another; and, a universal panic being diffused, reason and argument, and common sense and common humanity, lost all influence over them."

Oates and Bedloe come forward to swear against us the most atrocious and impossible falsehoods. The Pope and Propaganda had claimed possession of England; and he had nominated the Jesuits to be his representatives here, and to hold the supreme power for him. All the offices of government had been filled up under the seal of this Society, and all the dignities of the Protestant Church given away, in great measure, to Spaniards and other foreigners. The king had been condemned to death as a heretic. There had been a meeting of fifty Jesuits in London during the foregoing May, when the king's death was determined on. He was to be shot or to be poisoned. The confessor of the French king had sent to London 10,000l. as a reward for any one who would assassinate him; a Spanish ecclesiastic had offered 10,000l. more; and the Prior of the Benedictines 60007. The Queen's physician had been offered 10,000%., and had asked 15,000l. for the job; and had received an instalment of 5000l. Four Irish ruffians had been hired by the Jesuits at twenty guineas a piece, to shoot the king at Windsor. Two others were also engaged, one at 15007.; the other, being a pious man, preferred to take out the money in masses, of which he was to receive 30,000. Another had been promised canonization and 5007., if he was successful in the enterprise. There was a subscription going on among the Catholics all through England, to collect sums for the same purpose. The Jesuits had determined to set fire to London, Southwark, and all the chief cities of the country. They were planning to set fire to all the shipping in the Thames,

Twenty thousand Catholics were to rise in London in twenty-four hours' time, who, it was estimated, might cut the throats of 100,000 Protestants. The most eminent divines of the Establishment were especially marked for assassination. Ten thousand men were to be landed from abroad in the North, and were to seize Hull; and 20,000 or 30,000 religious men and pilgrims from Spain, were to land in Wales.

Is all this grave history?—it is. Do not think I have added ought of my own; it is unnecessary. Invention cannot run with prejudice. Prejudice wins. Do not my true stories of Protestantism beat the fables against Catholicism of Achilli and Maria Monk? they are a romance, true and terrible.

What came of these wild allegations, preferred by men of infamous character, and followed by the accident of Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey's murder, by unknown assassins? "Without further reasoning," says Hume, "the cry rose that he had been assassinated by the Papists, on account. of his taking Oates's evidence. The clamour was quickly propagated, and met with universal belief. Each hour teemed with new rumours and surmises. To deny the reality of the plot was to be an accomplice; to hesitate was criminal. Royalist, republican, churchman, sectary, courtier, patriot, all parties concurred in the illusion. The city prepared for its defence, as if the enemy were at its gates; the chains and posts were put up.. dead body of Godfrey was carried into the city, attended by vast multitudes. . . . Seventy-two clergymen marched before; above a thousand persons of distinction followed after; and, at the funeral sermon, two able-bodied divines mounted the pulpit, and stood on each side of the preacher, lest, in paying the last duties to this unhappy

The

magistrate, he should, before the whole people, bemurdered by the Papists."

A recent historian adds to the picture'; "Every where," he says, "justices were busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege. The trainbands were under arms all night. Preparations were made for barricading the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down the streets. Cannon were placed round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe, unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins."

The Parliament kept pace with the people; a solemn fast was voted, and a form of prayer drawn up; five Catholic peers were committed to the Tower on charge of high treason; a member of the Commons, who in private society spoke strongly against the defenders of the plot, was expelled the House; and both Houses, Lords and Commons, voted, almost in the form of a dogmatic decree, "that there is, and hath been, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the Government, and for rooting-out and destroying the Protestant succession." Titus Oates was called the Saviour of his country; was lodged in Whitehall, protected by guards, and rewarded with a pension of 12007. a year.

I will not pursue the history of this remarkable frenzy into its deeds of blood, into the hangings, and embowellings, and the other horrors of which innocent Catholics were in due course the victims. Well had it been, had the pretended plot ended with the worldly

1 Macaulay, History, vol. i. p. 235.

promotion of its wretched fabricators, whom at this day all the world gives up to reprobation and infamy. Oates and Bedloe were the Maria Monk, the Jeffreys, the Teodore, the Achilli, of their hour, on a larger field; they spoke then as Protestant champions speak now, to the prejudices of the people; they equalled our own slanderers in falsehood and assurance, in success they surpassed them.

We live in a happier age than our forefathers; at least let us trust that the habits of society and the selfinterest of classes and of sects will render it impossible that blind prejudice and brute passion should ever make innocence and helplessness their sport and their prey, as they did in the seventeenth century.

LECTURE VII.

ASSUMED PRINCIPLES THE INTELLECTUAL INSTRUMENT OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW.

THERE is a great and a growing class in the community, who wish to be fair to us, who see how cruelly we are dealt with, who are indignant at the clamour, and see through the calumnies, and despise the prejudice, which are directed against us, who feel themselves to be superior to the multitude in their feelings and their judgments, who aim at thinking well of all men, all persuasions, all schools of thought, and of Catholics in the number, and to like each for what is good in it, though they may not follow it themselves. Being thus candid, and, in a certain sense, unbiassed, they readily acknowledge the grandeur of the Catholic religion, both in history and in philosophy; they wish to be good friends with it; they delight to contemplate the great Catholic heroes; they recognize, perhaps with almost enthusiastic admiration, the genius and other gifts of the intellect, which in every age have been so profusely found among

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