Wearisome as these details are, they at least bring once more into relief the hesitancy which characterises every action of the Government till the powder is actually discovered. Though Fawkes has been seen by Suffolk in the afternoon, no preparations are made for his arrest. Knyvet does not even bring cord with him to tie the wrists of a possible conspirator, and when Doubleday at last proceeds to bind him, he has to rely upon the garters found in his pocket. It is but one out of many indications which point to the conclusion that the members of the Government had nothing to guide their steps but an uncertain light in which they put little confidence. Taken together with the revelations of their ignorance as to the whereabouts of the plotters after Fawkes's capture had been effected, it almost irresistibly proves that they had no better information to rest on than the obscure communication which had been handed to Monteagle at Hoxton. As I have said before, the truth of the ordinary account of the plot would not be in the slightest degree affected if Salisbury had known of it six weeks or six months earlier. I feel certain, however, that he had no such previous knowledge, because, if he had, he would have impressed on the action of his colleagues the greater energy which springs from certainty. It is strange, no doubt, that a Government with so many spies and intelligencers afoot, should not have been aware of what was passing in the Old Palace of Westminster. It was, however, not the first or the last time that governments, keeping a watchful eye on the ends of the earth, have been in complete ignorance of what was passing under their noses. CHAPTER VI THE GOVERNMENT AND THE CATHOLICS Having thus disposed of Father Gerard's assaults on the general truth of the accepted narrative of the Plot, we can raise ourselves into a larger air, and trace the causes leading or driving the Government into measures which persuaded such brave and constant natures to see an act of righteous vengeance in what has seemed to their own and subsequent ages, a deed of atrocious villainy. Is it true, we may fairly ask, that these measures were such as no honourable man could in that age have adopted, and which it is therefore necessary to trace to the vilest of all origins--the desire of a half-successful statesman to root himself in place and power? It would, indeed, be difficult to deny that the feeling of advanced English Protestants towards the Papal Church was one of doctrinal and moral estrangement. They held that the teaching of that church was false and even idolatrous, and they were quite ready to use the power of the state to extirpate a falsity so pernicious. On the other hand, the priests, Jesuits, and others, who flocked to England with their lives in their hands, were filled with the joy of those whose work it is to disseminate eternal truths, and to rescue souls, lost in heresy, from spiritual destruction.