the enthusiasts as well as the usurpers. Among the other extravagant motions made in this parliament, one was to destroy all the records in the Tower, and to settle the nation on a new foundation: so he took his province to himself to show the madness of this proposition, the injustice of it, and the mischiefs that would follow on it; and he did it with such clearness and strength of reason, as not only satisfied all sober persons (for it may be supposed, that was soon done), but stopped even the mouths of the frantic people themselves.

6

Thus he continued administering justice, till the Protector died; but then he both refused the mournings that were sent to him and his servants for the funeral, and likewise to accept the commission tendered to him by Richard Cromwell; alleging, that he could no longer act under such authority.' In the parliament convened by the new Protector in January, 1659, he was elected one of the burgesses for the University of Oxford, in gratitude chiefly perhaps for the service which he had formerly rendered that body. In the Healing Parliament of 1660, which recalled Charles II., he sat as representative for the county of Gloucester.*

Averse as he was from those principles, says Mr. Serjeant Runnington, which actuated the government of Cromwell, he nevertheless avoided the extre

* To procure voices, his competitor had spent nearly 1000l., a great sum to be employed that way in those days! while Hale had not only been at no cost (far, indeed, from soliciting the station, he had long withstood those, who pressed him to appear) but even declined promising to appear till three days before the election; yet such was the love and esteem of him in the neighbourhood, that he was preferred.

mities, into which the temerity of the loyalists too often precipitated them. Faction and party he equally despised; nay, attached as he was to monarchy and his Sovereign, upon the Restoration (of which he was a considerable promoter) he was unwilling to receive Charles without reasonable restrictions; conceiving this to be, of all other incidents, the most opportune to limit that prerogative, which had given rise to such recent and unparallelled calamities.

We are taught under every form of government to apprehend usurpation, either from the abuse, or from the extension, of the executive power; and, though it be no advantage to a prince to enjoy more power than is consistent with the good of his subjects, yet this maxim is but a feeble security against the passions and the follies of men. Those who are entrusted with power in any degree are disposed, from the mere dislike of constraint, to remove opposition. Sensible of such truths, Hale moved the Commons that, a Committee might be appointed to look into the propositions which had been made, and the concessions which had been offered by the late King; that they might thence digest such proposi tions, as they should think fit to be sent over to the King'

This motion, through the influence of Monk, failed of success. It showed, however, that Hale en tertained a warm regard for the republic, a high respect for it's laws, and that he was no friend to those opinions which tended to support the indefeasible right of prerogative. The motives, which determined the fate of this motion, were the very reverse of, and equally in extreme with, those which influenced the Commons against Charles I. The ge

neral opinion now seemed to condemn all jealous capitulations with the Sovereign. Harassed with convulsions, men ardently wished for repose, and were terrified at the mention of negotiation or delay. Added to this, the passion for liberty, having produced such horrid commotions, began to give place to a spirit of loyalty and obedience.

Why Monk should disapprove the imposition of rational conditions, is not easily to be accounted for: he seemed resolved, however, that the crown he intended to restore should be conferred on the King free and unincumbered. He knew not, perhaps, that liberty is never in greater danger, than when we measure national felicity by the blessings which a prince may bestow, or by the mere tranquillity which may attend an equitable administration. The Sovereign may dazzle with his heroic qualities; he may protect his subjects in the enjoyment of every animal advantage or pleasure: but the benefits arising from liberty are of a different sort. They are not the effects of a virtue and of a goodness which operate in the breast of one man, but the communication of virtue itself to many, and such a distribution of functions in civil societies, as gives to numbers the exercise and occupations which pertain to their nature.

Charles, immediately after his restoration, came to the House of Peers, and in the most earnest terms pressed an act of general indemnity: urging not only 'the necessity of it, but the obligation of a promise which he had formerly given; a promise, which he would ever regard as sacred, since to that he probably owed the satisfaction of meeting his parliament.' This measure of the King, though irregular, was received with great satisfaction; and the Commons,

after some debate, appointed a Committee to forward the generous purpose.

Serjeant Hale had the honour of being nominated one of the Committee; and now, in the execution of this high trust, he exerted all the powers of his mind, and all the goodness of his heart, to terminate those evils which had too long and too necessarily prevailed. Prudence and humanity dictated, that the sooner the bill passed, the sooner the blessings of peace would be diffused. With an assiduity to be equalled only by his philanthropy, he framed, carried on, and supported the bill.

Within the space of a month after the Restoration, he was recalled to the degree of a Serjeant at Law by the royal writ, that of Cromwell being deemed illegal; and, upon settling the Courts of Westminster Hall in November, he was constituted Chief Baron of the Exchequer. When the Lord Chancellor Clarendon delivered to him his commission, he told him,

that if the King could have found an honester and fitter man for that employment, he would not have advanced him to it; and that he had therefore preferred him, because he knew none who deserved it so well."* In this station he continued eleven years, and highly raised the reputation and practice of his court by his invariable impartiality,† his indefatiga

* This was, precisely, the compliment paid by Louis XIV. to one of his Generals on making him a Maréchal de France; and it is repeated by Mr. Edgeworth, in his Professional Education,' as highly enhancing the value of the new dignity. p. 423.

"I remember," says Dryden," a saying of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was, doubtless, an uncorrupt and upright man) that his servants were sure to be cast on a trial, which was heard before him;' not that he thought the Judge

ble diligence, and his great exactness in trials. The only complaint, indeed, which was made against

was possible to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too scrupulous, and that the causes of the Crown were always suspicious when the privileges of the subject were concerned."

The servility, insolence, and partiality (observes Thirlwall) to which Hale formed an honourable exception, of many of the Judges in this Monarch's reign present to the view a disgusting picture of the administration of public justice. What a striking contrast do they exhibit to the Judges, who grace the bench of the present day! The sobriety and gravity of their deportment, the patience and impartiality with which they poise the scales of justice between the rich and the poor, the King and the meanest of his subjects, cease to become the theme of admiration and applause, because they are now familiar and universally experienced.

They, however, who wish to appreciate the value and measure the extent of these political blessings, and calculate their importance to the security and preservation of the life, liberty, and property of the subject, ought to look back to the judicial proceedings of former times, and peruse the trials in which a Scroggs, a Howell, a Pemberton, and a Jeffreys presided.

The remark of Mr. Serjeant Rumington breathes such a spirit of constitutional liberty, so honourable to his profession as a lawyer, and to his feelings as an Englishman, that I am persuaded no apology is necessary for introducing it here.

To those who are acquainted with our history, it may seem strange, but it is not more so than true, that the Judges were formerly dependent on the caprice of the Crown. Prerogative, no doubt, thought it necessary; but the subject found it partial and oppressive. Before the close of the seventeenth century, and anterior to the glorious Revolution, men of pliant dispositions were raised to the bench, while those who distributed justice were removed: even-handed justice gave way to wicked policy; objects the most precious were by vicious constructions, without ceremony and without fear, sacrificed by those, whose duty it was to protect and preserve them. Sad and melancholy must have been the prospect; for when the channels of public justice are corrupted, where justice itself is corrupted into the means of revenge, political misery is arrived to it's height.