"ment; the expuncture of the Licence Act; and above all, "the glorious statute of Habeas Corpus." Of the benefit derived to the people from these acts, or of their originating in this reign, Mr. Rose expresses his doubts: surely they had not much reason to rejoice in the abolition of the Court of Wards, which could only affect the great landholders, when the Excise was established as an equivalent for it. The writ de hæretico comburendo had been a dead letter for more than a century. The Triennial Parliament bill was passed, 6 Will. & Mar. c. 2.; and what Mr. Fox has chosen to dignify here with that name, was merely to enact that a parliament should be held once in three years, but not to limit its duration. The right of the commons to impeachment had been frequently exercised previously to this time; and the right of the king to pardon in such cases, which rendered impeachment nugatory, was not taken away by an act of the legislature till after the Revolution. The Licensing Aet was merely a temporary law, enacted, for the first time, in this reign, for two years only; and the foundation of the Habeas Corpus act was laid by the 16 Car. I. c. 10. §. 8. This is the sum of Mr. Rose's objection to Mr. Fox's opinion of the perfection of our constitution during the reign of Charles II. But as to the writ de hæretico comburendo, though it had been laid aside for more than a century, it was very little more than a century; for the death of Queen Mary happened exactly 102 years before the Restoration : and considering the free use Queen Mary made of this writ, it certainly was of some consequence to prevent its revival. In speaking of the Triennial and Septennial bills, Mr. Rose is strangely loose in his definitions: his words are, "After the Revolution, an act " was passed to prevent the discontinuance of parliaments " for more than three years; which term was extended in the 66 reign of George I. to seven years." Here the Triennial bill of William and Mary is confounded with that of Charles 11.; and the Septennial bill, instead of extending the duration of parliaments, is said to extend the time for which they may be discontinued; and though the Habeas Corpus act received its foundation in the preceding reign, yet as Mr. Rose admits that it was greatly extended and made effectual in 1679, surely the essential establishment of it may fairly be ascribed to that æra. Mr. Rose reprobates with just indignation, the disgraceful and infamous negotiations of Charles II. and his ministers with Lewis XIV.; and his preferring to become a pensioner of France to receiving ample supplies from the English parliament, so ample, that even a profest royalist, Lord Lucas, who was made a peer at the Restoration, protested against them in very strong language; and this at the identical time when the secret treaty with Lewis was going on: his words were, as cited by Mr. Rose "The Scripture tells us that God Almighty sets bounds unto "the ocean, and says unto it, Thus far shall thy proud waves 66 come, and no further: and so I hope your Lordships, in imi"tation of the Divinity, will set some bounds, some limits, to this " over-liberal humour of the Commons, and say to them, Hither " shall your profuseness come, and no further." Who, after this, can read with patience this extract of a letter from Colbert to Monsieur de Lyonne ? " He (King "Charles) told me, he found himself, as it were, the only 66 person in his kingdom who had inclinations for France; " that all his subjects were more in favour of Spain, and he " had, therefore, many measures to keep;" or the assertion of Barillon to his master, that "he (the king) liked better to " depend on your Majesty than his people." Every friend of constitutional liberty will feel himself highly obliged for the (to us) convincing arguments, by which Mr. Rose has vindicated the memory of Russel and Sydney, from the charge of being bribed by France. Especially as Mr. Fox, who found so much in Barillon's testimony to support a position he wished to maintain, rather than invalidate that testimony, entirely overlooked it. The supposition that Barillon might apply part of the money trusted to him, to his own use, is very plausible, were it unsupported by any exterior evidence; but that he was suspected of such a practice at the time, is apparent, from a passage cited by Mr. Rose from one of Madame de Sevigné's letters, where, mentioning Barillon, she writes, "Son emploi ⚫est admirable cette année, il mangera cinquante mille francs; mais il sait bien ou les prendre." And Lord Russel, and Sydney, were of all men those whom he could best excuse himself for not producing vouchers, from which, most probably, neither Charles nor his profligate ministers would have had any hesitation in giving; but which certainly they would have scrupled to give, were it possible for a moment to suppose them capable of such a transaction. But the third section of Mr. Rose's work is by far the most interesting part of it, as it completely invalidates the position of Mr. Fox, that the re-establishment of the Roman-Catholic religion was not the primary object of James II. The investigation of this seems to be of more consequence, than any of those who have examined the book, not excepting even Mr. Rose, seem to be aware. But on the first perusal of the work, we were immediately struck with the idea, (and which a more attentive consideration of it has only tended to confirm,) that the establishing this position, was the principal, if not the sole object of the publication. When we consider how much Mr. Fox, and the friends with whom he acted, interested themselves in favour of the Roman-Catholics, and reflect how very opposite such a conduct would be to the general prejudices of those who strongly adopted Whig principles; since the establishment of the religion of Rome was always looked on as equivalent with the establishment of arbitrary power, and popery and slavery were always united in the language of the multitude; nothing could be more natural than for him to wish to separate them, and to shew, that, contrary to the generally received opinion, 4 it was not the re-establishment of the church of Rome, but the introduction of arbitrary government, which was almost the sole object of James's designs. This, Mr. Rose has completely refuted; and indeed the fallacy of the hypothesis is so obvious, that it could not have escaped the penetrating eye of Mr. Fox, had he not looked at the object through the medium of prejudice. But the desire of making others believe what we do not believe ourselves, is a strong feature of the human mind; neither is the imputation any disgrace to the moral character of Mr. Fox, as it is shared in common by every orator that ever spoke in the houses of parliament, or pleaded in the courts of judicature, and by every person that ever defended a favourite hypothesis in common conversation. There can hardly be a stronger proof of the almost frenetic desire of James to introduce the Roman-Catholic religion, than the embassy he sent to Rome; which was received even with disgust by the Pope himself: for, to use the words of Mr. Rose "In addition to the violation of the law, and to the outrage "thereby occasioned to the opinion and feelings of his subjects, " he could not be ignorant that he incurred a serious risk of giving "offence to Lewis, on whose support he chiefly depended for the " establishment of his power; who was, at that time, on such " terms with the Pope, as led very soon after to an open breach, " by an appeal, on the part of the French monarch, from the pro"ceedings of his Holiness to a general council." There is, however, a yet stronger proof, and that brought forward by Mr. Fox himself, where he notices the great favour the Episcopalians were in with James, at the beginning of his reign; and how ready they were at all times to second his views on the liberties and rights of his subjects, in a way beyond what had ever occurred before to any tyrant on earth, by preaching from the pulpit, as the express com * See his historical work, p. 124. mand of Heaven, a blind submission to his will, which it was sacrilege and blasphemy to resist, or even to question. Certain of such assistance from the church of England, what but the most stupid bigotry to the church of Rome, could induce him to wantonly insult the former, by his violent proceedings with regard to Oxford and Cambridge; shewing almost to a mathematical conviction, that though the general exercise of arbitrary power was the dearest wish of the heart of James, he had no part of the exercise of it so much at heart, as the power it would give him of restoring the RomanCatholic religion in his dominions ? We shall make a few short abstracts from the conclusion of the observations, where the author states some of the reasons which induced him to undertake the work. His first object was to vindicate the character of Sir Patrick Hume; an object, which though interesting to the feelings of Mr. Rose, would be very little so to the general reader; but he adds, that " in the course of the investigation which that object " had prompted, one of a more public and general kind " occurred, which the author, as a friend of the British con"stitution, became equally anxious to attain." Mr. Rose then observes, that "There have been times when the blindness and bigotry of " party writings, rau counter to the most just and noblest pri"vileges of the people; to the clearest and most undoubted prin"ciples of rational freedom: but these, if now remembered at all, are only remembered with the contempt they deserve. But "doctrines in the opposite extreme are not less dangerous to " public order, or to public welfare; doctrines which would de" grade and vilify in the minds of the people, that monarchy " whose limited powers are essential to their safety, and, in truth, " to their independence." Mr. Rose notices the favourable way in which Mr. Fox speaks of the usurpation of Cromwell-" Over which (he says) he has incidently thrown that sort of veil, which " speaking of its energy, and not of its injustice, naturally " interposes between that injustice and our feelings;" and |