At the head of this Roman Catholic party the King himself is to be placed. When he had reluctantly made up his mind to consent to the measure, it was in accordance with the circuitous policy I have now pointed out. Besides, he was fond of a dispensing power, liking Royal Declarations better than Acts of Parliament; almost any statute would be tolerable to him, if it gave him the prospect of affording relief to his subjects in the form of sovereign concession. Clarendon, who subsequently opposed the exercise of this power, now virtually recognized it, as a prerogative of the King, in the speech just quoted, and plainly pointed to the Royal intention of employing that assumed prerogative for mitigating the severities of the present statute. Policy and passion were stamped upon the face of the measure. It would be the bitterest of all satires to say that the men principally concerned in it were influenced by religious conviction--that conscientiously and in the sight of God, they performed an act which, though they saw it to be rigorous, they felt to be righteous. Amidst keenly excited feelings on the side of an exclusive policy, perhaps there was no impulse of greater force than the very common one of party feeling. When we recollect that it was not to the clergy then expressing itself in Convocation, or in any other way, but to Parliament, that the Church of England owed the clauses which required the repudiation of the Covenant, and of the doctrine of non-resistance--clauses which so galled the Puritans--the Act, to a large extent, appears, not so much an ecclesiastical measure, as a work executed by a political faction, bent upon crushing opponents, under pretence of their being unpatriotic and disloyal. Of the bad spirit in which Parliament framed and passed this act there remains not the shadow of a doubt; and it is impossible that any one acquainted with the circumstance, however he may admire the Church so re-established at the Restoration, can think of the mode of its re-establishment without shame and sorrow. [Sidenote: ACT OF UNIFORMITY.]