"These people are my subjects; and I cannot be so cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under my government." "There is nothing cruel," answered the callous diplomatist, "in what I recommend.

Your Majesty ought to consider that mercy to Protestants is cruelty to Catholics." James, however, was not to be moved; and Avaux retired in very bad humour.

His belief was that the King's professions of humanity were hypocritical, and that, if the orders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only because His Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country would fall on the Protestants without waiting for orders, [431] But Avaux was entirely mistaken.

That he should have supposed James to be as profoundly immoral as himself is not strange.

But it is strange that so able a man should have forgotten that James and himself had quite different objects in view.