the same stamp the existing house of commons were glad to debase
the government, and they absolutely reversed the sentence, which had been
passed on him and other libellers. "The more ignoble these men were," says
Hume, "the more sensible was the insult upon royal authority[17]." What
writer, valuing his own respectability, would cite such a creature as this?
One of a sect, who, the writer of the pamphlet himself tells us, were
united with the Jesuits, to whom their pulpits were open, for the purpose
of overawing the parliament, and compelling it to destroy the king. This
too is cited from Prynne, to whom he refers for _much valuable evidence_.

The pamphlet says, "see Rapin." The name has something less barbarous in
the sound than {37} most of the others cited by the writer. Let us see
Rapin. We find, in the pages of this historian, the names of Jesuit and
catholic indiscriminately used, as accused of plots, suffering the rack,
and confuting the accusations brought against them by the most persuasive
simplicity of their protestations of innocence, and the intrepidity of
their deaths. The pretended plots, in the days of Elizabeth and of the
Stuarts, cited by a writer in 1815, against the toleration of the
catholics[18]! Well, but see the _state trials,_ the _actio in proditores_,
drawn up by our own judges, &c.[19] "Nothing," says {38} Hume, "can be a
stronger proof of the fury of the times, than that lord Russel,
notwithstanding {39} the virtue and humanity of his character, seconded the
house of commons in the barbarous scruple of the sheriffs" on the power of
the king to remit the hanging and quartering of {40} lord Stafford, that
innocent victim to his pure attachment to God. Afterwards, when lord Russel
was himself condemned, the king, in remitting the same part of the sentence
for treason, said, "he shall find, that I am possessed of that prerogative,
which, in the case of lord Stafford, he thought proper to deny me."

I cannot here refrain from contrasting the intelligence, the spirit, and
the wisdom of that great and distinguished statesman, Charles James Fox,
with the tame and adoptive, though virulent, disposition of a writer, who,
in another part of his pamphlet, has dared to warn every man from speaking
in favour of the catholic priests of Ireland, lest he should be provoked to
overwhelm the whole body with damning proofs--proofs charitably kept _in
petto_, by this insinuator of more than he chooses to say. Sp