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understanding of James, but a great deal for his heart; and, with all the blemishes with which his public character is stained, he was not deficient in several qualities necessary to compose a good sovereign. His industry and attention to business were exemplary; he was frugal of the public money; he cherished and extended the maritime power of the empire; and his encouragement of trade was attended with such success that, according to the observation of the impartial historian Ralph, as the frugality of his administration helped to increase the number of malcontents, so his extreme attention to trade was not less alarming to the whole body of the Dutch, than his resolution not to rush into a war with France was mortifying to their stadtholder.

In domestic life the character of James, though not irreproachable, was comparatively good. It is true, he was in a great measure tainted with that licentiousness of manners which at this time pervaded the whole society, and which reigned triumphant within the circle of the court; but he was never carried into any excesses which trenched deeply upon the duties of social life; and if the qualities of his heart were only to be judged by his different conduct in the different characters of husband, father, master, and friend, he might be pronounced a man of very amiable disposition. But those who know not how to forgive injuries, and can never pardon the errors, the infirmities, the vices, or even the virtues of their fellowcreatures, when in any respect they affect personal interest or inclination, will aim against them the sensibility of every humane mind, and

can never expect from others that justice and commiseration which themselves have never exercised but whilst we execrate that rancorous cruelty with which James, in the short hour of triumph, persecuted all those who endeavoured to thwart his ambitious hopes, it is but justice to observe that the rank vices of pride, malice, and revenge which blacken his conduct, whilst he figured in the station of presumptive heir to the crown, and afterwards in the character of sovereign, on the successful quelling of the Monmouth rebellion, were thoroughly corrected by the chastening hand of affliction: that the whole period of his life, from his return to Ireland to the day of his death, was spent in the exercise of the first Christian virtues, patience, fortitude, humility, and resignation. Bretonneau, his biographer, records that he always spoke with an extreme moderation of the individuals who had acted the most successfully in his disfavour; that he reproved those who mentioned their conduct with severity; that he read, even with a stoical apathy, the bitterest writings which were published against him; that he regarded the loss of empire as a necessary correction of the misdemeanours of his life, and even rebuked those who expressed any concern for the issue of events, which he respected as ordinations of the divine will.

According to the same biographer, James was exact in his devotion, moderate even to abstinence in his life; full of sentiments of the highest contrition for past offences; and, according to the discipline of the Romish church, was very severe in the austerities which he inflicted on his per

son. As this prince justly regarded himself as a martyr to the Catholic faith, as his warmest friends were all of this persuasion, as his conversation in his retirement at St. Germains was, in a great measure, confined to priests and devotees, it is natural that his superstition should increase with the increase of religious sentiment; and as he had made use of his power and authority, whilst in England, to enlarge the number of proselytes to popery, so, in a private station, he laboured incessantly, by prayer, and exhortation, and example, to confirm the piety of his popish adherents, and to effect a reformation in those who still continued firm to the doctrines of the church of England. He visited the monks of La Trappe once a year, the severest order of religionists in France; and his conformity to the discipline of the convent was so strict and exact, that he impressed those devotees with sentiments of admiration at his piety, humility, and constancy.

Thus having spent twelve years with a higher degree of peace and tranquillity than he had ever experienced in the most triumphant part of his life, he was seized with a palsy in September, 1701; and, after having languished fifteen days, died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having filled up the interval between his first seizure and final exit with the whole train of religious exercises enjoined on similar occasions by the church of Rome, with solemn and repeated professions of his faith, and earnest exhortation of his two children, the youngest of whom was born in the second year of his exile, to keep steadfast to the religion in which they had been educated.

These precepts and commands have acted with a force superior to all the temptations of a crown, and have been adhered to with a firmness which obliges an historian to acknowledge the superiority which James's descendants, in the nice points of honour and conscience, have gained over the character of Henry the Fourth, who, at that period when he was looked up to as the greatest hero of the protestant cause, made no scruple to accept the crown on the disgraceful terms of abjuring the principles of the reformation, and embracing the principles of a religion, which, from his early infancy, he had been taught to regard as idolatrous and profane.

The dominion of error over the minds of the generality of mankind is irresistible. James, to the last hour of his life, continued as great a bigot to his political as his religious errors: he could not help considering the strength and power of the crown as a circumstance necessary to the preservation and happiness of the people; and in a letter of advice which he wrote to his son, whilst he conjures him to pay a religious observance to all the duties of a good sovereign, he cautions him against suffering any entrenchment on the royal prerogative. Among several heads, containing excellent instructions on the art of reigning happily and justly, he warns the young prince never to disquiet his subjects in their property or their religion; and, what is remarkable, to his last breath, he persisted in asserting, that he never attempted to subvert the laws, or procure more than a toleration and equality of privilege to his Catholic subjects.

VOL. II.

As there is great reason to believe this assertion to be true, it shows that the delusion was incurable under which the king laboured, by the trust he had put in the knavish doctrines of lawyers and priests; and that neither himself nor his Protestant abettors could fathom the consequences of that enlarged toleration which he endeavoured to establish.

MACAULEY.

KING WILLIAM III.

WILLIAM the Third, king of Great Britain and Ireland, was in his person of middle size, ill shaped in his limbs, somewhat round in his shoulders, light in the colour of his hair and in his complexion. The lines of his face were hard, and his nose was aquiline; but a good and penetrating eye threw a kind of light on his countenance, which tempered its severity, and rendered his harsh features, in some measure, agreeable. Though his constitution was weak, delicate, and infirm, he loved the manly exercises of the field; and often indulged himself in the pleasures, and even sometimes in the excesses of the table. In his private character he was frequently harsh, passionate, and severe, with regard to trifles; but when the subject rose equal to his mind, and in the tumult of battle, he was dignified, cool, and serene. Though he was apt to form bad impressions, which were not easily removed, he was neither vindictive in his disposition, nor obstinate in his resentment. Neglected in his education, and, perhaps, destitute by nature of an elegance

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