Stuart would not content them, without undoing all that had been enacted as to the church from the time of Henry VIII.; and thus the charge of innovation came evidently home to themselves.[265] The convention parliament would have acted a truly politic, as well as magnanimous, part in extending this boon, or rather this right, of religious liberty to the members of that unfortunate church, for whose sake the late king had lost his throne. It would have displayed to mankind that James had fallen, not as a catholic, nor for seeking to bestow toleration on catholics, but as a violator of the constitution. William, in all things superior to his subjects, knew that temporal, and especially military fidelity, would be in almost every instance proof against the seductions of bigotry. The Dutch armies have always been in a great measure composed of catholics; and many of that profession served under him in the invasion of England. His own judgment for the repeal of the penal laws had been declared even in the reign of James. The danger, if any, was now immensely diminished; and it appears in the highest degree probable that a genuine toleration of their worship, with no condition but the oath of allegiance, would have brought over the majority of that church to the protestant succession, so far at least as to engage in no schemes inimical to it. The wiser catholics would have perceived that, under a king of their own faith, or but suspected of an attachment to it, they must continue the objects of perpetual distrust to a protestant nation. They would have learned that conspiracy and jesuitical intrigue could but keep alive calumnious imputations, and diminish the respect which a generous people would naturally pay to their sincerity and their misfortune. Had the legislators of that age taken a still larger sweep, and abolished at once those tests and disabilities, which, once necessary bulwarks against an insidious court, were no longer demanded in the more republican model of our government, the jacobite cause would have suffered, I believe, a more deadly wound than penal statutes and double taxation were able to inflict. But this was beyond the philosophers, how much beyond the statesmen, of the time!