m ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it was to
be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, even
those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgment
reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were committing the murders
which have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament
to pass a new Act compared with which all former Acts might be called
merciful.

In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancient
and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently have seen him
infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals,
or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here
he could not drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, or
shoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet
even in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his
power extended, till events which will hereafter be related induced him
to form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for
the humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.

One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early period
of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society of Friends.
His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed to
religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission of
Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seem
paradoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between
the Roman Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. For
they deviated in opposite directions so far from what the great body of
the nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus the
two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme sects, had a
common interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects.
The Quakers were also guiltless of all offence against James and his
House. They had not been in existence as a community till the war
between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards a
close. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary
governments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill
usage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they
had, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded