It cannot be considered an impartial review; besides that it was written to order, no man in England could then write impartially in that quarrel; but it is not more one-sided and uncandid than the pamphlet which it answers, and Bacon is able to recriminate with effect, and to show gross credulity and looseness of assertion on the part of the Roman Catholic advocate.

But religion had too much to do with the politics of both sides for either to be able to come into the dispute with clean hands: the Roman Catholics meant much more than toleration, and the sanguinary punishments of the English law against priests and Jesuits were edged by something even keener than the fear of treason.

But the paper contains some large surveys of public affairs, which probably no one at that time could write but Bacon.

Bacon never liked to waste anything good which he had written; and much of what he had written in the panegyric in _Praise of the Queen_ is made use of again, and transferred with little change to the pages of the _Observations on a Libel_.
FOOTNOTES: [2] Dr.Mozley..