had produced a great revolution in the feelings of many Tories. At
the very moment at which their Church was suffering the last excess of
injury and insult, they were compelled to renounce the hope of peaceful
deliverance. Hitherto they had flattered themselves that the trial to
which their loyalty was subjected would, though severe, be temporary,
and that their wrongs would shortly be redressed without any violation
of the ordinary rule of succession. A very different prospect was
now before them. As far as they could look forward they saw only
misgovernment, such as that of the last three years, extending through
ages. The cradle of the heir apparent of the crown was surrounded by
Jesuits. Deadly hatred of that Church of which he would one day be the
head would be studiously instilled into his infant mind, would be the
guiding principle of his life, and would be bequeathed by him to his
posterity. This vista of calamities had no end. It stretched beyond the
life of the youngest man living, beyond the eighteenth century. None
could say how many generations of Protestant Englishmen might hive to
bear oppression, such as, even when it had been believed to be short,
had been found almost insupportable. Was there then no remedy? One
remedy there was, quick, sharp, and decisive, a remedy which the Whigs
had been but too ready to employ, but which had always been regarded by
the Tories as, in all cases, unlawful.

The greatest Anglican doctors of that age had maintained that no breach
of law or contract, no excess of cruelty, rapacity, or licentiousness,
on the part of a rightful King, could justify his people in withstanding
him by force. Some of them had delighted to exhibit the doctrine of
nonresistance in a form so exaggerated as to shock common sense and
humanity. They frequently and emphatically remarked that Nero was at
the head of the Roman government when Saint Paul inculcated the duty
of obeying magistrates. The inference which they drew was that, if an
English King should, without any law but his own pleasure, persecute his
subjects for not worshipping idols, should fling them to the lions in
the Tower, should wrap them up in pitched cloth and set them on fire to
light up Saint James's Park, and should go on with these massacres till
whole towns and shires were left without one inhabitant, the survivors
would still be bound meekly to submit, and to be torn in pieces or
roasted alive without a struggle. The argume