ance, the Whigs
said, was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public
employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be
mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the
supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting
to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral
casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had
openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty
to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had
sworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith which
a loyal subject owes to a rightful sovereign; but, when they promised
to bear true allegiance to William, they meant only that they would not,
whilst he was able to hang them for rebelling or conspiring against him,
run any risk of being hanged. None could wonder that the precepts and
example of the malecontent clergy should have corrupted the malecontent
laity. When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that they
had equivocated, in the very act of kissing the New Testament, it was
hardly to be expected that attorneys and taxgatherers would be more
scrupulous. The consequence was that every department swarmed with
traitors; that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted with
the duty of collecting and disbursing his revenues, of victualling his
ships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for the
field, were in the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking to
his speedy downfall. Could any government be safe which was hated and
betrayed by its own servants? And was not the English government exposed
to the dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might well
excite serious apprehensions? A disputed succession, war with France,
war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough without
treachery in every arsenal and in every custom house? There must be an
oath drawn in language too precise to be explained away, in language
which no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he was
perjuring himself. Though the zealots of indefeasible hereditary right
had in general no objection to swear allegiance to William, they would
probably not choose to abjure James. On such grounds as these, an
Abjuration Bill of extreme severity was brought into the House of
Commons. It was proposed to enact that every person who held