That James knew the dangers that beset him in England, there can scarcely be a doubt; but the measures of redress which he contemplated being just and beneficent, he believed they would in a short time harmonize all interests. He had faith in his own justice, but miscalculated in attributing so noble a sense to the dominant and intolerant nobles by whom he was surrounded, and was still more mistaken when he expressed an abiding faith in the justice of the English people. Yet filled with the hope of marking a glorious page in the annals of England, he assumed the sceptre with a bold and kingly hand. His speech before the assembled council of the nation was all that a generous or magnanimous people could desire, and all his subsequent acts are marked by a strict adherence to the principles which he then enunciated. "I will endeavor," said he, "to preserve the government of Church and State in the manner by law established. I know that the Church of England is favorable to monarchy, and those who are members of it have made it appear on various occasions that they were faithful subjects. I will take particular care to defend and support it. I know likewise that the laws of the kingdom are sufficient to make the king as great as I could wish. As I am determined to preserve the prerogative of my crown, so I will never deprive others of what belongs to them. I have often hazarded my life in defence of the nation; I am still ready to expose it to preserve its rights." He eschewed the tendency to despotic power which his enemies had circulated, or any design to call in question the titles or hereditaments of such as acquired lands through the Reformation. His object was not to disrupt but to harmonize and adjust, and blend all interests for an onward movement in civilization. He declared civil liberty to be the right of Catholics and Protestants alike. He proclaimed liberty of conscience, and took immediate action to secure it by liberating several thousand Catholics confined in the prisons of Ireland for non-attendance on Protestant worship, and also twelve hundred Quakers who had been imprisoned for a like offence. He declared the abolition of all penal laws, all religious test-oaths, and even oaths of allegiance on the assumption of civil office. He extended the same rights to the people of Ireland and Scotland as to those of England, and enjoined the bishops to announce in their churches that liberty of conscience was henceforth the law of the land. Here, 'tis said, he made his first royal blunder. Proclaiming liberty of conscience from a pulpit is hardly in accordance with that right of denouncing heresy and schism, which every church, whether founded on human will or divine right, has asserted from the days of Abram. But, then, on the other hand, the Church of England, which had been proclaiming that and every thing else the royal reformers of the last century chose to dictate, might have announced this liberal measure of