Note 142 — Chapter IV

The following remarks by Dalrymple are worth insertion:—“Although in history the causes of events should be pointed out before the events themselves are related, yet a contrary method becomes sometimes necessary. There were various causes of these disappointments. The Church party was by far the most numerous in Parliament, many being Tories in the Church who were Whigs in the State. A number of members who had deserted their duty in Parliament, returned, and took their seats during these debates, in order to protect the Church from the invasion—as they called it—which was making on her. The assistance of the Dissenters against Popery, and in defence of liberty, was now no longer needed; and their short-lived connections with the late King were recollected. Ancient antipathies with new jealousies started up in the minds of the Tories, and both were increased by the freedoms with which some of the Whig Lords, particularly Macclesfield and Mordaunt, treated the Church in their speeches and protests; for even those could not bear to hear her treated with indecency, who had never attended to her tenets. Of the Whig party of the established communion, many looked upon matters of religion with indifference, and thought, that the toleration in favour of all opinions would be the more easily maintained in proportion to the greater numbers who stood in need of it. Of the Dissenters themselves, many of the Presbyterians were afraid lest they should weaken the strength of their party by dividing the Dissenting interest; and the more rigid Sectaries looked with envy at that participation of honours in Church and in State, which the Presbyterians were to obtain, and from which they themselves were to be excluded. There were a few in Parliament too, of firm minds and remoter views, who, reflecting that the Dissenting interest had been always as much attached to liberty, as the Church of England had been to prerogative, thought that opposition and liberty would be buried in the same grave, and that great factions should be kept alive, both in Church and in State for the sake of the State itself.”—Dalrymple, i. 318.