But in that fault the nation itself had been an accomplice.

If the Mayors and Aldermen whom it was now proposed to punish had, when the tide of loyal enthusiasm ran high, sturdily refused to comply with the wish of their Sovereign, they would have been pointed at in the street as Roundhead knaves, preached at by the Rector, lampooned in ballads, and probably burned in effigy before their own doors.

That a community should be hurried into errors alternately by fear of tyranny and by fear of anarchy is doubtless a great evil.

But the remedy for that evil is not to punish for such errors some persons who have merely erred with the rest, and who have since repented with the rest.

Nor ought it to have been forgotten that the offenders against whom Sacheverell's clause was directed had, in 1688, made large atonement for the misconduct of which they had been guilty in 1683.