第25章 Letter VII(4)

It was this folly and madness however,that cured the folly and madness of party.As the common danger approached,the impressions of terror which it made,increased.Whig and Tory then felt them alike,and were brought by them,as drunken men sometimes are,to their senses.The events of King James's reign,and the steps by which the Revolution was brought about,are so recent,and so well known,that I shall not descend into any particular mention of them.A few general remarks on the behaviour of his prince,and on the behaviour of parties in his reign,and at the Revolution,will be sufficient to wind up the history of Whig and Tory,and to prove what I have so often asserted,that both sides purged themselves on this great occasion,of the imputations laid to their charge by their adversaries;that the proper and real distinction of the two parties expired at this era,and that although their ghosts have continued to haunt and divide us so many years afterwards,yet there neither is,nor can be any division of parties at this time,reconcilable with common sense,and common honesty,among those who are come on the stage of the world under the present constitution,except those of Churchmen and Dissenters,those of Court and Country.

This behaviour and conduct of King James the Second would be sufficient,if there was no other instance,and there are thousands,to show that as strong prejudices,however got,are the parents,so a weak understanding is the nurse of bigotry,and injustice and violence and cruelty its offspring.

This prince was above fifty,when he came to the throne.He had great experience of all kinds;particularly of the temper of this nation,and of the impossibility to attempt introducing popery,without hazarding his crown.But his experience profited him not.His bigotry drew false conclusions from it.He flattered himself that he should be able to play parties against one another,better than his brother had done (which,by the way,was the least of his little talents)and to complete his designs by an authority,which was but too well established.He passed,I think,for a sincere man.Perhaps,he was so;and he spoke always with great emphasis of the word of a king;and yet never was the meanest word so scandalously broken as his.In the debate in 1678,about the Test,when he got a proviso put in for excepting himself,it has been advanced in print,and not denied that I know of,that speaking with 'great earnestness,and with tears in his eyes,he solemnly protested that whatever his religion might be,it should only be a private thing between God and his own soul;and that no effect of it should ever appear in the government'.At his accession to the throne,in council first,and after that in full Parliament,in the face of the nation,he made the strongest declaration in favour of the constitution in Church and state,and took the most solemn engagements to defend and support it.But bigotry burst through all these cobwebs;for such they are to men,transported by a religious delirium,who acquires a strength that those,who are well,have not,and conscientiously break all the obligations of morality.These admirable dispositions in the King were encouraged by the state in which his brother left and he found the nation,and by the complaisance of the Parliament,which he called soon after his accession.They were confirmed,and he was determined to pull off the mask entirely,by the ill success of the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll.Bishop Burnet speaks of this Parliament very indecently,and Ithink very untruly.They were neither men of parts,nor estates,according to him.The truth is,that the circumstances under which we were brought by the factious proceedings of both parties,in the late reign,for and against the court,were such as might perplex the best parts,and puzzle the heads even of the wisest men.A professed,zealous papist,in full and quiet possession of the throne,and,instead of any provision made,or any measures taken against him,the notion and the exercise of the prerogative established at an extravagant height,were such circumstances,as laid the nation almost at the mercy of the King.They therefore,who were the most determined not to part with either their religion,or their liberty,and yet had more to lose in the fray than Dr Burnet,might be willing to look round them,to wait opportunities,and not undertake rashly what can seldom be undertaken twice.It is impossible to believe that their confidence in the King's word was such as they affected.But like drowning men,who saw nothing else to catch at,they caught at a straw.The Duke of Monmouth's expedition into England,and the Earl of Argyll's into Scotland,were so far from affording the nation any opportunity of mending their condition,that the declaration of the former might draw some of the Dissenters to his standard,as it did;but was calculated to drive the Tory party,most of the Whigs,and in short the bulk of the people from him.The declaration of the latter was founded in the Solemn League and Covenant;and gave so much reason to apprehend that a revival of the same principles,and a renewal of the same tyranny was intended,that we cannot wonder it had no better an effect;though we lament the fate of a worthy and gallant man,whose crime was refusing a test,that should never have been imposed on protestants and freemen,and who had been driven into these extreme resolutions by a series of unjust and tyrannical usage.