From an

London, Pablished by Longman Harst. Rees, Orme, and Browne, Nov 25th 1820.

INTRODUCTION.

THE character of the Rebellion which broke out in this country in the year 1745 cannot be rightly understood without a knowledge of our domestic history, and of the state of the different parts of the island, from the commencement of the disturbances in the reign of Charles I., down to that period.

To the Reformation (itself, no doubt, the fruit of growing knowledge and civilisation) we are chiefly indebted for the diffusion of the principles of civil as well as religious liberty. Even in countries possessed of certain political privileges, tyrannical principles were generally prevalent previous to that event. The English Constitution, às is well observed by Hume," had lain in a kind of confusion ;" and the value of the privileges which it conferred on the subjects was so little understood before the time of the Stuarts, that the government of England was generally conceived to be a simple and unmixed monarchy, which possessed popular assemblies forming "only the ornament of the fabric, without being in any

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degree essential to its being and existence." was impossible, however, for men to emancipate themselves from ecclesiastical tyranny, without, in some degree, embracing principles favourable to general freedom; for the arguments, on which they claimed religious liberty, admitted of an easy and almost unavoidable application to civil rights. This connection was soon perceived by many of the depositaries of power, who resisted innovation in matters of religion, as likely to lead to innovations in other matters. They saw the importance of preserving every link in the chain of tyranny unbroken. It was soon felt, in like manner, by the partisans of the new religious doctrines, that the establishment of their other rights was necessary to the secure enjoyment of their religion. Hence the intimate manner in which the questions of liberty and religion have been generally connected down to a comparatively recent period! In all the public dissensions of this country at least, since the Reformation, religion and liberty have always been more or less blended together.

In England a tyrannical sovereign early embraced so much of the Reformation as he thought favourable to his purposes, and arbitrarily modelled the church in such a manner, as to derive from the changes a great accession of power. The reformed church of England retained all, or nearly all the principles of the Catholic church favourable to arbitrary power; and the king having made himself its supreme head, Pontifex

maximus, all the influence of the ecclesiastical body was thrown into the regal scale. The permission to marry, which the clergy of all the Protestant churches have obtained, added greatly to the influence of the English monarch; for the natural wish to provide for an offspring, necessarily rendered the clergy more ambitious of wealth and preferment, and consequently more subservient to those who had that wealth and preferment at their disposal, than they would have been in a state of celibacy. Hence, now that the principles of toleration prevail in most countries; that persecution on account of religion is almost unknown; that the laity have escaped in several great Catholic states from the influence of the clegry; that religious reform has ceased to be an object of primary importance in most parts of Europe; and that the attention of men is almost solely directed to political reform, the Catholics, who are friendly to liberty as well as Protestants, rejoice at nothing so much, in the present contests for freedom, as that they have not to struggle against such an additional influence as their governments would have derived from an ecclesiastical reform ef fected on the principles of that of the church of England.

The Reformation, so effected by the monarch in England, did not satisfy a number of those who had embraced the reformed doctrines. These dissentients, from their wish to purge the church from many of the Catholic doctrines and