From this compromise the Church of England sprung. In many respects, indeed, it has been well for her, that in an age of exuberant zeal, her principal founders were mere politicians. To this circumstance she owes her moderate articles, her decent ceremonies, her noble and pathetic liturgy. Her worship is not disfigured by mummery. Yet she has preserved, in a far greater degree than any of her Protestant sisters, that art of striking the senses, and filling the imagination, in which the Catholic Church so eminently excels. But on the other hand, she continued to be, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the servile handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine rights of kings, and the duty of passively obeying all their commands, were her favourite tenets. She held them firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness; while law was trampled down; while judgment was perverted; while the people were eaten as though they were bread. Once and but once-for a moment, and but for a moment-when her own dignity and property were touched, she forgot to practise the submission which she had taught.

to make the smallest possible concessions to | was determined to be even with them in Engthe spirit of religious innovation. land, where he was powerful. Persecution gradually changed a sect into a faction. That there was any thing in the religious opinions of the Puritans, which rendered them hostile to monarchy, has never been proved to our satisfaction. After our civil contests, it became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the time of the French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with Republicanism. It is perfectly true, that a church constituted on the Calvinistic model will not strengthen the hands of the sovereign so much as a hierarchy, which consists of several ranks, differing in dignity and emolument, and of which all the members are constantly looking to the government for promotion. But experience has clearly shown that a Calvinistic church, like every other church, is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favoured and cherished. Scotland has had a Presbyterian establishment during a century and a half. Yet her General Assembly has not, during that period, given half so much trouble to the government as the Convocation of the Church of England gave to it during the thirty years which followed the Revolution. That James and Charles should have been mistaken on this point, is not sur prising. But we are astonished, we must confess, when writers of our own time, men who have before them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who may see with their own eyes that the Presbyterians are no such monsters, when government is wise enough to let them alone, should defend the old persecutions, on the ground that they were indispensable to the safety of the church and the throne.

Elizabeth clearly discerned the advantages which were to be derived from a close connection between the monarchy and the priesthood. At the time of her accession, indeed, she evidently meditated a partial reconciliation with Rome. And throughout her whole life, she leaned strongly to some of the most obnoxious parts of the Catholic system. But her imperious temper, her keen sagacity, and her peculiar situation, soon led her to attach herself completely to a church which was all her own. On the same principle on which she joined it, she attempted to drive all her people within its pale by persecution. She supported it by severe penal laws, not because she thought conformity to its discipline necessary to salvation, but because it was the fastness which arbitrary power was making strong for itself; because she expected a more profound obedience from those who saw in her both their civil and their ecclesiastical head, than from those who, like the Papists, ascribed spiritual authority to the Pope, or from those who, like some of the Puritans, ascribed it only to Heaven. To dissent from her establishment was to dissent from an institution founded with an expres: view to the maintenance and extension of the royal prerogative.

This great queen and her successors, by considering conformity and loyalty as identical, at length made them so. With respect to the Catholics, indeed, the rigour of persecu tion abated after her death. James soon found that they were unable to injure him; and that the animosity which the Puritan party felt towards them, drove them of necessity to take refuge under his throne. During the subsequent conflict, their fault was any thing but disloyalty. On the other hand, James hated the Puritans with far more than the hatred of Elizabeth. Her aversion to them was political; his was personal. The sect had plagued him in Scotland, where he was weak: and he

VOL. I-10

How persecution protects churches and thrones was soon made manifest. A systematic political opposition, vehement, daring, and inflexible, sprang from a schism about trifles, altogether unconnected with the real interests of religion or of the state. Before the close of the reign of Elizabeth it began to show itself. It broke forth on the question of the monopolies. Even the imperial Lioness was compelled to abandon her prey, and slowly and fiercely to recede before the assailants. The spirit of liberty grew with the growing wealth and intelligence of the people. The feeble struggles and insults of James irritated instead of suppressing it. And the events which immediately followed the accession of his son, portended a contest of no common severity, between a king resolved to be absolute, and a people resolved to be free.

The famous proceedings of the third Parliament of Charles, and the tyrannical measures which followed its dissolution, are extremely well described by Mr. Hallam. No writer, we think, has shown, in so clear and satisfactory a manner, that at that time the government entertained a fixed purpose of destroying the old parliamentary Constitution of England, or at least of reducing it to a mere shadow. We hasten, however, to a part of his work, which, though it abounds in valuable information, an in remarks well deserving to be attentively

G

considered; and though it is, like the rest, evi- | right in the point of law, is now universally dently written in a spirit of perfect imparti- admitted. Even had it been otherwise, he had ality, appears to us, in many points, objection- a fair case. Five of the judges, servile as our courts then were, pronounced in his favour. The majority against him was the smallest possible. In no country retaining the slightest

able.

and decent appeal to the laws be treated as a crime. Strafford, however, recommends that, for taking the sense of a legal tribunal on a legal question, Hampden should be punished, and punished severely-"whipt," says the insolent apostate, "whipt into his senses. If the rod," he adds, "be so used that it smarts not, I am the more sorry." This is the maintenance of just authority.

We pass to the year 1640. The fate of the short Parliament held in that year already indicated the views of the king. That a parlia-vestige of constitutional liberty, can a modest ment so moderate in feeling should have met after so many years of oppression, is truly wonderful Hyde extols its loyal and conciliatory spirit. Its conduct, we are told, made the excellent Falkland in love with the very name of parliament. We think, indeed, with Oliver St. John, that its moderation was carried too far, and that the times required sharper and more decided councils. It was fortunate, however, that the king had another opportunity of showing that hatred of the liberties of his subjects, which was the ruling principle of all his conduct. The sole crime of this assembly was that, meeting after a long intermission of parliaments, and after a long series of cruelties and illegal imposts, they seemed inclined to examine grievances before they would vote supplies. For this insolence, they were dis-lawyers will be passionately against it, who solved almost as soon as they met.

In civilized nations, the most arbitrary governments have generally suffered justice to have a free course in private suits. Strafford wished to make every cause in every court subject to the royal prerogative. He complained, that in Ireland he was not permitted to meddle in cases between party and party. "I know very well," says he, "that the common

are wont to put such a prejudice upon all Defeat, universal agitation, financial embar- other professions, as if none were to be trusted, rassments, disorganization in every part of the or capable to administer justice but themselves: government, compelled Charles again to con- yet how well this suits with monarchy, when vene the Houses before the close of the same they monopolize all to be governed by their year. Their meeting was one of the great eras year-books, you in England have a costly exin the history of the civilized world. What-ample." We are really curious to know by ever of political freedom exists either in Eu- what arguments it is to be proved, that the rope or in America, has sprung, directly or in-power of interfering in the lawsuits of indidirectly, from those institutions which they se- viduals is part of the just authority of the execured and reformed. We never turn to the cutive government. annals of those times, without feeling increased admiration of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the consummate wisdom, which marked the measures of that great parliament, from the day on which it met, to the commencement of civil hostilities.

It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil rights, which even despots have generally respected, should treat with scorn the limitations which the constitution imposes on the royal perogative. We might quote pages: but we will content ourselves The impeachment of Strafford was the first, with a single specimen: "The debts of the and perhaps the greatest blow. The whole con- crown being taken off, you may govern as you duct of that celebrated man proved that he had please: and most resolute I am that may be formed a deliberate scheme to subvert the funda-done without borrowing any help forth of the mental laws of England. Those parts of his cor- king's lodgings." respondence which have been brought to light since his death, place the matter beyond a doubt. One of his admirers has, indeed, offered to show, "that the passages which Mr. Hallam has invidiously extracted from the correspondence between Laud and Strafford, as proving their design to introduce a thorough tyranny, refer not to any such design, but to a thorough reform in the affairs of state, and the thorough maintenance of just authority!" We will recommend two or three of these passages to the especial notice of our readers.

All who know any thing of those times, know that the conduct of Hampden in the affair of the ship-money met with the warm approbation of every respectable royalist in England. It drew forth the ardent eulogies of the champions of the prerogative, and even of the crown lawyers themselves. Clarendon allows his demeanour through the whole proceeding to have been such, that even those who watched for an occasion against the defender of the people, were compelled to acknowledge themselves unable to find any fault in him. That he was

Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which Strafford meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he sold himself to the court, was in strict conformity to his theory. For his accomplices various excuses may be urged; ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry. But Wentworth had no such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early prepossessions were on the side of popu lar rights. He knew the whole beauty and value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the first of the Rats; the first of those statesmen whose patriotism has been only the coquetry of political prostitution; whose profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from an opposition, than to rear them in a ministry. He was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was not an addition of honour, but a sacrament of infamy-a baptism into the communion of corruption. As he was the earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest-eloquent, saga.

-"So call him now.-His former naine la heard no more in heaven."

cious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of inven- | for his life, took that ground of defence. The tion, immutable of purpose, in every talent Journals of the Lords show that the Judges which exalts or destroys nations, pre-eminent, were consulted. They answered with one acthe lost Archangel, the Satan of the apostasy. cord, that the articles on which the earl was The title for which, at the time of his deser- convicted amounted to high treason. This tion, he exchanged a name honourably distin- judicial opinion, even if we suppose it to have guished in the cause of the people, reminds us been erroneous, goes far to justify the Parlia of the appellation which, from the moment of ment. The judgment pronounced in the Exthe first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son chequer Chamber has always been urged by of the Morningthe apologists of Charles in defence of his conduct respecting ship-money. Yet on that occasion there was but a bare majority in favour of the party, at whose pleasure all the magisThe defection of Strafford from the popular trates composing the tribunal were removable. party contributed mainly to draw on him the The decision in the case of Strafford was hatred of his contemporaries. It has since unanimous; as far as we can judge, it was unmade him an object of peculiar interest to those biassed; and though there may be room for whose lives have been spent, like his, in prov- hesitation, we think, on the whole, that it was ing that there is no malice like the malice of reasonable. "It may be remarked," says Mr. a renegade. Nothing can be more natural or Hallam, "that the fifteenth article of the imbecoming, than that one turn-coat should eulo-peachment charging Strafford with raising mogize another. ney by his own authority, and quartering troops Many enemies of public liberty have been on the people of Ireland, in order to compel distinguished by their private virtues. But their obedience to his unlawful requisitions, Strafford was the same throughout. As was upon which, and upon one other article, not the statesman, such was the kinsman and such upon the whole matter, the Peers voted him the lover. His conduct towards Lord Mount- guilty, does, at least, approach very nearly, if morris is recorded by Clarendon. For a word we may not say more, to a substantive treason which can scarcely be called rash, which within the statute of Edward III., as a levying could not have been made the subject of an of war against the king." This most sound: ordinary civil action, he dragged a man of high and just exposition has provoked a very ridicurank, married to a relative of that saint about lous reply. "It should seem to be an Irish whom he whimpered to the Peers, before a tri-construction this," says an assailant of Mr. bunal of his slaves. Sentence of death was Hallam, "which makes the raising money for passed. Every thing but death was inflicted. the king's service, with his knowledge, and by Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still more disgusting. That nobleman was thrown into prison, in order to compel him to settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his daughter-in-law, whom, as there is every reason to believe, Strafford had debauched. These stories do not rest on vague report. The historians most partial to the minister admit their truth, and censure them in terms which, though too lenient for the occasion, are still severe. These facts are alone sufficient to justify the appellation with which Pym branded him-"the wicked earl."

In spite of all his vices, in spite of all his dangerous projects, Strafford was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law; but of the law in all its rigour; of the law according to the utmost strictness of the letter which killeth. He was not to be torn in pieces by a mob, or stabbed in the back by an assassin. He was not to have punishment meted out to him from his own iniquitous measure. But if justice, in the whole range of its wide armory, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before Ged and man, to employ.

his approbation, to come under the head of levying war on the king, and therefore to be high treason." Now, people who undertake to write on points of constitutional law should know, what every attorney's clerk and every forward schoolboy on an upper form knows, that, by a fundamental maxim of our polity, the king can do no wrong; that every court is bound to suppose his conduct and his sentiments to be, on every occasion, such as they ought to be; and that no evidence can be received for the purpose of setting aside this loyal and salutary presumption. The Lords. therefore, were bound to take it for granted, that the king considered arms which were unlawfully directed against his people, as directed against his own throne.

The remarks of Mr. Hallam on the bill of attainder, though, as usual, weighty and acute, do not perfectly satisfy us. He defends the principle, but objects to the severity of the punishment. That, on great emergencies, the state may justifiably pass a retrospective act against an offender, we have no doubt whatever. We are acquainted with only one argument on the other side, which has in it enough of reason to bear an answer. Warning, it is said, is the end of punishment. But a punish ment inflicted, not by a general rule, but by an arbitrary discretion, cannot serve the purpose of a warning; it is therefore useless, and use, less pain ought not to be inflicted. This sophism has found its way into several books on penal legislation. It admits, however, of a very simple refutation. In the first place, punishments ex post facto are not altogether useless

If there be any universal objection to retrospective punishment, there is no more to be said. But such is not the opinion of Mr. Hallam. He approves of the mode of proceeding. He thinks that a punishment not previously affixed by law to the offences of Strafford, should have been inflicted; that he should have been degraded from his rank, and condemned to perpetual banishment, by act of Parliament; but he sees strong objections to the taking away of his life. Our difficulty would have been at the first step, and there only. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive that any case, which does not call for capital punishment, can call for retrospective punishment. We can scarcely conceive a man so wicked and so dangerous, that the whole course of law must be disturbed in order to reach him; yet not so wicked as to deserve the severest sentence, nor so dangerous as to require the last and surest custodythat of the grave. If we had thought that Strafford might be safely suffered to live in France, we should have thought it better that he should continue to live in England, than that he should be exiled by a special act. As to degradation, it was not the earl, but the general and the statesman, whom the people had to fear. Essex said, on that occasion, with more truth than elo

even as warnings. They are warnings to a! particular class, which stands in great need of warnings-to favourites and ministers. They remind persons of this description, that there may be a day of reckoning for those who ruin and enslave their country in all the forms of law. But this is not all. Warning is, in ordinary cases, the principal end of punishment; but it is not the only end. To remove the offender, to preserve society from those dangers which are to be apprehended from his incorrigible depravity, is often one of the ends. In the case of such a knave as Wild, or such a ruffian as Thurtell, it is a very important end. In the case of a powerful and wicked statesmen, it is infinitely more important; so important, as alone to justify the utmost severity, even though it were certain that his fate would not deter others from imitating his example. At present, indeed, we should think it extremely pernicious to take such a course, even with a worse minister than Strafford, if a worse could exist; for, at present, Parliament has only to withhold its support from a cabinet, to produce an immediate change of hands. The case was widely different in the reign of Charles the First. That prince had governed for eleven years without any Parliament; and even when Parliament was sitting, had supported Bucking-quence, "Stone-dead hath no fellow." And ham against its most violent remonstrances.

often during the civil wars the Parliament had reason to rejoice, that an irreversible law and an impassable barrier protected them from the valour and capacity of Strafford.

Mr. Hallam is of opinion that a bill of pains and penalties ought to have been passed against Strafford; but he draws a distinction less just, we think, than his distinctions usual- It is remarkable that neither Hyde nor Falkly are. His opinion, so far as we can collect land voted against the bill of attainder. There it, is this; that there are almost insurmounta- is, indeed, reason to believe that Falkland ble objections to retrospective laws for capital spoke in favour of it. In one respect, as Mr. punishment; but that where the punishment Hallam has observed, the proceeding was hostops short of death, the objections are compa-nourably distinguished from others of the same ratively trifling. Now the practice of taking kind. An act was passed to relieve the childthe severity of the penalty into consideration, ren of Strafford from the forfeiture and corwhen the question is about the mode of proce- ruption of blood, which were the legal consedure and the rules of evidence, is no doubt suf-quences of the sentence. The crown had never ficiently common. We often see a man con- shown equal generosity in a case of treason. victed of a simple larceny, on evidence on The liberal conduct of the Commons has been which he would not be convicted of a burglary.fully and most appropriately repaid. The house It sometimes happens that a jury, when there of Wentworth has since been as much distinis strong suspicion, but not absolute demon-guished by public spirit as by power and splenstration, that an act, unquestionably amounting dour; and may at the present time boast of to murder, was committed by the prisoner be- members, with whom Say and Hampden would fore them, will find him guilty of manslaughter; have been proud to act. but this is surely very irrational. The rules of evidence no more depends on the magnitude of the interests at stake than the rules of arithmetic. We might as well say, that we have a greater chance of throwing a size when we are playing for a penny than when we are playing for a thousand pounds, as that a form of trial which is sufficient for the purposes of justice, in a matter affecting liberty and property, is insufficient in a matter affecting life. Nay, if a mode of proceeding be too lax for capital cases, is, a fortiori, to lax for all others; for, in capital cases, the principles of human nature will always afford considerable security. No judge is so cruel as he who indemnifies himself for scrupulosity in cases of blood, by license in affairs of smaller importance. The difference in tale on the one side far more than makes up for the difference in weight on the other.

It is somewhat curious that the admirers of Strafford should also be, without a single exception, the admirers of Charles; for whatever we may think of the conduct of the Parliament towards the unhappy favourite, there can be no doubt that the treatment which he received from his master was disgraceful. Faithless alike to his people and his tools, the king did not scruple to play the part of the cowardly approver, who hangs his accomplice. It is good that there should be such men as Charles in every league of villany. It is for such men that the offers of pardon and reward, which appear after a murder, are intended. They are indemnified, remunerated, and despised. The very magistrate who avails himself of their assistance looks on them as wretches more degraded than the criminal whom they betray. Was Strafford innocent? was he a meritorious servant of the crown? If so, what shall we

think of the prince, who, having solemnly pro- to attain his ends; the readiness with which mised him that not a hair of his head should he gave promises; the impudence with which be hurt, and possessing an unquestioned con- he broke them; the cruel indifference with stitutional right to save him, gave him up to which he threw away his useless or damaged the vengeance of his enemies? There were tools, rendered him, at least till his character some points which we know that Charles was fully exposed, and his power shaken to its would not concede, and for which he was will-foundations, a more dangerous enemy to the ing to risk the chances of civil war. Ought constitution than a man of far greater talents not a king, who will make a stand for any and resolution might have been. Such princes thing, to make a stand for the innocent blood? may still be seen-the scandals of the southWas Strafford guilty! Even on this supposi- ern thrones of Europe; princes false alike to tion, it is difficult not to feel disdain for the the accomplices who have served them, and partner of his guilt-the tempter turned pun- to the opponents who have spared them; isher. If, indeed, from that time forth, the con- princes who, in the hour of danger, concede duct of Charles had been blameless, it might every thing, swear every thing, hold out their have been said that his eyes were at last open-cheeks to every smiter, give up to punishment ed to the errors of his former conduct, and that every minister of their tyranny, and await in sacrificing to the wishes of his Parliament, with meek and smiling implacability the blessa minister whose crime had been a devotion too ed day of perjury and proscription. zealous to the interests of his prerogative, he gave a painful and deeply humiliating proof of the sincerity of his repentance. We may describe his behaviour on this occasion in terms resembling those which Hume has employed, when speaking of the conduct of Churchill at the Revolution. It required ever after the most rigid justice and sincerity in his dealings with his people to vindicate it. His subsequent dealings with his people, however, clearly showed, that it was not from any respect for the constitution, or from any sense of the deep criminalty of the plans in which Straf ford and himself had been engaged, that he gave up his minister to the axe. It became evident that he had abandoned a servant who, deeply guilty as to all others, was guiltless to him alone, solely in order to gain time for maturing other schemes of tyranny, and purchasing the aid of other Wentworths. He who would not avail himself of the power which the laws gave him to save a friend, to whom his honour was pledged, soon showed that he did not scruple to break every law and forfeit every pledge, in order to work the ruin of his opponents. "Put not your trust in princes!" was the expression of the fallen minister, when he neard that Charles had consented to his death. The whole history of the times is a sermon on that bitter text. The defence of the Long Parliament is comprised in the dying words of its

We will pass by the instances of oppression and falsehood which disgraced the early years of the reign of Charles. We will leave out of the question the whole history of his third Parliament, the price which he exacted for assenting to the Petition of Right, the perfidy with which he violated his engagements, the death of Eliot-the barbarous punishments inflicted by the Star Chamber, the ship-money, and all the measures, now universally con demned, which disgraced his administration from 1630 to 1640. We will admit, that it might be the duty of the Parliament, after punishing the most guilty of his creatures, after abolishing the inquisitorial tribunals, which had been the instruments of his ty ranny, 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 The early measures of that Parliament, Mr. begun to take place; that the majority of those Hallam in general approves. But he consi- who had taken part against the king were deders the proceedings which took place after sirous of an honourable and complete reconthe recess in the summer of 1641, as mischie- ciliation; and that the more violent, or, as it Vous and violent. He thinks, that from that soon appeared, the more judicious members time, the demands of the Houses were not war of the party were fast declining in credit. The ranted by any imminent danger to the consti- remonstrance had been carried with grea: diftution, and that in the war which ensued they ficulty. The uncompromising antagonists of were clearly the aggressors. As this is one the court, such as Cromwell, had begun to of the most interesting questions in our his-talk of selling their estates and leaving Engtory, we will venture to state, at some length, land. The event soon showed that they were the reasons which have led us to form an opi the only men who really understood how much nion on it contrary to that of a writer whose inhumanity and fraud lay hid under the conjudgment we so highly respect. stitutional language and gracious demeanour of the king.

victim.

We will premise, that we think worse of King Charles the First than even Mr. Hallam appears to do. The fixed hatred of liberty, which was the principle of all his public conduct; the unscrupulousness with which he adopted any means which might enable him

The attempt to seize the five members was undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the king, was turned into hatred and