It is plain that King James’s Government[A] were mysteriously stayed and restrained in their legislative and administrative action after the discovery of the diabolically atrocious Gunpowder Treason Plot. [Footnote A: It is the duty of every Government to see that it is true, just, and strong. Governments should confine their efforts to the calm and faithful attainment of these three ideals. Then they win respect and confidence, even from those who fear them but do not love. James and the first Earl of Salisbury, and that type of princes and statesmen, oscillate betwixt the two extremes, injustice and hysterical generosity, which is a sure sign of a lack of consciousness of absolute truth, justice, and strength.] And illogical and inconstant as many English rulers too often have been throughout England’s long and, by good fortune, glorious History, this extraordinary illogicalness and inconstancy of the Government of King James I. betokens to him that can read betwixt the lines, and who “knows what things belong to what things”——betokens Evidence of what? Unhesitatingly I answer: _Of that Government’s not daring, for very decency’s sake, to proceed to extremities._ Now, by reason of the primal instincts of human nature, this consciousness would be sure to be generated by, and would be certain to operate upon, any and every civilized, even though heathen, government with staying and restraining force. Now, the Government of James I. was a civilized government, and it was not a heathen government. Moreover, it certainly was a Government composed of human beings, who, after all, were the persecuted Papists’ fellow-creatures. Therefore, I suggest that this manifest hesitancy to proceed to extremities sprang from, and indeed itself demonstrates, this fact, namely, that the then British Government realized that _it was an essentially Popish Doctrine of Morals which had been the primary motive power for securing their temporal salvation. That doctrine being, indeed, none other than the hated and dreaded “Popish Doctrine” of the “non-binding force” upon the Popish Conscience of a secret, morally unlawful oath which thereby, ipso facto, “the Papal Church” prohibited and condemned._ Hence, that was, I once more suggest, what Archbishop Usher referred to, in his oracular words, which have become historic, but which have been hitherto deemed to constitute an insoluble riddle. For certainly behind those oracular words lay some great State mystery. The same fact possibly accounts for the traditional tale that the second Earl of Salisbury confessed that the Plot was “his father’s contrivance.”——See Gerard’s “_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_” p. 160.