le man whose services could
be seriously missed by the commonwealth. The proportion which they bore
to the population of England was very much smaller than at present.
For at present a constant stream of emigration runs from Ireland to our
great towns: but in the seventeenth century there was not even in London
an Irish colony. Forty-nine fiftieths of the inhabitants of the kingdom,
forty-nine fiftieths of the property of the kingdom, almost all the
political, legal, and military ability and knowledge to be found in
the kingdom, were Protestant. Nevertheless the King, under a strong
infatuation, had determined to use his vast patronage as a means of
making proselytes. To be of his Church was, in his view, the first
of all qualifications for office. To be of the national Church was a
positive disqualification. He reprobated, it is true, in language which
has been applauded by some credulous friends of religious liberty, the
monstrous injustice of that test which excluded a small minority of the
nation from public trust: but he was at the same time instituting a test
which excluded the majority. He thought it hard that a man who was a
good financier and a loyal subject should be excluded from the post of
Lord Treasurer merely for being a Papist. But he had himself turned out
a Lord Treasurer whom he admitted to be a good financier and a loyal
subject merely for being a Protestant. He had repeatedly and distinctly
declared his resolution never to put the white staff in the hands of any
heretic. With many other great offices of state he had dealt in the
same way. Already the Lord President, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord
Chamberlain, the Groom of the Stole, the First Lord of the Treasury,
a Secretary of State, the Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, the
Chancellor of Scotland, the Secretary of Scotland, were, or pretended
to be, Roman Catholics. Most of these functionaries had been bred
Churchmen, and had been guilty of apostasy, open or secret, in order to
obtain or to keep their high places. Every Protestant who still held
an important post in the government held it in constant uncertainty
and fear. It would be endless to recount the situations of a lower rank
which were filled by the favoured class. Roman Catholics already swarmed
in every department of the public service. They were Lords Lieutenants,
Deputy Lieutenants, judges, justices of the Peace, Commissioners of the
Customs, Envoys to foreign courts, Colonels of regim