, to preserve with steadiness
the happy mean between these two extremes. The question whether members
of the Roman Catholic Church could be safely admitted to Parliament and
to office convulsed our country during the reign of James the Second,
was set at rest by his downfall, and, having slept during more than
a century, was revived by that great stirring of the human mind which
followed, the meeting of the National Assembly of France. During
thirty years the contest went on in both Houses of Parliament, in every
constituent body, in every social circle. It destroyed administrations,
broke up parties, made all government in one part of the empire
impossible, and at length brought us to the verge of civil war. Even
when