JAMES THE SECOND.

47

which all tlie other attacks of the Stuarts on public freedomhad been most strenuously resisted. It could scarcely behoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from hiscountrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced, would be in-clined to dispute the validity of a decree which relieved himfrom intolerable grievances. A cool and philosophical ob-server would undoubtedly have pronounced that all the evilarising from all the intolerant laws which Parliaments hadframed was not to be compared to the evil which would beproduced by a transfer of the legislative power from the Par-liament to the Sovereign. But such coolness and philosophyare not to be expected from men who are smarting under pre-sent pain, and who are tempted by the oiler of immediateease. A Puritan divine could not indeed deny that the dis-pensing power now claimed by the crown was inconsistentwith the fundamental principles of the constitution. But hemight perhaps be excused if he asked, What was the consti-tution to him? The Act of Uniformity had ejected him, inspite of royal promises, from a benefice which was his free-hold, and had reduced him to beggary and dependence. TheFive Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from hisrelations, from Ids friends, from almost all places of publicresort. Under the Conventicle Act his goods had been dis-trained; and lie had been flung into one noisome gaol afteranother among highwaymen and housebreakers. Out ofprison he had constantly had the officers of justice on histrack; he had been forced to pay hush-money to informers; hehad stolen, in ignominious disguises, through windows andtrap-doors, to meet his flock, and had, while pouring thebaptismal water, or distributing the eucharistic bread, beenanxiously listening for the signal that the tipstaves were ap-proaching. Was it not mockery to call on a man thus plun-dered and oppressed to suffer martyrdom for the propertyand liberty of his plunderers and oppressors ? The Decla-ration, despotic as it might seem to his prosperous neighbours,brought deliverance to him. He was called upon to make hischoice, not between freedom and slavery, but between two

CHAP.

VII.

16S7.