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 a bloody revenge.

The advocates of Charles have very dexterously 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.

demned, which disgraced his adminis- | don, the carriage of Hampden became tration from 1630 to 1640. We will fiercer, that he drew the sword and admit that it might be the duty of the threw away the scabbard. For, from Parliament, after punishing the most guilty of his creatures, after abolishing the inquisitorial tribunals which had been the instruments of his tyranny, after reversing the unjust sentences of his victims, to pause in its course. The concessions which had been made were great, the evils of civil war obvious, the advantages even of victory doubtful. The former errors of the King might be imputed to youth, to the pressure of circumstances, to the influence of evil counsel, to the undefined state of the law. We firmly believe that if, even at this eleventh hour, Charles had acted fairly towards his people, if he had even acted fairly towards his own partisans, the House of Commons would have given him a fair chance of retrieving the public confidence. Such was the opinion of Clarendon. He distinctly states that the fury of opposition had abated, that a reaction had begun to take place, that the majority of those who had In the first place, the transaction taken part against the King were de- was illegal from beginning to end. sirous of an honourable and complete The impeachment was illegal. The reconciliation, and that the more vio-process was illegal. The service was lent, or, as it soon appeared, the more illegal. If Charles wished to prosecute judicious members of the popular party the five members for treason, a bill were fast declining in credit. The against them should have been sent Remonstrance had been carried with to a grand jury. That a commoner great difficulty. The uncompromising cannot be tried for high treason by the antagonists of the court, such as Cromwell, had begun to talk of selling their estates and leaving England. The event soon showed, that they were the only men who really understood how much inhumanity and fraud lay hid under the constitutional language and gracious demeanour of the King.

Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence even in the time of Edward the Fourth. "A subject," said Chief Justice Markham to that Prince, “may

The attempt to seize the five mem-arrest for treason: the King cannot ; bers was undoubtedly the real cause for, if the arrest be illegal, the party of the war. From that moment, the has no remedy against the King." loyal confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the King was turned into hatred and incurable 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. From that moment, in the phrase of Claren

The time at which Charles took this step also deserves consideration. We have already said that the ardour which the Parliament had displayed at the time of its first meeting had considerably abated, that the leading opponents of the court were desponding, and that their followers were in general inclined to milder and more temperate

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 disapproved of his past conduct, thought that the remedies had now become worse than the distempers. But we believe that in his heart he regarded both the parties in the Parliament with feelings of aversion which differed only in the degree of their intensity, and that the awful warning which he proposed to give, by immolating the principal supporters of the Remonstrance, was partly intended for the instruction of those who had concurred in censuring the ship-money and in abolishing the Star Chamber.

measures than those which had hitherto | concerned. without consulting them. been pursued. In every country, and On this occasion he did not consult in none more than in England, there them. His conduct astonished them is a disposition to take the part of those more than any other members of the who are unmercifully run down, and Assembly. Clarendon says that they who seem destitute of all means of were deeply hurt by this want of condefence. Every man who has observed fidence, and the more hurt, because, if the ebb and flow of public feeling in they had been consulted, they would our own time will easily recall exam- have done their utmost to dissuade ples to illustrate this remark. An Charles from so improper a proceeding. English statesman ought to pay assi-Did it never occur to Clarendon, will duous 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 instance in our history of the operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and most extended Ministry that ever existed into 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 affections of his people, who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of offence, even to the unreasonable. 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, and to whom his own 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 measure in which that House was

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 office with which he attempted to invest them. And what was then 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 loose brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his act by itself alone. And we say, without hesitation, that it is impossible to acquit him of having meditated violence, and violence which might probably end in blood. He knew that the legality of his proceedings was denied. He must have known that some of the accused members were men not likely to submit peaceably to an

It is certainly from no admiration of Charles that Mr. Hallam disapproves of the conduct of the Houses 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, and that therefore the Constitution might be considered as out of danger, or, at least, that it had more to apprehend from the 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.

illegal arrest. There was every reason to expect that he would find them in their places, that they would refuse to obey his summons, and that the House would support them in their refusal. What course would then have been left to him? Unless we suppose that he went on this expedition for the sole purpose of making himself ridiculous, 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 had been in his inclination, to prevent a scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately for his fame, unfortunately perhaps for what he prized The Constitution of England was far more, the interests of his hatred only one of a large family. In all the and his ambition, the affair ended dif- monarchies of Western Europe, during ferently. The birds, as he said, were the middle ages, there existed restraints flown, and his plan was disconcerted. on the royal authority, fundamental Posterity is not extreme to mark abor- laws, and representative assemblies. In tive crimes; and thus the King's ad- the fifteenth century, the government vocates have found it easy to represent of Castile seems to have been as free as a step, which, but for a trivial accident, that of our own country. That of Armight have filled England with mourn-ragon was beyond all question more so ing and dismay, as a mere error of In France, the sovereign was more abjudgment, wild and foolish, but per- solute. Yet, even in France, the Statesfectly innocent. Such was not, however, General alone could constitutionally 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 for ever. As soon as the outrage had failed, the hypocrisy recommenced. Down to the very eve of this 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?

impose taxes; and, at the very time when the authority of those assemblies was beginning to languish, the Parliament of Paris received such an accession of strength as enabled it, in some measure, to perform the functions of a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark had constitutions of a similar description.

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 government in their own hands. In France the institution of the States was only mentioned 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 was too short, the discipline of a renewed. Louis the Fourteenth had national militia too lax, to efface from imposed on his parliament a patient their minds the feelings of civil life. silence of sixty years. His grandson, As they carried to the camp the senafter the War of the Spanish Succession, timents and interests of the farm and assimilated the constitution of Arragon the shop, so they carried back to the to that of Castile, and extinguished the farm and the shop the military accomlast feeble remains of liberty in the plishments which they had acquired in Peninsula. In England, on the other the camp. At home the soldier learned hand, the Parliament was infinitely how to value his rights, abroad how more powerful than it had ever been. to defend them. 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 rather that, at the very crisis of the discase, 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, languished and expired at almost the same time.

Such a military force as this was a far stronger restraint on the regal power than any legislative assembly. The army, now the most formidable instrument of the executive power, was then the most formidable check on that power. 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, a force of ten thousand armed men 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 It is the fashion to say, that the pro- halbert. He fell at once and without an gress of civilisation is favourable to effort. In such times a sovereign like liberty. The maxim, though in some Louis the Fifteenth or the Emperor sense true, must be limited by many Paul would have been pulled down qualifications and exceptions. Wher-before his misgovernment had lasted for ever a poor and rude nation, in which a month. We find that all the fame and 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.

influence of our Edward the Third could not save his Madame de Pompadour from the effects of the public hatred.

Hume and many other writers have hastily concluded, that, in the fifteenth In such a state of society as that century, the English Parliament was alwhich existed all over Europe during together servile, because it recognised, the middle ages, very slight checks suf- without opposition, every successful ficed to keep the sovereign in order. His usurper. That it was not servile its conmeans of corruption and intimidation duct on many occasions of inferior were very scanty. He had little money, importance is sufficient to prove. But little patronage, no military establish- surely it was not strange that the ment. His armies resembled juries. majority of the nobles, and of the They were drawn out of the mass of the deputies chosen by the commons, people: they soon returned to it again: should approve of revolutions which and the character which was habi- the nobles and commons had effecttual prevailed over that which was ed. The Parliament did not blindly Occasional. A campaign of forty days follow the event of war, but par

ticipated in those changes of public charter or any assembly, been the safesentiment on which the event of war guard of their privileges, was transdepended. The legal check was secon- ferred entire to the King. Monarchy dary and auxiliary to that which the gained in two ways. The sovereign nation held in its own hands. There was strengthened, the subjects weakhave always been monarchies in Asia, ened. The great mass of the populain which the royal authority has been tion, destitute of all military discipline tempered by fundamental laws, though and organization, ceased to exercise no legislative body exists to watch over any influence by force on political them. The guarantee is the opinion transactions. There have, indeed, of a community of which every indivi- during the last hundred and fifty years, dual is a soldier. Thus, the king of been many popular insurrections in Cabul, as Mr. Elphinstone informs us, Europe: but all have failed except cannot augment the land revenue, or those in which the regular army has interfere with the jurisdiction of the been induced to join the disaffected. ordinary tribunals.

Those legal checks which, while the In the European kingdoms of this sovereign remained dependent on his description there were representative subjects, had been adequate to the purassemblies. But it was not necessary, pose for which they were designed that those assemblies should meet very were now found wanting. The dikes frequently, that they should interfere which had been sufficient while the with all the operations of the executive waters were low were not high enough government, that they should watch to keep out the spring-tide. The with jealousy, and resent with prompt deluge passed over them; and, accordindignation, every violation of the laws ing to the exquisite illustration of which the sovereign might commit. Butler, the formal boundaries which They were so strong that they might had excluded it, now held it in. The safely be careless. He was so feeble old constitutions fared like the old that he might safely be suffered to shields and coats of mail. They were encroach. If he ventured too far, the defences of a rude age; and they chastisement and ruin were at hand. did well enough against the weapons In fact, the people generally suffered of a rude age. But new and more formore from his weakness than from his midable means of destruction were inauthority. The tyranny of wealthy vented. The ancient panoply became and powerful subjects was the charac- useless; and it was thrown aside to teristic evil of the times. The royal rust in lumber-rooms, or exhibited only prerogatives were not even sufficient as part of an idle pageant. for the defence of property and the maintenance of police. The progress of civilisation intro-caped; but she escaped very narrowly. duced a great change. War became a science, and, as a necessary consequence, a 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. That physical force which in the dark ages had belonged to the nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any

Thus absolute monarchy was established on the continent. England es

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 on governments which bore a close analogy to that established in England. Every where they saw the power of the monarch increasing, 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