r.curable suspicion. From that moment, the Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms; from that moment, the city assumed the appearance of a garrison; rom that moment, it was that, in the phrase or Clarendon, the carriage of Hampden became fiercer, that he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard. For, from that moment, it must have been evident to every impartial observer, that in the midst of professions, oaths, and smiles, the tyrant was constantly looking forward to an absolute sway, and to bloody rerenge.

The advocates of Charles have very dex:ercusly contrived to conceal from their readers the real nature of this transaction. By making concessions apparently candid and ample, they elude the great accusation. They allow that the measure was weak, and even frantic, an absurd caprice of Lord Digby, absurdly adopted by the king. And thus they save their client from the full penalty of his transgression, by entering a plea of guilty to the minor offence. To us his conduct appears at this day, as at the time it appeared to the Parliament and the city. We think it by no means so foolish as it pleases his friends to represent it, and far more wicked.

In the first place, the transaction was illegal from beginning to end. The impeachment was illegal. The process was illegal. The service was illegal. If Charles wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a bill against them should have been sent to a grand jury That a commoner cannot be tried for high treason by the Lords at the suit of the crown, is part of the very alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by a message or a verbal summons of the king, with or without a warrant from a responsible magistrate, is equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence in the time of Edward the Fourth. "A subject," said Chief Justice Markham to that prince, “may arrest for treason: the king cannot; for if the arrest be illegal, the party has no remedy against the king."

most extended ministry that ever existed, intu a feeble opposition, and raised a king who was talking of retiring to Hanover, to a height of power which none of his predecessors had enjoyed since the Revolution. A crisis of this description was evidently approaching in 1642 At such a crisis, a prince of a really honest and generous nature, who had erred, who had seen his error, who had regretted the lost af fections of his people, who rejciced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of offence, even to the unreason. able. On the other hand, a tyrant, whose whole life was a lie, who hated the constitution the more because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, to whom his honour and the love of his people were as nothing, would select such a crisis for some appalling violation of law, for some stroke which might remove the chiefs of an opposition, and intimidate the herd. This Charles attempted. He missed his blow: but so narrowly, that it would have been mere madness in those at whom it was aimed to trust him again.

It deserves to be remarked, that the king had, a short time before, promised the most respectable royalists in the House of Commons, Falkland, Colepepper, and Hyde, that he would take no ineasure in which that House was concerned, without consulting them. On this occasion he did not consult them. His conduct astonished them more than any other members of the assembly. Clarendon says that they were deeply hurt by this want of confidence, and the more hurt, because, if they had been consulted, they would have done their utmost to dissuade Charles from so improper a proceeding. Did it never occur to Clarendon, will it not at least occur to men less partial, that there was good reason for this? When the danger to the throne seemed imminent, the king was ready to put himself for a time into the hands of those who, though they had disapproved of his past conduct, thought that the remedies had now become worse than the distempers. But we believe, that in heart The time at which Charles took this step he regarded both the parties in the Parliament also deserves consideration. We have already with feelings of aversion, which differed only said, that the ardour which the parliament had in the degree of their intensity; and that the displayed at the time of its first meeting had lawful warning which he proposed to give by considerably abated; that the leading oppo- immolating the principal supporters of the nents of the court were desponding, and that remonstrance, was partly intended for the intheir followers were in general inclined to mild-struction of those who had concurred in cen. er and more temperate measures than those suring the ship-money, and in abolishing the which had hitherto been pursued. In every Star Chamber. country, and in none more than in England, there is a disposition to take the part of those who are unmercifully run down, and who seem destitute of all means of defence. Every man who has observed the ebb and flow of public feeling in our own time, will easily recall examples to illustrate this remark. An English statesman ought to pay assiduous worship to Nemesis, to be most apprehensive of ruin when he is at the height of power and popularity, and to dread his enemy most, when most completely prostrated. The fate of the Coalition Ministry, in 1784, is perhaps the strongest intance in our history of the operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and

The Commons informed the king that their members should be forthcoming to answer any charge legally brought against them. The Lords refused to assume the unconstitutional offices with which he attempted to invest them. And what then was his conduct? He went, attended by hundreds of armed men, to seize the objects of his hatred in the House itself! The party opposed to him more than insinuated that his purpose was of the most atrocious kind. We will not condemn him merely on their suspicions; we will not hold him answerable for the sanguinary expressions of the lcose brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his conduct by itself alone. And w、

say, without hesitation, that it is impossible to | damental laws, and representative assemblies acquit him of having meditated violence, and In the fifteenth century, the government of violence which night probably end in blood. Castile seems to have been as free as that of He knew that the legality of his proceedings our own country. That of Arragon was beyond was denied; he must have known that some all question far more so. In France, the sove of the accused members were not men likely reign was more absolute. Yet, even in France, to submit peaceably to an illegal arrest. There the States-general alone could constitutionally was every reason to expect that he would find impose taxes; and at the very time when the them in their places, that they would refuse to authority of those assemblies was beginning obey his summons, and that the House would to languish, the Parliament of Paris received support them in their refusal. What course such an accession of strength, as enabled it, would then have been left to him? Unless we in some measure, to perform the functions of suppose that he went on this expedition for the a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark sole purpose of making himself ridiculous, had constitutions of a similar description. we must believe that he would have had recourse to force. There would have been a scuffle; and it might not, under such circumstances, have been in his power, even if it were in his inclination, to prevent a scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately for his fame, unfortunately, perhaps, for what he prized far more, the interests of his hatred and his ambition, the affair ended differently. The birds, as he said, were flown, and his plan was dis-government in their own hands. In France concerted. Posterity is not extreme to mark abortive crimes. And thus his advocates have found it easy to represent a step which, but for trivial accident, might have filled England with mourning and dismay, as a mere error of judgment, wild and foolish, but perfectly innocent. Such was not, however, at the time, the opinion of any party. The most zealous royalists were so much disgusted and ashamed, that they suspended their opposition to the popular party, and, silently, at least, concurred in measures of precaution so strong as almost to amount to resistance.

From that day, whatever of confidence and loyal attachment had. survived the misrule of seventeen years, was, in the great body of the people, extinguished, and extinguished forever. As soon as the outrage had failed, the hypocrisy recommenced. Down to the very eve of his flagitious attempt, Charles had been talking of his respect for the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of his people. He began again in the same style on the morrow; but it was too late. To trust him now would have been, not moderation, but insanity. What common security would suffice against a prince who was evidently watching his season with that cold and patient hatred which, in the long run, tires out every other passion?

It is certainly from no admiration of Charles that Mr. Hallam disapproves of the conduct of the House in resorting to arms. But he thinks, that any attempt on the part of that prince to establish a despotism would have been as strongly opposed by his adherents as by his enemies; that the constitution might | be considered as out of danger; or, at least, that it had more to apprehend from war than from the king. On this subject Mr. Hallam dilates at length; and with conspicuous ability. We will offer a few considerations, which lead us to incline to a different opinion.

The constitution of England was only one of a large family. In all the monarchies of western Europe, during the middle ages, there existed restraints on the roya authority, fun

Let us overleap two or three hundred years, and contemplate Europe at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Every free constitution, save one, had gone down. That of England had weathered the danger; and was riding in full security. In Denmark and Sweden, the kings had availed themselves of the disputes which raged between the nobles and the commons, to unite all the powers of

the institution of the states was only maintained by lawyers, as a part of the ancient theory of their government. It slept a deep sleep-destined to be broken by a tremendous waking. No person remembered the sittings of the three orders, or expected ever to see them renewed. Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on his Parliament a patient silence of sixty years. His grandson, after the war of the Spanish succession, assimilated the constitution of Arragon to that of Castile, and extinguished the last feeble remains of liberty in the Peninsula. In England, on the other hand, the Parliament was infinitely more pow erful than it had ever been. Not only was its legislative authority fully established, but its right to interfere, by advice almost equivalent to command, in every department of the executive government, was recognised. The appointment of ministers, the relations with foreign powers, the conduct of a war or a negotiation, depended less on the pleasure of the prince than on that of the two Houses.

What then made us to differ? Why was it that, in that epidemic malady of constitutions, ours escaped the destroying influence; or ra ther that, at the very crisis of the disease, a favourable turn took place in England, and in England alone? It was not surely without a cause that so many kindred systems of government, having flourished together so long, larguished and expired at almost the same time.

It is the fashion to say, that the progress of civilization is favourable to liberty. The maxim, though on the whole true, must be limited by many qualifications and exceptions. Wherever a poor and rude nation, in which the form of government is a limited monarchy, receives a great accession of wealth and knowledge, it is in imminent danger of falling under arbitrary power.

In such a state of society as that which existed all over Europe during the middle ages, it was not from the king, but from the nobles, that there was danger. Very slight checks sufficed to keep the sovereign in order. His means of corruption and intimidation

very scanty. He had little money, little pa- | jealousy, and resent with proript ia dignation tronage, no military establishment. His armies every violation of the laws which the sovereign resembled juries. They were draughted out might commit. They were so strong, that they of the mass of the people; they soon returned might safely be careless. He was so feeble, to it again; and the character which was ha- that he might safely be suffered to encroach. bitual prevailed over that which was occa- If he ventured too far, chastisement and ruin sional. A campaign cf forty days was too were at hand. In fact, the people suffered more short, the discipline of a national militia toe from his weakness than from his authority. lax, to efface from their minds the feelings of | The tyranny of wealthy and powerful subjects civil life. As they carried to the camp the was the characteristic evil of the times. The sentiments and interests of the farm and the royal prerogatives were not even sufficient for shop, so they carried back to the farm and the the defence of property and the maintenance shop the military accomplishments which they of police. had acquired in the camp. At home they learned how to value their rights-abroad how to defend them.

Such a military force as this was a far stronger restraint on the regal power than the legislative assemblies. Resistance to an established government, in modern times so difficult and perilous an enterprise, was, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the simplest and easiest matter in the world. Indeed, it was far too simple and easy. An insurrection was got up then almost as easily as a petition is got up now. In a popular cause, or even in an unpopular cause favoured by a few great nobles, an army was raised in a week. If the king were, like our Edward the Second and Richard the Second, generally odious, he could not procure a single bow or halbert. He fell at once and without an effort. In such times a sovereign like Louis the Fifteenth, or the Emperor Paul, would have been pulled down before his misgovernment had lasted for a month. We find that all the fame and influence of our Edward the Third could not save his Madame de Pompadour from the effects of the public hatred.

That

The progress of civilization introduced a great change. War became a science; and, as a necessary consequence, a separate trade. The great body of the people grew every day more reluctant to undergo the inconveniences of military service, and better able to pay others for undergoing them. A new class of men, therefore-dependent on the crown alone; natural enemies of those popular rights, which are to them as the dew to the fleece of Gideon; slaves among freemen; freemen among slaves-grew into importance. physical force, which in the dark ages had be longed to the nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any charter or any assembly, been the safeguard of their privileges, was transferred entire to the king. Monarchy gained in two ways. The sovereign was strengthened, the subjects weakened. great mass of the population, destitute of all military discipline and organization, ceased to exercise any influence by force on political transactions. There have, indeed, during the last hundred and fifty years, been many popu lar insurrections in Europe: but all have failed, except those in which the regular army has been induced to join the disaffected.

The

Hume, and mary other writers, have hastily concluded, that in the fifteenth century the Those legal checks, which had been adeEnglish Parliament was altogether servile, quate to the purpose for which they were because it recognised, without opposition, designed while the sovereign remained deevery successful usurper. That it was not pendent on his subjects, were now found servile, its conduct on many occasions of in- wanting. The dykes, which had been sufficient ferior importance is sufficient to prove. But while the waters were low, were not high surely it was not strange, that the majority of enough to keep out the spring tide. The deluge the nobles, and of the deputies chosen by the passed over them; and, according to the excommons, should approve of revolutions which quisite illustration of Butler, the formal boundthe nobles and commons had effected. The aries which had excluded it now held it in. Parliament did not blindly follow the event of The old constitutions fared like the old shields war; but participated in those changes of pub- and coats of mail. They were the defences of lic sentiment, on which the event of war de-a rude age; and they did well enough against pended. The legal check was secondary and auxiliary to that which the nation held in its own hands. There have always been monarchies in Asia, in which the royal authority has been tempered by fundamental laws, though no legislative body exists to watch over them. The guarantee is the opinion of a community, of which every individual is a soldier. Thus the king of Caubul, as Mr. Elphinstone informs us, cannot augment the land revenue, or interfere with the jurisdiction of the ordinary Iribunals.

In the European kingdoms of this descrip1on, there were representative assemblies But it was not necessary that those assemblies hould meet very frequently, that they should interfere with all the operations of the execuve government, that they should watch with

the weapons of a rude age. But new and more formidable means of destruction were invented. The ancient panoply became useless; and it was thrown aside to rust in lumber. rooms, or exhibited only as part of an ille pageant.

Thus absolute monarchy was established on the Continent. England escaped; but she escaped very narrowly. Happily, our insular situation and the pacific policy of James rendered standing armies unnecessary here, till they had been for some time kept up in the neighbouring kingdoms. Our public men had therefore an opportunity of watching the effects produced by this momentous change, in forins of government which bore a close analogy to that established in England. Everywhere they saw the power of the monarch increasing

always going backward and forward; lut should be remembered to his honour, that i was always from the stronger to the weaker side that he deserted. While Charles was op. pressing the people, Falkland was a resolute champion of liberty. He attacked Strafford. He even concurred in strong measures against Episcopacy. But the violence of his party annoyed him, and drove him to the other party, to be equally annoyed there. Dreading the success of the cause which he had espoused, sickened by the courtiers of Oxford, as he had been sickened by the patriots of Westminster, yet bound by honour not to abandon them, he pined away, neglected his person, went about moaning for peace, and at last rushed desperately on death as the best refuge in such miserable times. If he had lived through the scenes that followed, we have little doubt that he would have condemned himself to share the exile and beggary of the royal family; that he would then have returned to oppose all their measures; that he would have been sent to the Tower by the Commons as a disbeliever in the Popish Plot, and by the king as an accomplice in the Rye-House Plot; and that, if he had escaped being hanged, first by Scroggs, and then by Jeffries, he would, after manfully opposing James the Second through his whole reign, have been seized with a fit of compassion at the very moment of the Revolution, have voted for a regency, and died a nonjuror.

the resistance of assemblies, which were no longer supported by a national force, gradually becoming more and more feeble, and at length altogether ceasing. The friends and the enemies of liberty perceived with equal clearness the causes of this general decay. It is the favourite theme of Strafford. He advises the king to procure from the judges a recognition of his right to raise an army at his pleasure. "This piece, well fortified," says he, "forever vindicates the monarchy at home from under the conditions and restraints of subjects." We firmly believe that he was in the right. Nay; we believe that, even if no deliberate scheme of arbitrary government had been formed by the sovereign and his ministers, there was great reason to apprehend a natural extinction of the constitution. If, for example, Charles had played the part of Gustavus Adolphus; if he had carried on a popular war for the defence of the Protestant cause in Germany; if he had gratified the national pride by a series of victories; if he had formed an army of forty or fifty thousand devoted soldiers, we do not see what chance the nation would have had of escaping from despotism. The judges would have given as strong a decision in favour of camp-money as they gave in favour of ship-money. If they had scrupled, it would have made little difference. An individual who resisted would have been treated as Charles treated Eliot, and as Strafford wished to treat Hampden. The Parliament might have We do not dispute that the royal party con been summoned once in twenty years, to contained many excellent men and excellent citi. gratulate a king on his accession, or to give zens. But this we say-that they did not dis solemnity to some great measure of state. cern those times. The peculiar glory of the Such had been the fate of legislative assem- Houses of Parliament is, that, in the great blies as powerful, as much respected, as high-plague and mortality of constitutions, they spirited, as the English Lords and Commons.

The two Houses, surrounded by the ruins of so many free constitutions, overthrown or rapped by the new military system, were required to intrust the command of an army, and the conduct of the Irish war, to a king who nad proposed to himself the destruction of iberty as the great end of his policy. We are lecidedly of opinion that it would have been fatal to comply. Many of those who took the side of the king on this question would have ursed their own loyalty if they had seen him return from war at the head of twenty thousand troops, accustomed to carnage and free quarters in Ireland.

We think with Mr. Hallam, that many of the royalist nobility and gentry were true friends to the constitution; and that, but for the solemn protestations by which the king bound himself to govern according to the law for the future, they never would have joined his standard. But surely they underrated the public danger. Falkland is commonly selected as the most respectable specimen of this class. He was indeed a man of great talents, and of great virtues; but, we apprehend, infinitely too fasndious for public life. He did not perceive that in such times as those on which his lot nad fallen, the duty of a statesman is to choose he better cause, and to stand by it, in spite of those excesses by which every cause, however good in itself, will be disgraced. The present vil always seemed to him the worst. He was

took their stand between the living and the dead. At the very crisis of our destiny, at the very moment when the fate which had passed on every other nation was about to pass on England, they arrested the danger.

Those who conceive that the parliamentary leaders were desirous merely to maintain the old constitution, and those who represent them as conspiring to subvert it, are equally in error. The old constitution, as we have attempted to show, could not be maintained. The progress of time, the increase of wealth, the diffusion of knowledge, the great change in the European system of war, rendered it impossible that any of the monarchies of the middle ages should continue to exist on the old footing. The prerogative of the crown was constantly advancing. If the privileges of the people were to remain absolutely stationary, they would relatively retrograde. The monarchical and democratical parts of the government were placed in a situation not unlike that of the two brothers in the Fairy Queen, one of whom saw the soil of his inheritance daily washed away by the tide, and joined to that of his rival. The portions had at first been fairly meted out: by a natural and constant transfer, the one had been extended; the other had dwindled to no. thing. A new partition or a compensation was necessary to restore the original equality.

It was now absolutely necessary to violate the formal part of the constitution, in order to preserve its spirit. This might have beer

done, as it was dor.e at the Revolution, by ex- | Little as we are disposed to join in the vu.gar pelling the reigning family, and calling to the clamour on this subject, we think that such an throne princes, who, relying solely on an elect- event ought to be, if possible, averted; and ive title, would find it necessary to respect the this could only be done, if Charles was to he privileges and follow the advice of the assem- left on the throne, by placing his domestic arblies to which they owed every thing, to pass rangements under the control of Parliament. every bill which the legislature strongly A veto on the appointment of ministers was pressed upon them, and to fill the offices of demanded. But this veto Parliament had virstate with men in whom it confided. But as tually possessed ever since the Revolution. It the two Houses did not choose to change the is no doubt very far better that this power of dynasty, it was necessary that they should do the legislature should be exercised, as it is now directly what at the Revolution was done indi- exercised, when any great occasion calls for inrectly. Nothing is more usual than to hear it terference, than that at every change it should said, that if the Long Parliament had content- have to signify its approbation or disapprobaed itself with making such a reform in the tion in form. But, unless a new family had government under Charles as was afterwards been placed on the throne, we do not see how this made under William, it would have had the power could have been exercised as it is now highest claim to national gratitude; and that exercised. We again repeat, that no restraints in its violence it overshot the mark. But how which could be imposed on the princes who was it possible to make such a settlement un- reigned after the Revolution could have added der Charles? Charles was not, like William to the security which their title afforded. They and the princes of the Hanoverian line, bound were compelled to court their parliaments. by community of interests and dangers to the But from Charles nothing was to be expected two Houses. It was therefore necessary that which was not set down in the bond. 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.

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 his 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 article 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 import ance 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.

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 Ged, not for an hour!" exclaimed the king. "Keep One of the propositions is, that the judges the militia," said the queen after the defeat shall hold their offices during good behaviour. of the royal party, "keep the militia; that To this surely no exception will be taken. will bring back every thing." That, by The right of directing the education and mar- the old constitution, no military authority was riage of the princes was most properly claimed lodged in the Parliament, Mr. Hallam has by the Parliament on the same ground on clearly shown. That it is a species of power which, after the Revolution, it was enacted, which ought not to be permanently lodged in that no king, on pain of forfeiting his throne, large and divided assemblies, must, we think, should espouse a papist. Unless we condemn in fairness be conceded. Opposition, publicity, the statesmen of the Revolution, who conceived long discussion, frequent compromise, these that England could not safely be governed by are the characteristics of the proceedings in a sovereign married to a Catholic queen, we such bodies. Unity, secrecy, decision, are the can scarcely condemn the Long Parliament, qualities which military arrangements require. because, having a sovereign so situated, they This undoubtedly was an evil. But, on the thought it necessary to place him under strict other hand, at such a crisis to trust such a king restraints. The influence of Henrietta Maria with the very weapon which, in hands less had already been deeply felt in political affairs. dangerous, had destroyed so many free consti 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