He lent himself to the intrigues of the French minister, stained with Protestant blood; for his first armament was a fleet against the Huguenots. If not a friend to Popery, he was madly regardless of its hazards to the constitution. Ill fortune suddenly gathered round him. Distracted councils; popular feuds, met by alternate weakness and violence; the loss of the national respect, finally deepening into civil bloodshed; were the punishments of his betrayal of Protestantism.

"Cromwell's was the sceptre of a broken kingdom. He found the reputation and influence of England crushed: utter humiliation abroad; at home, the exhaustion of the civil war, and furious partizanship still tearing the public strength in sunder. Cromwell was a murderer; but in the high designs of Providence the personal purity of the instrument is not always regarded. Whatever was in the heart of the Protector, the policy of his government was Protestantism. His treasures and his arms were openly devoted to the Protestant cause in France, in Italy, throughout the world. He was the first who raised a public fund for the support of the Vaudois churches. He sternly repelled the advances which Popery made to seduce him into the path of the late king. England was instantly lifted upon her feet, as by the power of miracle. All her battles

were victorious; France and Spain bowed before her. All her adventures were conquests: she laid the foundation of her colonial empire, and of that still more brilliant commercial empire, to which the only limits in either space or time may be those of mankind. She was the most conspicuous power in Europe; growing year by year in opulence, public opulence, and foreign renown; until Cromwell could almost realize the splendid improbability, that, Before he died, he would make the name of an Englishman as much feared and honoured as ever was that of an ancient Roman.'

"Charles II. came to an eminently prosperous throne. Abroad, it held the foremost rank, the fruit and vigour of the Protectorate; at home, all faction had been forgotten in the general joy of the restoration. But Charles was a concealed Roman Catholic. He attempted to introduce his religion: the star of England was instantly darkened; the country and the king became alike the scorn of foreign courts; the national honour was scandalized by mercenary subserviency to France; the national arms were humiliated by a disastrous war with Holland; the capital was swept by the memorable inflictions of pestilence and conflagration.

"James II. still more openly violated the national trust he publicly became a Roman Catholic. This filled the cup. The Stuarts

were cast out, they and their dynasty, for ever; that proud line of kings were sentenced to wither down into a monk; and that monk living on the alms of England, a stipendiary and an exile.

"William was called by Protestantism. He found the throne, as it was always found at the close of a Popish reign, surrounded by a host of difficulties: at home, the kingdom in a ferment; Popery, and its ally Jacobinism, girding themselves for battle; fierce disturbance in Scotland; open war in Ireland, with the late king at its head: abroad, the French king domineering over Europe, and threatening invasion; in the scale of nations, England nothing! But the principle of William's government was Protestantism ; he fought and legislated for it through life; and it was to him, as it had been to all before him, strength and victory. He silenced the English faction; he crushed the Irish war; he then attacked the colossal strength of France on its own shore. This was the direct collision, not so much of the two kingdoms as the two faiths; the Protestant champion stood in the field against the Popish persecutor. Before that war closed, the fame of Louis was undone; England rose to the highest military name. In a train of immortal victories, she defended Protestantism through

out Europe; drove the enemy to his palace gates; and before she sheathed the sword, broke the power of France for a hundred years. "The Brunswick line were called to the throne on the sole title of Protestantism. They were honourable men, and they kept their oaths to the religion of England. The country rose under each of those Protestant kings to a still higher rank; every trivial reverse compensated by some magnificent addition of honour and power; until the throne of England stands on a height from which it may look down upon the world."

"It is impossible to conceive that this regular interchange of punishment and preservation has been without a cause and without a purpose. Through almost three hundred years, through all varieties of public circumstances, all changes of men, all shades of general polity, we see one thing alone unchanged, the regular connection of national misfortune with the introduction of Popish influence, and of national triumph with its exclusion."

2d. I would further reply, in answer to the question relative to our preservation as a nation, that the rejoicing which is represented to take place in heaven on the fall of the symbolical Babylon, or

Papal Rome, has a manifest allusion TO A GREAT

MARITIME POWER.

"And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more; the merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyme wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. THE MERCHANTS OF THESE THINGS, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every ship-master, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning,