He certainly was guilty of
the offence of sending an envoy openly to Rome, who, by the bye, was
received by the Pope with great discourtesy; and her Majesty Queen
Victoria, whose Protestantism cannot be doubted, for it is one of her
chief titles to our homage, has at this time a secret envoy at the same
court: and that is the difference between them: both ministers doubtless
working however fruitlessly for the same object: the termination of
those terrible misconceptions, political and religious, that have
occasioned so many martyrdoms, and so many crimes alike to sovereigns
and to subjects.

If James the Second had really attempted to re-establish Popery in this
country, the English people, who had no hand in his overthrow, would
doubtless soon have stirred and secured their "Catholic and Apostolic
church," independent of any foreign dictation; the church to which they
still regularly profess their adherence; and being a practical people,
it is possible that they might have achieved their object and yet
retained their native princes; under which circumstances we might
have been saved from the triple blessings of Venetian politics, Dutch
finance, and French wars: against which, in their happiest days, and
with their happiest powers, struggled the three greatest of English
statesmen,--Bolingbroke, Shelburne, and lastly the son of Chatham.

We have endeavoured in another work, not we hope without something of
the impartiality of the future, to sketch the character and career of
his successors. From his death to 1825, the political history of England
is a history of great events and little men. The rise of Mr Canning,
long kept down by the plebeian aristocracy of Mr Pitt as an adventurer,
had shaken parties to their centre. His rapid disappearance from the
scene left both whigs and tories in a state of disorganization. The
distinctive principles of these connexions were now difficult to trace.
That period of public languor which intervenes between the breaking up
of parties and the formation of factions now transpired in England. An
exhausted sensualist on the throne, who only demanded from his ministers
repose, a voluptuous aristocracy, and a listless people, were content,
in the absence of all public conviction and national passion, to consign
the government of the country to a great man, whose decision relieved
the sovereign, whose prejudices pleased the nobles, and whose
achievements dazzled the multitude.

The DUKE