done, as it was done at the Revolution, by expelling the reigning family, and calling to the throne princes, who, relying solely on an elective title, would find it necessary to respect the privileges and follow the advice of the assemblies to which they owed every thing, to pass every bill which the legislature strongly pressed upon them, and to fill the offices of state with men in whom it confided. But as the two Houses did not choose to change the dynasty, it was necessary that they should do directly what at the Revolution was done indirectly. Nothing is more usual than to hear it said, that if the Long Parliament had contented itself with making such a reform in the government under Charles as was afterwards made under William, it would have had the highest claim to national gratitude; and that in its violence it overshot the mark. But how was it possible to make such a settlement un der Charles? Charles was not, like William and the princes of the Hanoverian line, bound by community of interests and dangers to the two Houses. It was therefore necessary that they should bind him by treaty and statute.

Mr. Hallam reprobates, in language which has a little surprised us, the nineteen propositions into which the Parliament has digested its scheme. We will ask him whether he does not think that, if James the Second had remained in the island, and had been suffered, as he probably would in that case have been suffered, to keep his crown, conditions to the full as hard would have been imposed on him? On the other hand, if the Long Parliament had pronounced the departure of Charles from London an abdication, and had called Essex or Northumberland to the throne, the new prince might have safely been suffered to reign without such restrictions; his situation would have been a sufficient guarantee. In the nineteen propositions, we see very little to blame except the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, that may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt.

Little as we are disposed to join in the vulgar clamour on this subject, we think that such an event ought to be, if possible, averted; and this could only be done, if Charles was to be left on the throne, by placing his domestic arrangements under the control of Parliament. A veto on the appointment of ministers was demanded. But this veto Parliament had virtually possessed ever since the Revolution. It is no doubt very far better that this power of the legislature should be exercised, as it is now exercised, when any great occasion calls for interference, than that at every change it should have to signify its approbation or disapproba tion in form. But, unless a new family had been placed on the throne, we do not see how this power could have been exercised as it is now exercised. We again repeat, that no restraints which could be imposed on the princes who reigned after the Revolution could have added to the security which their title afforded. They were compelled to court their parliaments. But from Charles nothing was to be expected which was not set down in the bond.

It was not stipulated that the king should give up his negative on acts of Parliament. But the Commons had certainly shown a strong disposition to exact this security also. "Such a doctrine,” says Mr. Hallam, “was in this country as repugnant to the whole history of our laws as it was incompatible with the subsistence of the monarchy in any thing more than a nominal pre-eminence." Now this ar ticle has been as completely carried into effect by the Revolution, as if it had been formally inserted in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. We are surprised, we confess, that Mr. Hallam should attach so much importance to a prerogative which has not been exercised for a hundred and thirty years, which probably will never be exercised again, and which can scarcely, in any conceivable case, be exercised for a salutary purpose.

One of the propositions is, that the judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour. To this surely no exception will be taken. The right of directing the education and marriage of the princes was most properly claimed by the Parliament on the same ground on which, after the Revolution, it was enacted, that no king, on pain of forfeiting his throne, should espouse a papist. Unless we condemn the statesmen of the Revolution, who conceived that England could not safely be governed by a sovereign married to a Catholic queen, we can scarcely condemn the Long Parliament, because, having a sovereign so situated, they thought it necessary to place him under strict restraints. The influence of Henrietta Maria had already been deeply felt in political affairs. In the regulation of her family, in the educa- tutions, would have been the extreme of rash tion and marriage of her children, it was stillness. The jealousy with which the oligarchy more likely to be felt There might be another of Venice and the States of Holland regarded Catholic queen; possibly, a Catholic king. their generals and armies induced them per

But the great security, that without which every other would have been insufficient, was the power of the sword. This both parties thoroughly understood. The Parliament insisted on having the command of the militia, and the direction of the Irish war. "By God, not for an hour!" exclaimed the king. Keep the militia," said the queen after the defeat of the royal party, "keep the militia; that will bring back every thing." That, by the old constitution, no military authority was lodged in the Parliament, Mr. Hallam has clearly shown. That it is a species of power which ought not to be permanently lodged in large and divided assemblies, must, we think, in fairness be conce ed. Opposition, publicity, long discussion, frequent compromise, these are the characteristics of the proceedings in such bodies. Unity, secrecy, decision, are the qualities which military arrangements require This undoubtedly was an evil. But, on the other hand, at such a crisis to trust such a king with the very weapon which, in hands less dangerous, had destroyed so many free consti

petually to interfere in matters of which they | collects round it a vast retinue, composed of were incompetent to judge. This policy secured them against military usurpation, but placed them under great disadvantages in war. The uncontrolled power which the king of France exercised over his troops enabled him to conquer his enemies, but enabled him also to oppress his people. Was there any intermediate course? None, we confess, altogether free from objection. But, on the whole, we conceive that the best measure would have been that which the Parliament over and over proposed; that for a limited time the power of the sword should be left to the two Houses, and that it should revert to the crown when the constitution should be firmly established; when the new securities of freedom should be so far strengthened by prescription, that it would be difficult to employ even a standing army for the purpose of subverting them.

people who thrive by its custom, or are amused by its display, who may be sometimes reckoned, in an ostentatious enumeration, as forming a part of it, but who give no aid to its operations, and take but a languid interest in its success: who relax its discipline and dishonour its flag, by their irregularities; and who, after a disaster, are perfectly ready to cut the throats and rifle the baggage of their companions.

Thus it is in every great division: and thus it was in our civil war. On both sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and enough of error, to disgust any man who did not reflect that the whole history of the species is nothing but a comparison of crimes and errors. Misanthropy is not the temper which qualifies a man to act in great affairs, or to judge of them.

Mr. Hallam thinks that the dispute might easily have been compromised, by enacting that the king should have no power to keep a standing army on foot without the consent of Parliament. He reasons as if the question had been merely theoretical-as if at that time no army had been wanted. "The kingdom," he says, "might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military organization." Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks the most important circumstance in the whole case. Ireland was at that moment in rebellion; and a great expedition would obviously be necessary to reduce that kingdom to obedience. The Houses had, therefore, to consider, not an abstract question of law, but an urgent practical question, directly involving the safety of the state. They had to consider the expediency of immediately giving a great army to a king, who was at least as desirous to put down the Parliament of England as to conquer the insurgents of Ireland.

"Of the Parliament," says Mr. Hallam, “it may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them, from their quarrel with the king to their expulsion by Cromwell." Those who may agree with us in the opinion which we have expressed as to the original demands of the Parliament, will scarcely concur in this strong censure. The propositions which the Houses made at Oxford, at Uxbridge, and at Newcastle, were in strict accordance with these demands. In the darkest period of the war, they showed no disposition to concede any vital principle. In the fulness of their success, they showed no disposition to encroach beyond these limits. In this respect we cannot but think that they showed justice and generosity, as well as political wisdom and courage.

The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with Mr. Hallam_in_reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual, indeed, we entertain a more unmi

No private quarrel ever happens, in which the right and wrong are so exquisitely divided, that all the right lies on one side, and all the wrong on the other. But here was a schism which separated a great nation into two parties. Of these parties, each was composed of many smaller parties. Each contained many members, who differed far less from their moderate opponents than from their violent allies. Each reckoned among its supporters many who were determined in their choice, by some accident of birth, of connection, or of local situation. Each of them attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and turbid spirits, to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political hurricane are the atmosphere of life. A party, the disputes in the University of Dublin. He like a camp, has its sutlers and camp-follow-regrets to hear that a church is used as a stable, ers, as well as its soldiers. In its progress it and that the benefices of Irelan 1 are very poor

Of course, we do not mean to defend all their measures. Far from it. There never was a perfect man; it would, therefore, be the height of absurdity to expect a perfect party or a per-tigated contempt than for any other character fect assembly. For large bodies are far more in our history. The fondness with which a likely to err than individuals. The passions portion of the church regards his memory, can are inflamed by sympathy; the fear of punish-be compared only to that perversity of affection ment and the sense of shame are diminished which sometimes leads a mother to select the by partition. Every day we see men do for monster or the idiot of the family as the object their faction what they would die rather than of her especial favour. Mr. Hallam has incido for themselves. dentally observed, that in the correspondence of Laud with Strafford, there are no indica tions of a sense of duty towards God or man. The admirers of the archbishop have, in con sequence, inflicted upon the public a crowd of extracts, designed to prove the contrary. Now, in all those passages, we see nothing which a prelate as wicked as Pope Alexander or Cardinal Dubois might not have written. They indicate no sense of duty to God or man; but simply a strong interest in the prosperity and dignity of the order to which the writer be longed; an interest which, when kept within certain limits, does not deserve censure, but which can never be considered as a virtue. Laud is anxious to accommodate satisfactorily

He is desirous that, however small a congre- themselves in the lower ranks of the party. gation may be, service should be regularly The war was, therefore, conducted in a languid performed. He expresses a wish that the and inefficient manner. A resolute leader judges of the court before which questions of might have brought it to a close in a month. tithe are generally brought, should be selected At the end of three campaigns, however, the with a view to the interest of the clergy. All event was still dubious; and that it had not this may be very proper; and it may be very been decidedly unfavourable to the cause of proper that an alderman should stand up for liberty, was principally owing to the skill the tolls of his borough, and an East Indian and energy which the more violent Rounddirector for the charter of his company. But heads had displayed in subordinate situations. it is ridiculous to say that these things indicate The conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell at piety and benevolence. No primate, though Marston had exhibited a remarkable contrast he were the most abandoned of mankind, to that of Essex at Edgehill, and Waller at would wish to see the body, with the conse- Lansdown. quence of which his own consequence was identical, degraded in the public estimation by internal dissensions, by the ruinous state of its edifices, and the slovenly performance of its rites. We willingly acknowledge that the particular letters in question have very little harm in them; a compliment which cannot often be paid either to the writings or to the actions of Laud.

Bad as the archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the statute. Nor was he by any means so formidable as to be a proper subject for a retrospective ordinance of the legislature. His mind had not expansion enough to comprehend a great scheme, good or bad. His oppressive acts were not, like those of the Earl of Strafford, parts of an extensive system. They were the luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition indulges itself from day to day-the excesses natural to a little mind in a great place. The severest punishment which the two Houses could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty, and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague, with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart in the abject imbecility of his intellect; minuting down his dreams, counting the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction of the salt, and listening for the note of the screechowl! Contemptuous mercy was the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous old bigot.

The Houses, it must be acknowledged, committed great errors in the conduct of the war; or rather one great error, which brought their affairs into a condition requiring the most perilous expedients. The Parliamentary leaders of what may be called the first generation, Essex, Manchester, Northumberland, Hollis, even Pym-all the most eminent men, in short, Hampden excepted, were inclined to half-measures. They dreaded a decisive victory almost as much as a decisive overthrow. They wished to bring the king into a situation which might render it necessary for him to grant their just and wise demands; but not to subvert the constitution or to change the dynasty. They were afraid of serving the purposes of those fiercer and more determined enemies of monarchy, who now began to show

If there be any truth established by the uni versal experience of nations, it is this; that to carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. The time of negotiation is the time for deliberation and delay. But when an extreme case calls for that remedy, which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is vio lent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will not do better: and to act on any other principle is not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

This the Parliamentary leaders found. The third year of hostilities was drawing to a close: and they had not conquered the king. They had not obtained even those advantages which they had expected, from a policy obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished to husband their resources. They now found that, in enterprises like theirs, par. simony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The even taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the work of destruction to a speedĮ termination. By their moderation many live and much property had been wasted. The angry passions which, if the contest had bec short, would have died away almost as soor, as they appeared, had fixed themselves in the form of deep and lasting hatred. A miary caste had grown up. Those who had been induced to take up arms by the patrione feel ings of citizens, had begun to entertain the professional feelings of soldiers. Avove all, the leaders of the party had forfeited its confidence. If they had, by their valour and abilities, gained a complete victory, tacir influence might have been sufficient to prevent their associates from abusing it. It is now neces sary to choose more resolute and uncompromising commanders. Unhappily the illustrious man who alone united in himself all the talents and virtues which the crisis required, who alone could have saved his country from the present dangers without plunging her into others, who alone could have united all the friends of liberty in obedience to his commanding genius and his venerable name, was no more. Something might still be done. The Houses might still avert that worst of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious and unprincipled master. They might still preserve London from all the horrors of rapine, massacre, and lust. But their hopes of a victory as spotless as their cause, of a reconciliation which might knit together the hearts of all

honest Englishmen for the defence of the pub- reach them. Here his own case differed widely lic good, of durable tranquillity, of temperate from theirs. Not only was his condemnation freedom, were buried in the grave of Hamp-in itself a measure which only the strongest den. necessity could vindicate, but it could not be The self-denying ordinance was passed, and procured without taking several previous the army was remodelled. These measures steps, every one of which would have rewere undoubtedly full of danger. But all that quired the strongest necessity to vindicate it. was left to the Parliament was to take the less It could not be procured without dissolving of two dangers. And we think that, even if the government by military force, without esthey could have accurately foreseen all that tablishing precedents of the most dangerous followed, their decision ought to have been the description, without creating difficulties which same. Under any circumstances, we should the next ten years were spent in removing, have preferred Cromwell to Charles. But without pulling down institutions which it there could be no comparison between Crom- soon became necessary to reconstruct, and well and Charles victorious-Charles restored, setting up others which almost every man was Charies enabled to feed fat all the hungry soon impatient to destroy. It was necessary grudges of his smiling rancour, and his cringing to strike the House of Lords out of the consti pride. The next visit of his majesty to his tution, to exclude members of the House of faithful Commons would have been more se- Commons by force, to make a new crime, a rious than that with which he last honoured new tribunal, a new mode of procedure. The them; more serious than that which their own whole legislative and judicial systems were general paid them some years after. The trampled down for the purpose of taking a sinking would scarce have been content with col-gle head. Not only those parts of the consti laring Marten, and praying that the Lord would tution which the republicans were desirous to deliver him from Vane. If, by fatal misman-destroy, but those which they wished to retain agement, nothing was left to England but a and exalt, were deeply injured by these transchoice of tyrants, the last tyrant whom she actions. High courts of justice began to usurp should have chosen was Charles. the functions of juries. The remaining dele gates of the people were soon driven from their seats, by the same military violence which had enabled them to exclude their col

From the apprehension of this worst evil the Houses were soon delivered by their new leaders. The armies of Charles were everywhere routed; his fastnesses stormed; his party hum-leagues. bled and subjugated. The king himself fell If Charles had been the last of his line, there into the hands of the Parliament; and both the would have been an intelligible reason for putking and the Parliament soon fell into the ting him to death. But the blow which termi hands of the army. The fate of both the cap-nated his life, at once transferred the allegiance tives was the same. Both were treated alter-of every royalist to an heir, and an heir who nately with respect and with insult. At length was at liberty. To kill the individual, was the natural life of the one, and the political truly, under such circumstances, not to delife of the other, were terminated by violence; stroy, but to release the king. and the power for which both had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity. Thus misfortune turned the greatest of Parliaments into the despised Rump, and the worst of kings into the Blessed Martyr.

We detest the character of Charles; but a man ought not to be removed by a law ex post facto, even constitutionally procured, merely because he is detestable. He must also be very dangerous. We can scarcely conceive that any danger which a state can apprehend from any individual, could justify the violent measures which were necessary to procure a sentence against Charles. But in fact the danger amounted to nothing. There was indeed danger from the attachment of a large party to his office. But this danger, his execution only increased. His personal influence was little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party. Churchmen, Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies, his friends, his tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions

Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in all that he says on that subject, we heartily agrec. We fully concar with him in thinking that a great social schism, such as the civil war, is not to be confounded with an ordinary treason; and that the vanquished ought to be treated according to the rules, not of municipal, but of international law. In this case the distinction is of the less importance, because both international and subdivisions of his people had been deand municipal law were in favour of Charles.ceived by him. His most attached councillors turned away with shame and anguish from his false and hollow policy; plot intertwined with plot, mine sprung beneath mine, agents disowned, promises evaded, one pledge given in private, another in public.—“Oh, Mr. Secreta ry," says Clarendon, in a letter to Nicholas, "those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have befallen the king; and look like the effects of God's anger towards us."

He was a prisoner of war by the former, a king by the latter. By neither was he a traitor. If he had been successful, and had put his leading opponents to death, he would have deserved severe censure; and this without reerence to the justice or injustice of his cause. Yet the opponents of Charles, it must be aditted were technically guilty of treason. He might have sent them to the scaffold without violating any established principle of jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to verturn the whole constitution in order to

The abilities of Charles were not formida ble. His taste in the fine arts was indeed es H

quisite. He was as good a writer and speaker as any modern sovereign has been. But he was not fit for active life. In negotiation he was always trying to dupe others, and duping only himself. As a soldier, he was feeble, dilatory, and miserably wanting, not in personal courage, but in the presence of mind which his station required. His delay at Gloucester saved the parliamentary party from destruction. At Naseby, in the very crisis of his fortune, his want of self-possession spread a fatal panic through his army. The story which Clarendon tells of that affair, reminds us of the excuses by which Bessus and Bobadil explain their cudgellings. A Scotch nobleman, it seems, begged the king not to run upon his death, took hold of his bridle, and turned his horse round. No man who had much value for his life would have tried to perform the same friendly office on that day for Oliver Cromwell.

ways taken off his hat when he went into a church! The character of Charles would scarcely rise in our estimation, if we believed that he was pricked in conscience after the manner of this worthy loyalist; and that, while violating all the first rules of Christian morality, he was sincerely scrupulous about churchgovernment. But we acquit him of such weak. ness. In 1641, he deliberately confirmed the Scotch declaration, which stated that the government of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary to the word of God. In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in Ireland. That a king who had established the Presbyterian religion in one kingdom, and who was willing to establish the Catholic religion in another, should have insurmountable scruples about the ecclesiasti cal constitution of the third, is altogether incredible. He himself says in his letters that he looks on Episcopacy as a stronger support of monarchical power than even the army. From causes which we have already consi

One thing, and one alone, could make Charles dangerous-a violent death. His tyranny could not break the high spirit of the English people.dered, the Established Church had been, since His arms could not conquer, his arts could not the Reformation, the great bulwark of the predeceive them; but his humiliation and his rogative. Charles wished, therefore, to preexecution melted them into a generous com- serve it. He thought himself necessary both passion. Men who die on a scaffold for politi- to the Parliament and to the army. He did cal offences almost always die well. The eyes not foresee, till too late, that by paltering with of thousands are fixed upon them. Enemies the Presbyterians he should put both them and and admirers are watching their demeanour. himself into the power of a fiercer and more darEvery tone of voice, every change of colour, ing party If he had foreseen it, we suspect is to go down to posterity. Escape is impos- that the royal blood, which still cries to Heaven sible. Supplication is vain. In such a situa- every thirtieth of January for judgments only tion pride and despair have often been known to be averted by salt fish and egg-sauce, would to nerve the weakest minds with fortitude ade- never have been shed. One who had swal quate to the occasion. Charles died patiently lowed the Scotch Declaration would scarcely and bravely; not more patiently or bravely, strain at the Covenant. indeed, than many other victims of political The death of Charles, and the strong mearage; not more patiently or bravely than his sures which led to it, raised Cromwell to a own judges, who were not only killed, but tor-height of power fatal to the infant commontured; or than Vane, who had always been wealth. No men occupy so splendid a place considered as a timid man. However, his con- in history as those who have founded mo duct during his trial and at his execution made narchies on the ruins of republican institua prodigious impression. His subjects began tions. Their glory, if not of the purest, is asto love his memory as heartily as they had suredly of the most seductive and dazzling hated his person; and posterity has estimated kind. In nations broken to the curb, in nahis character from his death rather than from tions long accustomed to be transferred from his life. one tyrant to another, a man without eminent To represent Charles as a martyr in the qualities may easily gain supreme power. The cause of Episcopacy is absurd. Those who defection of a troop of guards, a conspiracy of put him to death cared as little for the Assem- eunuchs, a popular tumult, might place an inbly of Divines as for the Convocation; and dolent senator or a brutal soldier on the throne would in all probability only have hated him of the Roman world. Similar revolutions have the more if he had agreed to set up the Pres-often occurred in the despotic states of Asia. byterian discipline; and, in spite of the opinion But a community which has heard the voice of Mr. Hallam, we are inclined to think that of truth and experienced the pleasures of liber the attachment of Charles to the Church of ty, in which the merits of statesmen and of England was altogether political. Human na- systems are freely canvassed, in which obeture is indeed so capricious that there may be dience is paid not to persons but to laws, in a single sensitive point in a conscience which which magistrates are regarded not as the everywhere else is callous. A man without lords but as the servants of the public, in truth or humanity may have some strange which the excitement of party is a necessary scruples about a trifle. There was one devout of life, in which political warfare is reduced warrior in the royal camp whose piety bore a to a system of tactics;-such a community is great resemblance to that which is ascribed to not easily reduced to servitude. Beasts of burthe king. We mean Colonel Turner. That den may easily be managed by a new master; gallant cavalier was hanged after the Restora- but will the wild ass submit to the bonds? will tion for a flagitious burglary. At the gallows the unicorn serve and abide by the crib? will he told the crowd that his mind received great leviathan hold out his nostrils to the hook consolation from one reflection-he had al- The mythological conqueror of the East, whose