The public became Stuart-mad, and everybody, specially the
women, said, "What a pity it was that we hadn't a Stuart to
govern." All parties, Whig, Tory, or Radical, became Jacobite at
heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked about the
liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of man
still, but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about,
and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they
could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite
as the Jacobs themselves. As for Tories, no great change in them
was necessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being
congenial to them. So the whole nation, that is, the reading part
of the nation, with some exceptions, for thank God there has always
been some salt in England, went over the water to Charlie. But
going over to Charlie was not enough, they must, or at least a
considerable part of them, go over to Rome too, or have a hankering
to do so. As the Priest sarcastically observes in the text, "As
all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folks who through Scott's
novels admire the Jacobs must be Papists too." An idea got about
that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts must be the
climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient.
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