w transgression; and when the next case occurred, they brought her to
trial and condemned her to death. The sentence was executed in the
gloomy castle of Fotheringay, where she was then confined.

As to the question whether Mary or Elizabeth had the rightful title to
the English crown, it has not only never been settled, but from its very
nature it can not be settled. It is one of those cases in which a
peculiar contingency occurs which runs beyond the scope and reach of
all the ordinary principles by which analogous cases are tried, and
leads to questions which can not be decided. As long as a hereditary
succession goes smoothly on, like a river keeping within its banks, we
can decide subordinate and incidental questions which may arise; but
when a case occurs in which we have the omnipotence of Parliament to set
off against the infallibility of the pope--the sacred obligations of a
will against the equally sacred principles of hereditary succession--and
when we have, at last, two contradictory actions of the same ultimate
umpire, we find all _technical_ grounds of coming to a conclusion gone.
We then, abandoning these, seek for some higher and more universal
principles--essential in the nature of things, and thus independent of
the will and action of man--to see if they will throw any light on the
subject. But we soon find ourselves as much perplexed and confounded in
this inquiry as we were before. We ask, in beginning the investigation,
What is the ground and nature of the right by which _any king or queen_
succeeds to the power possessed by his ancestors? And we give up in
despair, not being able to answer even this first preliminary inquiry.

Mankind have not, in their estimate of Elizabeth's character, condemned
so decidedly the substantial acts which she performed, as the duplicity,
the false-heartedness, and the false pretensions which she manifested in
performing them. Had she said frankly and openly to Mary before the
world, if these schemes for revolutionizing England and placing yourself
upon the throne continue, your life must be forfeited, my own safety and
the safety of the realm absolutely demand it; and then had fairly, and
openly, and honestly executed her threat, mankind would have been silent
on the subject, if they had not been satisfied. But if she had really
acted thus, she would not have been Elizabeth. She, in fact, pursued a
very different course. She maneuvered, schemed, and planned; she
pret