ilty of sedition, let them be fined and
imprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations, to pray for
King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under
those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of
Uniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty be
empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so
tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring
bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally
convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present
settlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist on
ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts a
finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as
he performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for a
blessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not take
an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a
sovereign? Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this
sort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear
fidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he
considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful
members of society, who else can be entitled to complain?

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, with
ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public
gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the
order had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true
that bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late
King: but it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which
they had opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and
that, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience,
he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief
business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people
to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of
Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been
put to death for attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism.
Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary
power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt,
forgetting all their old commonplaces about submitting to