LECTURE LIX. Of the history of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Restoration in the year 1660 to the accession of James II. in the year 1685. Charles II. Corporation Act Act of Uniformity Act of Settlement for Ireland Act of Explanation for Ireland Roman-Catholics excluded from the Whigs and Tories } 1678 1680 Rye-House Plot 1683 WE now enter upon the consideration of the second great movement of the English government, in which it received an impulse contrary to that by which it had been previously actuated, and was urged to the very verge of despotism. In both cases indeed the administration of the government was directed by an arbitrary spirit, for such, however variously modified by individual peculiarities and political circumstances, appears to have been the prevailing character of the princes of the family of the Stuarts; and the grand distinction to be discovered between the two cases, must be sought in the different state and temper of parties, rather than in any diversity of the principles of the rulers. In the period already considered the arbitrary efforts of the sovereign, encountering a body of commons newly risen into importance, and animated by the recent spirit of puritanism, served only to excite the independent feelings of the people. During a series of years, more especially in the reign of Charles I, the English submitted to a government, which outraged their hereditary notions of the constitution; but the public sentiment was during all this time separating itself from its former connection with the royal authority, and attaching itself to the novel principle of resistance. The government accordingly of the two earlier Stuarts was, in its influence on the people, a school of republicanism, not a tyranny erected on their own base or thoughtless acquiescence; it compressed indeed the springs of public free dom, but its violence served only to encrease their expansive energy. The state of the public sentiment was evidently different under the government of the two latter princes of the same family. The agitations of the preceding period had formed a powerful party, disposed to admit and to support the most extravagant pretensions of the crown; the most ambitious claims of the government were accordingly in entire unison with the opinions of a large and important portion of the people; and it required all the infatuated (a) bigotry of James II. to correct the public error, and to drive the too loyal nation back within the limits of a regulated constitution. The alternate vibration of the government has already been illustrated by the obvious comparison with the motion of a pendulous body, which is impelled from the perpendicular position by some external force, and, when it has been brought back to that position by its own gravitation, is again carried as far in the opposite direction, by the force which it had acquired in the descent. The comparison is indeed sufficiently apposite for the general purpose of illustration; but the political is in some respects, as might be supposed, distinguishable from the mechanical pendulum, and its principles may well deserve a particular consideration, especially as the enquiry may discover to us, why the vibratory movement was so suddenly and happily terminated at the Revolution. The motion of the mechanical pendulum would be perpetual, if it were not counteracted by the external agencies of friction and resistance; nor, even though it must in a little time be destroyed by these causes, when it is not preserved by the repeated impulses of a maintaining power, is it however suddenly discontinued. To the political pendulum which we are considering, it was on the contrary important that, when the double movement had been performed, the agitation of the government should be at once concluded, instead of being protracted through a series of decreasing oscillations, and subsiding gradually into quiescence. This peculiarity appears to have been the result of a very curious combination of moral mechanism, if such a term may be admitted for the illustration of the actions of free and intelligent agents. In tracing the analogy to the pendulum we may mark the correspondence between the original impulse, which generates the movement of a pendulous body, and the influence of that comparatively small party of the people, which in the English government communicated to the remainder the spirit of resistance; and we may well compare the returning affection for the ancient government, which brought the na tion from the excesses of republicanism, to that power of gravitation, which draws the pendulum again to its original position, and then sends it with a new force in a contrary direction. But here the strictness of the analogy is terminated. If it had been extended beyond this limit, the government would have continued to be disturbed, and could only by slow degrees, if at all, have arrived at a position of tranquillity. The peculiarity of the moral combination on the contrary made a provision for bringing the government at once to quiescence. The revulsion which sent back the public sentiment from the extreme of despotism, was not the effect of the actual experience of civil oppression, however arbitrary was the spirit of the government. If the second movement had been thus generated, the people would naturally have returned to their former independence. The despotism of the two latter Stuarts was exercised rather in violating the principles of the constitution, than in offending the feelings of the nation; the public loyalty therefore continued to subsist through the two reigns, without any diminution, which could influence the general conduct of the people; and the final movement of the Revolution was generated, not by an anxiety for the recovery of the constitution, but to the bigotry of James II, urging a protestant nation to an abandonment of their religious inter |