object: the termination of those terrible misconceptions,
political and religious, that have occasioned so many
martyrdoms, and so many crimes alike to sovereigns and to
subjects.

If James the Second had really attempted to re-establish
Popery in this country, the English people, who had no hand in
his overthrow, would doubtless soon have stirred and secured
their "Catholic and Apostolic church," independent of any
foreign dictation; the church to which they still regularly
profess their adherence; and being a practical people, it is
possible that they might have achieved their object and yet
retained their native princes; under which circumstances we
might have been saved from the triple blessings of Venetian
politics, Dutch finance, and French wars: against which, in
their happiest days, and with their happiest powers, struggled
the three greatest of English statesmen,--Bolingbroke,
Shelburne, and lastly the son of Chatham.

We have endeavoured in another work, not we hope without
something of the impartiality of the future, to sketch the
character and career of his successors. From his death to
1825, the political history of England is a history of great
events and little men. The rise of Mr Canning, long kept down
by the plebeian aristocracy of Mr Pitt as an adventurer, had
shaken parties to their centre. His rapid disappearance from
the scene left both whigs and tories in a state of
disorganization. The distinctive principles of these
connexions were now difficult to trace. That period of public
languor which intervenes between the breaking up of parties