43 ENGLISH OPINION . to have attained. very high degree in the scale of moral excellence. Are splendor in decoration and Magnificence in expense a mantle broad. enough to co- ver that injustice and those exactions on a plundered people by which they were purchased? The piety of the king's latter days is frequently thrown into the scale against the disorders of his earlier life. But surely the transition from profligacy to persecution is no great improvement in the human character.. Were not his false virtues even more de- structive than his avowed vices ? Did matters take a better turn, when the monarch, by exchanging gross immorali- ties for the exercise of a superstitious and intolerant religion, indulged himself and his directress in a long and bitter perse- cutibn of his own subjects? a persecution accompanied with every act of the most unrelenting cruelty. Exile, proscription, torture, death, were the rewards of four millions ofhis faithful protestant subjects .! To these rigorous exercises of arbitrary
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