ction of 1660.

The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly
represented the statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors
of modern liberty. It is humiliating to trace a political lineage to
Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of the French king; to Lord
Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as absolute
monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood
shed by the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the
plot must be supported even if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his
comrades to perish on an expedition which he had betrayed to the French;
to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more spiritual than
the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and
persecution; or even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting
taxes belonged to no country but his own. Defoe affirms that from the
time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never knew a politician who
truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the
statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the
cause of progress for a century.

When the purport of the secret treaty became suspected by which Louis
XIV. pledged himself to support Charles II. with an army for the
destruction of Parliament, if Charles would overthrow the Anglican
Church, it was found necessary to make concession to the popular alarm.
It was proposed that whenever James should succeed, great part of the
royal prerogative and patronage should be transferred to Parliament. At
the same time, the disabilities of Nonconformists and Catholics would
have been removed. If the Limitation Bill, which Halifax supported with
signal ability, had passed, the monarchical constitution would have
advanced, in the seventeenth century, farther than it was destined to do
until the second quarter of the nineteenth. But the enemies of James,
guided by the Prince of Orange, preferred a Protestant king who should
be nearly absolute, to a constitutional king who should be a Catholic.
The scheme failed. James succeeded to a power which, in more cautious
hands, would have been practically uncontrolled, and the storm that cast
him down gathered beyond the sea.

By arresting the preponderance of France, the Revolution of 1688 struck
the first real blow at Continental despotism. At home it relieved
Dissent, purified justice, developed the national energies and
resource