dissensions in the camp.[1] Toleration is good—but even the best things must abide their opportunity; and although we may regret that in this grand struggle for freedom, success could only be won by the aid of measures which bordered upon oppression, yet here also the even hand of justice was but commending the chalice to the lips of those who had made others drink it to the dregs. They only were likely to fall under the Treason Act who for centuries had fed the rack and the stake with sufferers for 'opinion.'
Having thus made provision for public safety, the Parliament voted a supply of money for the fortifications on the coast and for the expenses of the Irish war; and after transferring to the Crown the first-fruits of Church benefices, which had been previously paid to the See of Rome, and passing at the same time a large and liberal measure for the appointment of twenty- six suffragan bishops,[2] they separated, not to meet again for more than a year.
- ↑ The Act was repealed in 1547, 1 Edw. VI. cap. 12. The explanation -which is there given of the causes which led to the enactment of it is temperate and reasonable. Subjects, says that statute, should obey rather for love of their prince than for fear of his laws: 'yet such times at some time cometh in the commonwealth, that it is necessary and expedient for the repressing of the insolence and unruliness of men, and for the foreseeing and providing of remedies against rebellions, insurrections, or such mischiefs as God, sometime with us displeased, doth inflict and lay upon us, or the devil, at God's permission, to assay the good and God's elect, doth sow and set among us,—the which Almighty God and man's policy hath always been content to have stayed that sharper laws as a harder bridle should be made.'
- ↑ 26 Henry VIII. cap. 14: 'An Act for Nomination and Consecration of Suffragans within the Realm.' I have already stated my impression
