46

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

VJ1.

iC87.

Feelingof theProtes-tant Dis*scoters.

Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The Declaration of

■ James dispensed also with all religious tests. The Declarationof Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate theirworship in private dwellings only. Under the Declaration ofJames they might build and decorate temples, and even walkin procession along Fleet Street with crosses, images, andcensers. Yet the Delaration of Charles had been pronouncedillegal in the most formal manner. The Commons had re-solved that the King had no power to dispense with statutes inmatters ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxiousinstrument to be cancelled in his presence, had torn off theseal with his own hand, and had, both by message under hissign manual, and with his own lips from his throne in full Par-liament, distinctly promised the two Houses that the stepwhich had given so much offence should never be drawn intoprecedent. The two Houses had then, without one dis-sentient voice, joined in thanking him for this compliancewith their wishes. No constitutional question had ever beendecided more deliberately, more clearly, or with more har-monious consent.

The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in hisexcuse the judgment of the Court of King’s Bench, on the in-formation collusively laid against Sir Edward Hales: but theplea is of no value. That judgment James had notoriouslyobtained by solicitation, by threats, by dismissing scrupulousmagistrates, and by placing oi) the bench other magistratesmore courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally re-garded by the bar and by the nation as unconstitutional, wentonly to this extent, that the Sovereign might, for specialreasons 'of state, grant to individuals by name exemptionsfrom disabling statutes. That he could by one sweeping edictauthorise all his subjects to disobey whole volumes of laws, notribunal had ventured, in the face of the solemn parliamentarydecision of 1673, to affirm.

Such, however, was the position of parties that James’sDeclaration of Indulgence, though the most audacious of all

■ the attacks made by the Stuarts on public freedom, was wellcalculated to please that very portion of the community by