ministry must perish; already condemned by the voice of the country, it was to be its own executioner. It at length made its promised attempt upon the constitution. A harmless measure was proposed, notoriously but a cover for the deeper insults that were to follow. It was met with stern repulse; and, in the midst of public indignation, perished the Popish Ministry of one month and one year.

Their successors came in on in on the express title of resistance to Popery; they were emphatically "The Protestant Administration." They had scarcely entered on office, when the whole scene of disaster brightened up, and the deliverance of Europe was begun with a vigour that never relaxed, a combination of unexpected means and circumstances, an effective and rapid suc

• The granting of commissions in the army. Mr. Perceval opposed this, as only a pretext; he said, "It was not so much the individual measure, to which he objected, as the system of which it formed a part, and which was growing every day. From the arguments that he had heard, a man might be almost led to suppose that one religion was considered as good as another, and that the Reformation was only a measure of political convenience."

7 March, 1807.

cess, that if a man had ventured to suppose but a month before, he would have been laughed at as a visionary. Of all countries, Spain, sluggish and accustomed to the yoke of France, with all its old energies melted away in the vices of its government, was the last that Europe could have looked to for defiance of the universal conqueror.

But if ever the battle was fought by the shepherd's staff and sling against the armed giant, it was then. England was summoned to begin a new career of triumph. Irresistible on one element, she was now to be led up step by step to the first place of glory on another; and that Protestant ministry saw, what no human foresight could have thought to see, Europe restored; the monarch of its monarchs a prisoner in their hands; and the mighty fabric of the French Atheistic Empire, that was darkening and distending like an endless dungeon over the earth, scattered with all its malignant pomps and ministers of evil into air.

It is impossible to conceive that this regular interchange of punishment and preservation has been without a cause and a purpose. Through

almost three hundred years, through all varieties of public circumstance, all changes of men, all shades of general polity, we see one thing alone unchanged, the regular connexion of national misfortune with the introduction of Popish influence, and of national triumph with its exclusion.

It might be possible even to show, that, as the time for the great trial of nations hurries on, England has become the subject of, if such a phrase may be permitted, a still more sensitive vigilance; and that not to have sternly repelled the first temptation of the corrupt faith has in our later day been punished as a crime.

This language is not used to give offence to the Roman Catholic. His religion is reprobated, because it is his undoing, the veil that darkens his understanding, the tyranny that forbids him the use of his natural liberty of choice, the guilty corruption of Christianity that shuts the Scriptures upon him, that forces him away from the worship of that Being, who is to be worshipped alone in spirit and in truth; and flings him down at the feet of priests, and images of the Virgin, and the whole host of

false and idolatrous mediatorship. But, for himself there can be but one feeling of the deepest anxiety, that he should search the Scriptures; and, coming to that search without insolent self-will, or sullen prejudice, or the haughty and negligent levity to which their wisdom will never be disclosed, he should compare the Gospel of God with the doctrines of Rome.

But, whatever may be the lot of those to whom error has been an inheritance, woe be to the man and the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, free above all nations, sustained amidst the trials which have covered Europe before her eyes with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by the fullest knowledge of Divine truth, refuse fidelity to the compact by which those matchless privileges have been given, her condemnation will not be distant. But if she faithfully repel this deepest of all crimes, and refuse to place Popery side by side with Christianity in the temple of the state, there may be no bound to the sacred magnificence of her preservation. Even the coming terrors and tribulations of the earth

may but augment her glory; like the prophet in the mount, even in the midst of the thunderings and lightnings that appal the tribes of the earth, she may be led up, only nearer to behold the Eternal Majesty ; and when the time of the visitation has past, to come forth from the cloud with the light of the Divine presence round her brow, and bearing in her hand the law for mankind.

In dedicating this volume to the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, the author feels gratified by the opportunity of expressing his thanks for personal attentions, and his perfect respect for a rank of learning and virtue worthy of the best ages of the Church, for toleration in the true spirit of Christianity, and for manly, pious, and principled resistance to Claims which menace alike the Constitution and the Religion of England.