_King's intention to repeal the test act._--We know that the king's intention was to obtain the repeal of the habeas corpus act, a law which he reckoned as destructive of monarchy as the test was of the catholic religion.[82] And I see no reason to suppose that he would have failed of this, had he not given alarm to his high-church parliament, by a premature manifestation of his design to fill the civil and military employments with the professors of his own mode of faith. It has been doubted by Mr. Fox whether James had, in this part of his reign, conceived the projects commonly imputed to him, of overthrowing, or injuring by any direct acts of power, the protestant establishment of this kingdom. Neither the copious extracts from Barillon's correspondence with his own court, published by Sir John Dalrymple and himself, nor the king's own memoirs, seem, in his opinion, to warrant a conclusion that anything farther was intended than to emancipate the Roman catholics from the severe restrictions of the penal laws, securing the public exercise of their worship from molestation, and to replace them upon an equality as to civil offices, by abrogating the test act of the late reign.[83] We find nevertheless a remarkable conversation of the king himself with the French ambassador, which leaves an impression on the mind that his projects were already irreconcilable with that pledge of support he had rather unadvisedly given to the Anglican church at his accession. This interpretation of his language is confirmed by the expressions used at the same time by Sunderland, which are more unequivocal and point at the complete establishment of the catholic religion.[84] The particular care displayed by James in this conversation, and indeed in so many notorious instances, to place the army, as far as possible, in the command of catholic officers, has very much the appearance of his looking towards the employment of force in overthrowing the protestant church, as well as the civil privileges of his subjects. Yet he probably entertained confident hopes, in the outset of his reign, that he might not be driven to this necessity, or at least should only have occasion to restrain a fanatical populace. He would rely on the intrinsic excellence of his own religion, and still more on the temptations that his favour would hold out. For the repeal of the test would not have placed the two religions on a fair level. Catholics, however little qualified, would have filled, as in fact they did under the dispensing power, most of the principal stations in the court, law, and army. The king told Barillon, he was well enough acquainted with England to be assured, that the admissibility to office would make more catholics than the right of saying mass publicly. There was, on the one hand, a prevailing laxity of principle in the higher ranks, and a corrupt devotedness to power for the sake of the emoluments it could dispense, which encouraged the expectation