was continually verging to defeat and disgrace. However necessary he and Laud might conceive their own ecclesiastical institutions to be, the Covenanters were equally clear that such relics and images of Popery were quite fatal to all rational hopes of acceptance with the Deity. The King drew the sword; the obvious consequence, but the last fatal consummation of his impolicy and intolerance. On the one hand, contributions were levied, by the influence of Laud, on the ecclesiastical bodies of England; while, on the other, the pulpits of Scotland resounded with anathemas against those, who went not out to assist the Lord against the mighty. "Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly," &c. &c.

The result was, as it is desirable it may always be, that the cause of intolerance was successfully resisted.

But the effects of this attempt of Charles and Laud were not to end with Scotland.

The king could not wage war without expense, nor encounter expense without pressing upon his English subjects.

After having made a pacification with the Scots, the king could not persuade himself fairly to give up the contest; and he therefore once more collected an army: an army which he could not pay; and for the purpose of paying it, he was at last obliged to summon once more an English parliament, and this, after an intermission of eleven years, and after all his tyrannical expedients to do without one.

And here commences a third interval, which I should propose to extend only to the king's journey into Scotland in the August of 1641. This interval includes the whole sitting of the parliament now called, and the first period of the proceedings of the next, the noted parliament, afterwards called the long parliament; it is a short interval of about a year; but it is clearly to be distinguished from the two former intervals, when the conduct of the king was so deserving of reprobation, and again from the fourth or last interval, when the conduct of the parliament was unequivocally wrong. Even in this third, this intermediate interval, the king was still, as I conceive, to be blamed, and the parliament to be praised; but this blame and this praise become now more questionable, and not to be given without some hesitation and reserve.

When the parliament met, it was soon evident that the

king only wanted money; while the commons, on their part, were chiefly anxious for proper admissions on his, to secure the liberty of the subject. He could not wait, he said, for the result of discussions of this nature; and desired to be supplied, in the first place, and to be trusted on his promise for a subsequent redress of their grievances. The parliament civilly evaded his request, and would not comply, i. e. would not in fact trust his promise; they were, therefore, dissolved in haste and anger.

This important measure, which was decisive of his fate and of the peace of the community, will be found, on examination, though it may not at first sight appear so, impolitic and unjustifiable. "The vessel was now full," says Lord Bolingbroke, "and this last drop made the waters of bitterness overflow."

It was a subject of the most sincere lamentation, and evidently a measure much disapproved by Lord Clarendon, then Mr. Hyde, and a most valuable member of the House of Commons, valuable both to the king and people.

This unfortunate prince seems to have been, even at this advanced period of these dissensions, totally unable to comprehend his own situation, or make the slightest provision for future contingencies.

As money could not be raised by parliament, the former illegal expedients were renewed; and we are here to consider what was the object, all this time, which the king was so resolved to accomplish. Was it justifiable? The introduction of Laud's canons and liturgy into Scotland?

The event was, that an army undisciplined and ill-paid was led against the Scots, and found unfit to contend with them; and every thing being reduced to a state of exasperation and despair, the king, after calling a council of the peers at York, once more thought proper to suinmon a parliament.

It was the last he ever did summon; it was the long parliament.

Hitherto the feelings of Englishmen will sufficiently sympathize with the proceedings of the commons. But as the contest between prerogative and privilege was longer continued, and grew more and more warm, it must necessarily be expected that the hazards and perplexities of the great

leaders of the House of Commons were to increase, and that right decisions were to be attained with more difficulty. After having been tried in the perilous warfare of doubtful and dangerous contest, a severer trial yet remained, that of success. They were now, if possible, though successful, to be wise and moderate.

In civil dissensions it is quite impossible to suppose that misconduct shall be found only on one side. Outrage and folly in the one party are necessarily followed by similar offences on the other; and from the condition of human infirmity, it must inevitably happen, that in examining the merits and demerits of actors in scenes like these, the question is soon altered; and ceasing to be, an inquiry of which is in the right, becomes rather an investigation of which is least in the

wrong.

To the lasting honour of the long parliament, and by implication of the parliaments that preceded, it does not appear that its measures were, for a certain period, with one exception, the attainder of Lord Strafford, and perhaps also the vote for their own continuance, at all censurable; on the contrary, that they were highly laudable. The members of the long parliament would surely have been unworthy of their office if they had not provided for the meeting of parliaments, the integrity of the judges, the extinction of monopolies, and the abolition of the council of York, and the courts of starchamber and high commission.

Lord Falkland and Lord Clarendon concurred, for a time, with the measures of the popular party of this long parliament; and the major part of the house is stated by the latter to have consisted of men who had no mind to break the peace of the kingdom, or to make any considerable alteration in the government of church and state.

Mr. Hume himself, in his fifty-fourth chapter, gives the following opinion: observe the very considerate candour of his remarks. "In short, if we take a survey of the transactions of this memorable parliament (that is, the long parliament), during the first period of its operation (the period we are now considering), we shall find that, excepting Strafford's attainder, which was a complication of cruel iniquity, their merits in other respects so much outweigh their mistakes, as

to entitle them to praise from all lovers of Eberty. Not only were former abuses remedied, and grievances redressed: great provision for the future was made by law against the retar of like complaints, and if the means by which they othased such advantages savour often of artifice, sometimes of villence, it is to be considered that revolutions of government cann be effected by the mere force of argument and reasseng: ard that factions being once excited, men can neither so Emmy regulate the tempers of others, nor their own, as to ensure themselves against all exorbitances." The admissions of Mr. Hume are often very striking.

Down, therefore, to the king's journey into Settland in August, 1641, the student will find that, with the exeptions before stated, the attainder of Lord Strafford, and perhaps the vote for their own continuance, he may consider his country as for ever indebted to those who thus far resisted the arbitrary practices of prerogative; that thus far they are perfectly entitled to the highest of all praise-the praise of steady, courageous, and enlightened patriotism.

The next interval that may be taken is, the period that elapsed between the king's journey to Scotland in August, 1641, and the commencement of hostilities.

During this, the fourth interval, the measures of the commons became violent and unconstitutional. That this should be the case may be lamented, but cannot, for the reasons already mentioned, excite much surprise.

There were, however, various circumstances which still further contributed most unhappily to produce these mistaken and blameable proceedings. I will mention some of them; they must be considered as explanations and palliatives of the faults that were committed.

For instance, and in the first place, Lord Clarendon, after giving the testimony which I have quoted, to the general good intentions of the long parliament, distinguishes the great body of the house from some of the great leaders of the popular party; from Pym, Hampden, St. John, Fiennes, Sir Harry Vane, and Denzel Hollis, &c. That men, like these, men of great ability, should be found in an assembly like the House of Commons, is not to be wondered at; nor that such men should be of a high and impetuous nature, or

should succeed in their endeavours to lead the rest-men of calmer sense and more moderate tempers.

Finally, we cannot be surprised that moderate men of this last description should be deficient in their attendance on the house; should be wanting in activity, and above all, in a just confidence in themselves. That all this should happen, as, according to the noble historian, seems to have been the case, may readily be supposed. This inactivity, however, this want of confidence in themselves, was fatal to the state; and it is from circumstances like these that this period of our history is only rendered still more deserving of the study of every Englishman, and of all posterity. That men of genius, who are the more daring guides, may learn the temptations of their particular nature, and that men of colder sense, who are the more safe guides, should be taught their own value-should be made to feel that it is they alone who ought, not indeed to propose, but ultimately to decide; and though they may not apparently lead, at least determine, and in fact prescribe the course that is to be pursued; that it is their duty in this, their proper province, to exert themselves manfully and without ceasing.

For instance, the great occasion on which the moderate party failed was in the prosecution of Lord Strafford. That he was to be impeached by the leaders must have been expected; that he deserved it may be admitted; but that, when the existing laws did not sentence him to condign punishment, when no ingenuity could prove that he had capitally offended, then for the leaders to bring in a bill of attainder, that is, a bill to execute him with or without law, by the paramount authority of parliament, or rather of the House of Commons, acting merely on their own moral estimation of the case, all this was what no moderate, reasonable men should ever have admitted; and they ought surely to have considered that if they were once to be hurried over an act of injustice a real crime against the laws like this-it was impossible to say into what offences they might not afterwards be plunged, by the violence of which they saw their leaders were certainly capable on the one part, and by what they already knew of the indiscretion and arbitrary nature of the king, on the other.