established immunity and privilege. The three nations and the three systems were, by the Revolution of 1688, brought into direct contrast with one another. At the same time, the English world was lifted out of theological forms, and entered upon the career of commerce, which had been prepared by the navigation acts and by the mutual treaties for colonial monopoly with France and Spain. The period through which we have passed shows why we are a free people; the coming period will show why we are a united people. We shall have no tales to relate of more adventure than in the early period of Virginia, none of more sublimity than of the pilgrims at Plymouth. But we are about to enter on a wider theatre; and, as we trace the progress of commercial ambition through events which shook the globe from the wilds beyond the Alleghanies to the ancient abodes of civilization in Hindostan, we shall still see that the selfishness of evil defeats itself, and God rules in the affairs of men.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SOUTHERN STATES AFTER THE REVOLUTION.

THE Stuarts passed from the throne of England. The family, distinguished by a blind resistance to popular opinion, was no less distinguished by misfortunes. During their separate sovereignty over Scotland, but three of the race escaped a violent death. The first of them who aspired to the crown of Great Britain was by an English sovereign doomed to death on the scaffold; her grandson was beheaded in the name of the English people. The next in the line, long a needy exile, is remembered chiefly for his vices; and James II. was reduced from royalty to beggary by the conspiracy of his own children. Yet the New World has monuments of the Stuarts; North America acquired its British colonies during their rule, and towns, rivers, headlands, and even states bear their names. James I. promoted the settlement of Virginia; a timely neglect fostered New England; the favoritism of Charles I. opened the way for religious liberty in Maryland; Rhode Island long cherished the charter which it won from Charles II.; the honest friendship of James II. favored the grants which gave liberties to Pennsylvania, and extended them to Delaware; the crimes of the dynasty banished to our country men of learning, virtue, and fortitude. Despotism rendered benefits to freedom. "The wisdom of God," as John Knox had predicted, "compelled the very malice of Satan, and such as were drowned in sin, to serve to his glory and the profit of his elect."

Four hundred and seventy-four years after the barons at Runnymede extorted Magna Charta from their legitimate king, the aristocratic Revolution of 1688 established for England and its dominions the sovereignty of parliament and the supremacy of law. Its purpose was the security of

property and existing franchises, and not the abolition of privilege or the equalization of political power. The chiefs of the nobility, who, in 1640, had led the people in its struggle for liberty, had, from the passionate enthusiasm. of "a generous inexperience," been hurried, against their design, into measures which their interests opposed. Made circumspect by the past, the renewed contest did not disturb their prudence, nor triumph impair their moderation. Avoiding the collisions with established privileges that spring from the fanatical exaggeration of abstract principles, still placing the hope of security on the system of checks and the balance of opposing powers, they made haste to finish the work of establishing the government. The character of the new monarch of Great Britain could mould its policy, but not its constitution. True to his purposes, he yet wins no sympathy. In political sagacity, in force of will, far superior to the English statesmen who environed him; more tolerant than his ministers or his parliaments, the childless man seems like the unknown character in algebra which is introduced to form the equation, and dismissed when the problem is solved. In his person thin and feeble, with eyes of a hectic lustre, of a temperament inclining to the melancholic, in conduct cautious, of a selfrelying humor, with abiding impressions respecting men, he sought no favor, and relied for success on his own inflexibility and the ripeness of his designs. Too wise to be cajoled, too firm to be complaisant, no address could sway his resolve, no filial respect controlled his ambition. His exterior was chilling; yet he took delight in horses and the chase. In conversation he was abrupt, speaking little and slowly, and with repulsive dryness; in the day of battle, he was all activity, and the highest energy, without kindling his passions, animated his frame. His trust in Providence was so connected with faith in general laws that, unconscious to himself, he had sympathy with the people, who always have faith in Providence. "Do you dread death in my company?" he cried to the anxious sailors, when the ice on the coast of Holland had almost crushed the boat that was bearing him to the shore. Courage and pride pervaded the

reserve of the prince, who, spurning an alliance with a bastard daughter of Louis XIV., had made himself the centre of a gigantic opposition to France. For England, for the English people, for English liberties, he had no affection, indifferently employing the whigs, who found their pride in the revolution, and the tories, who had opposed his elevation, and who yet were the fittest instruments "to carry the prerogative high." One great passion had absorbed his breast, the independence of his native country. The encroachments of Louis XIV., which, in 1672, had made him a revolutionary stadholder, now assisted to constitute him a revolutionary king, transforming the impassive champion of Dutch independence into the defender of the liberties of Europe.

The English statesmen who settled the principles of the revolution took experience for their guide. It is true that Somers, the acknowledged leader of the whig party, of plebeian origin, and unsupported by inherited fortune, was ready, with the new king from a Calvinistic commonwealth, to admit some reform in the maxims of government and religion. Yet, free from fanaticism even to indifference, by nature, by his profession as a lawyer, and by the tastes which he had cultivated, averse to metaphysical abstractions, he labored to make an inventory of the privileges and liberties of Englishmen and imbody them in a public law, not to set forth the rights of man. Freedom sought its title-deeds in experience, in customs, in records, charters, and prescription. The bill of rights was designed to be an authentic recapitulation of ancient and well-established national possessions.

A king had broken the ties that bound England to Rome; the Puritans made the people of England Protestant, and in the finally triumphant war of English liberty had done most efficient service. But the statute-book of the kingdom, alike when it was Catholic, and from the days of Henry VIII., knew no other rule than the unity of the church. It was the policy of Bacon almost as much as of Whitgift. A revolution made on the principle of asserting established rights and liberties might be willing to promote further re

forms, but knew not how to set about them. For Scotland there was no such difficulty; there the claim of right could, on historical ground, recognise the abolition of Episcopacy. In England, it was taken for granted that the Anglican church must subsist as the national church, and as a consequence the men of the revolution desired to comprehend the largest number of persons within its pale. In the convention which changed the dynasty, there was no party strong enough to carry through a vital change. The state of parties was reversed; Queen Elizabeth was in earnest, and would not be swayed by the persistent hostility of parliament to all superstitions that lurked in the prayer book; King William wished concessions, but his parliaments would not support him, and he was too indifferent to religion to hold out. No statesman of that day proposed to go back to the second service book of Edward VI., or to make it possible for a consistent Calvinist like John Knox to become a royal chaplain or to be presented to a benefice. The law of Charles II., which for the first time required Episcopal ordination before presentation to a benefice, was not repealed. In the convocation of the clergy, the Puritans were not represented, for the unrepealed law of Charles II. had turned them all out of the church. Nothing was therefore done beyond the toleration act of the convention parliament. The old laws enforcing conformity were left in force against Catholics; Protestants were exempted from penalties for absenting themselves from church and worshipping in conventicles, as the statute called them, provided the religious unity was so far at least preserved that their preachers would subscribe the doctrinal articles of the church of England. But even this narrow liberty was yielded only at the price of civil disfranchisement. The ministry, the privy council, both houses of parliament, the bench, all great employments, even places in corporations, were shut against the non-conformists, to whom the English constitution, in a great measure, owed its salvation.

In Ireland, persecution was double-edged; there was not even a toleration act, though two thirds of the inhabitants were Catholics, and of the Protestants one half were non