offensive, and had the air of a triumph over a fallen adversary: it would have been better to have made allowance for the king's situation and feelings; to have been satisfied, for the present, with the king's surrender of the point in theory; to have sacrificed something of constitutional precision, for the sake of an object so important as a sincere accommodation with the executive branch of the legislature; in short, to have indulged the sovereign, even in his unreasonableness and mistakes, since the contest had evidently turned in their favour, and they could do it without hazard.

In all political struggles, there is no duty so seldom practised, and so necessary to society, as a forbearance and magnanimity of this nature. The commons thought otherwise, and I do not deny that their situation was very critical, and that much may be urged in opposition to what I have thus suggested.

The second and next interval which I would select, is from the end of the first four years of Charles's reign, from 1629 to 1640; a most remarkable interval of eleven years, and which is extremely important.

Here a new scene opens :-we have no longer, as hitherto, the king calling parliaments, and then demanding the grant of supplies, as the condition of his favour; and the commons, in their turn, requiring the admission of constitutional claims, as the condition of their subsidies. We have no longer prorogations, dissolutions, imprisonment of the members, and during the intermission of parliament, loans and benevo lences; but we have now a resolution to call parliaments no more; we have what were before occasional expedients, converted into a system of regular government; we have every effort exerted to make the prerogative of the crown supply the place of parliaments; and this plan of government persevered in for eleven years together.

Now it is very evident, that if this experiment had succeeded-if Charles I. could have ruled without parliaments, as he was to be followed by such princes as his sons really were, and must necessarily have been made, no difference could have long remained between the English monarchy and the French; and Charles I., though amiable in private life, a man of virtue and of religion, would, in fact, have been the

destroyer of the liberties of his country; and in this important respect, precisely on a level with the perfidious and detestable tyrant of France, Louis XI.

This part of the history ought to be well observed. The illegal expedients, or, as Mr. Hume calls them, the irregular levies of money, that were resorted to, and the cruel sentences, or, as Mr. Hume denominates them, the severities of the star chamber, and high commission, may be gathered even from one of Hume's own chapters, the fifty-second, which you must particularly observe.

The Puritans every where fled, preferring to the fair lands of England, the savage and untamed wilds of America-wilds where their persons were yet free, and their minds their own. Hazelrig, Pym, and Cromwell, even Hampden, had embarked, but were prevented from proceeding by an order of government.

This last anecdote has been shown to be a mistake of the historians by Miss Aikin, who was the first to suspect and examine into the truth of this statement, with her usual discernment and diligence. Of course the conclusions I had drawn from a circumstance, so striking as the flight of such leaders, are now omitted.

But I shall conclude this lecture, by endeavouring to present to you the danger to which the constitution of this country was in reality exposed from another point of view. It may be collected, I conceive, even from the manner in which so intelligent a philosopher as Hume, and so sincere a patriot as Lord Clarendon, have thought proper to express themselves on this occasion.

The passages I mean to quote are a little longer than I could wish, but I conceive, that when fairly stated, they exemplify so completely the peculiar perils of our free government at this particular period of our history, that I do not venture much to abridge them, and certainly to make no alterations in the expressions or sense.

Mr. Hume, after detailing in the fifty-second chapter a series of incidents, which show that the person and property of every man of spirit in the country was at the mercy of the court, begins the next chapter with the following words :

"The grievances under which the English laboured, when

considered in themselves, without regard to the constitution, scarcely deserve the name; nor were they either burthensome on the people's properties, or anywise shocking to the natural humanity of mankind. Even the imposition of ship-money, independent of the consequences, was rather an advantage to the public, by the judicious use which the king made of the money levied by that expedient."

Again :-"All ecclesiastical affairs were settled by law and uninterrupted precedent; and the church was become a considerable barrier to the power, both legal and illegal, of the crown. Peace, too, industry, commerce, opulence, nay, even justice and lenity of administration (notwithstanding some very few exceptions); all these were enjoyed by the people, and every other blessing of government, except liberty, or rather the present exercise of liberty and its proper security."

Observe now Lord Clarendon; observe the facts that he first lays down, and then the remarks which he thinks it necessary to subjoin. His facts are these:-" Supplemental acts of state were made to supply defects of law; obsolete laws were revived and rigorously executed; the law of knighthood was revived, which was very grievous; and no less unjust projects of all kinds (page 67, octavo), many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot; the old laws of the forest were revived; and lastly, for a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an everlasting supply for all occasions, a writ was framed in a form of law, &c. &c.-the writ of ship-money." He tells us, "That for the better support of these extraordinary ways, and to protect the agents and instruments who must be employed in them, and to discountenance and suppress all bold inquirers and opposers, the council-table and star-chamber enlarged their jurisdiction to a vast extent, holding (as Thucydides said of the Athenians) for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited; and being the same persons in several rooms, grew both courts of law to determine right, and courts of revenue to bring money into the treasury: the council-table, by proclamations, enjoining to the people what was not enjoined by the law, and prohibiting that which was not prohibited; and the star-chamber censuring the breach and disobedience to those proclamations, by very great fines

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and imprisonment; so that any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more penal; and those foundations of right, by which men valued their security, to the apprehension of understanding and wise men, never more in danger to be destroyed."

And yet at the close of his description of this most alarming state of England, what are his observations? They are these:-"Now after all this, I must be so just as to say, that during the whole time that these pressures were exercised, and these new and extraordinary ways were run, this kingdom enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of felicity, that any people, in any age, for so long time together (i. e. for the above-mentioned eleven or twelve years) have been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all the other parts of Christendom."

Soon after he adds, having first given a more distinct enumeration of the blessings which England enjoyed, these words:"Lastly, for a complement of all these blessings, they were enjoyed by, and under, the protection of a king of the most harmless disposition, the most exemplary piety, the greatest sobriety, chastity, and mercy, that any prince hath been endowed with."

Such are the words of Lord Clarendon. Now what I have to press upon your reflections is this:-If men like these, a calm, deliberating philosopher like Hume (though favourable to monarchy, yet certainly not meaning to be unfavourable to the interests of mankind), if Hume, at the distance of more than a century in the security of his closet; and Clarendon, a lover of the constitution, of his country, a patriotic statesman, while delivering, as he rightly conceived, a work to posterity if such men could think that these were observations on the subject, too reasonable to be withheld from the minds of their readers, how difficult must it have been for men at the time, to have escaped from the soothing, the fatal influence of such considerations; this supposed prosperity of their country, this peace, this order, these domestic virtues and piety of their king, their safety under his kind protection; how difficult to have been generous enough to think of those Englishmen who were to follow them, rather than of themselves; how difficult to have encountered the terrors of fines

and imprisonments, for the sake of any thing so vague, so abstract, so disputed (such might have been their language), as the constitution of their country; how difficult to have resisted all those very prudent suggestions with which sensible men, like Hume and Clarendon, not to say, the minions of baseness and servility, could have so readily supplied them; how difficult, when all that was required of them was a little silence, and the occasional payment of a tax of a few shillings!

Yet if our ancestors had not escaped from the soothing, the fatal influence of such considerations; if they had not thought that there was something still more to be required for their country, than all this peace, and industry, and commerce, this calm of felicity, this protection and repose, under the most virtuous and merciful of kings; if they had not resisted with contempt and scorn all the very prudent suggestions with which their minds might have been so easily accommodated; if they had not been content to encounter the terrors of fines and imprisonments, the loss of their domestic comforts, the prospects of lingering disease and death, for the sake of their civil and religious liberties; if they had not had the generosity and magnanimity, the virtue and the heroism, to think of their descendants as well as themselves, what, it may surely be asked, would have been now the situation of those descendants, and where would have been now the renowned constitution of England?