These confiscations had great effect in satisfying the vulture appetite of England. But as this business approached completion, the national mind reverted to the one great question--that of Protestant succession. The days of Charles drew towards a close. As yet the British Constitution had not debarred the heir-presumptive, though he should be a Catholic; and this was a thorn in the national heart. The fears of "popery" became again the national theme, and nobles and people alike brooded on this impending calamity. The hostility to James, always bitter, grew more open and violent as the king declined. In 1680, the Earl of Shaftesbury had him indicted in Westminster Hall, as a popish recusant; but the Chief-Justice dismissed the suit. In 1681, during a temporary illness of the king, a rebellion was set on foot by Shaftesbury, the Duke of Argyle, Lord William Russell, and others. The avowed object was the restoration of The Protectorate, but the covert design, to supplant the Duke of York, and place Monmouth, the natural son of Charles, on the throne. The king recovered; the plot exploded, Monmouth was banished the court, and retired to the Continent, and Argyle and Shaftesbury were attainted, but fled to Holland, to concoct new schemes for barring the succession of James. On the 6th of February, 1685, Charles died, unhonored and unlamented, save in so far as his death opened the way to an unwelcome successor, and all looked in fearful boding to that dreaded event. The reign of Charles was a weak and inglorious one. His was a kind of passive existence, spent in connivance at the treason of a corrupt court, and the regicides of the last reign, while they connived at his secret carousals and studied profligacy. His youth was one of promise, and it is even asserted by some of his biographers that his indifference to all the great ends that excite the ambition of princes was an exemplification of practical wisdom. That such a reign was the only one that could have secured his permanency on the throne is now a matter of speculation. The received opinion is, that he believed it was, and acted in accordance with that belief. His well-known repartee to the Duke of York, who endeavored to rouse him from his apathy, would more than indicate this--that "he was too old to go again upon his travels." Yet it scarcely serves as an excuse for a long life wasted, and the noble ends of government neglected. But this much is well known in Ireland,--too well to be forgotten,--that he mulcted his English subjects to carry on his debaucheries; that he despoiled the Irish Catholics to remunerate his English creditors, and when both sources failed, he became a stipendiary on the bounty of the French king, bequeathing to his successor an exhausted exchequer, a turbulent people, a crown pawned for many a debt, and yet with many an heir-expectant. It required but a short time for James to establish facts which were patent to all minds but his: that the nobles by whom