King, attended by two hundred armed followers, went down to the Commons. Commanding his attendants to remain outside he entered the House and took the Speaker's chair. He said he had expected obedience, and not a message, and that no one had a privilege in cases of treason. He looked round the benches, and asked the Speaker if any of the accused members were present. Lenthal, thus suddenly interrogated, answered with singular felicity, 'I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me.' Having again looked round, the King said that he perceived the birds had flown, that he only intended to proceed against them in a legal manner, and that he expected them to be sent to him as soon as they returned, or he must take his own course to find them. He then withdrew amid indignant shouts of Privilege, privilege.' The accused members had received an intimation that he was coming, and had retreated into the City. Had they been present, Charles must have submitted to have his person and authority despised, or he must have attempted to arrest them. His guards would have been resisted by a large proportion of the Commons, and the civil war would have commenced that day within the walls of the House. The probability of such a scene was alone sufficient to rank the act among the rashest upon record. It was as unconstitutional as it was imprudent. If the King, for alleged political offences, could enter the Commons and take its members from the benches, its freedom and independence were gone. That he could venture upon this invasion of the liberties of Parliament after all the lessons which had been taught him, all the dangers he had run, and while he continued to stand in a most precarious position, went far to destroy the hope that he could ever be trusted. Those who had been accustomed on every occasion to uphold his authority were full of anger and grief; Falkland, Hyde, and Colepepper had almost determined to retire from his service; the patriots, who had begun to despair of succeeding in their schemes, once more became lords of the ascendant; the King's party in the Commons, broken and dejected, could not again make head against them; the Royalist Peers, already discomfited by the committal of the Bishops, were completely disorganised, and the opportunity was finally lost of putting a peaceful stop to the progress of the Revolution. The day after his disastrous attempt Charles went into the city, which was the strong hold of the patriots, and demanded of the Common Council the surrender of the members who had fled there for safety. The acclamations which had recently greeted him on his return from Scotland were exchanged for murmurs and cries of Privilege of Parliament.' He went back sensible that that his popularity was gone, and that the blow he had struck had recoiled upon himself. The change in public feeling seemed complete when a grand procession along the Thames conducted the accused members, on the 11th of January, from their temporary asylum to resume their seats in the Commons. Armed boats of sailors escorted them upon the water; the trained bands with cannon marched upon the banks. Danger there was none, but the ostentatious preparations served the purpose of inspiring the people with the belief of it. Execrations against the King mingled with the clang of the martial music and the thunders of applause. He had not waited to witness the triumph of his adversaries; the evening before he had secretly fled from the palace at Whitehall, and never entered it again till he came to lay his head upon the block. The false step of Charles emboldened the patriots to press forward a project at which they were previously aiming, and which was the immediate cause of the civil war. They insisted that the militia should be entrusted to persons nominated by themselves and subject to their orders, and as a pretence for the demand they asserted that the design of arresting the members in the Commons' was the effect of the bloody councils of the papists and other ill-affected persons, who had already raised a rebellion in Ireland,' and whom they believed to be preparing to stir up the like insurrection in England.' This disingenuous attempt to connect the events in England with the massacres in Ireland was not thrown away. The assertion worked upon the fears of thousands, and reconciled them to a measure which is now admitted by everybody to have been a complete usurpation upon the prerogative of the Crown. In all the discussions which ensued, the triumph of argument was with the King. 'So great,' says M. Guizot, was the effect of the Royal manifestoes, that the Parliament used every effort to suppress them, whilst Charles printed the messages of Parliament on the same sheet with his answers.' Each party in the meanwhile was preparing for war. The question in dispute was the power of the sword, and the sword alone could cut the knot. The Parliament raised troops. by its own authority; the King had no resource but to imitate their example, and on the 22nd of August, 1642, he erected his standard at Nottingham. Great faults had been committed on both sides, but the main guilt of the bloodshed which ensued appears to us to have rested with the patriots. Posterity has decided against their constitutional creed. The concessions they had recently obtained, and the fresh demands for which they took up arms, form no part of our system. Had their schemes of government been more enlightened, their conduct in forcing changes in the mass, which should have been the produce of years, would yet have displayed a grievous want of political wisdom. It is the interest of the people,' said Mr. Burke, at the period of his life when he was entirely devoted to the Whigs, 'that reformation should be temperate. It is their interest, because a temperate reform is permanent and because it has a principle of growth. Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the effect of what we have done; then we can proceed with confidence, because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas in hot reformations, in what men, more zealous than considerate, call making clear work, the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so undigested; mixed with so much imprudence and so much injustice; so contrary to the whole course of human nature and human institutions, that the very people who are the most eager for it are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have done.' Such were the later reformations in the reign of Charles, and such were the authors of them. Their erroneous views and excessive impatience might admit of excuse while they confined themselves to debate; but when they provoked the horrors of a civil war in support of precipitate and mistaken dogmas, their overweening self-confidence became a heinous crime. There is only a single supposition which would render their conduct defensible-the probability, approaching to certainty, that there was no other means of preserving such of the previous concessions as were allowed to be essential to the liberty of the subject. The fact, however, was the reverse. In the effort to gain more they jeopardised that which they had already obtained. If the King at any time had sought armed assistance, it was their own violence which justified him in the precaution. Or admitting that he was treacherous and was watching for an opportunity to get back what he had lost, there was a far better prospect of resisting him with a united than a divided nation. The revolutionary designs of the patriots were the sole cause which drove the Falklands and Hydes to take part with the Crown, and if Charles had attempted unprovoked to break his faith, he would have been left to cope by himself with the indignation of a unanimous people. The interest he could have made with the officers, nominated in accordance with his rights, would have been a trivial benefit in comparison with the disadvantage of universal hostility. Nor, dependent as he now was upon Parliament for his supplies, could he have kept up an army without the aid of the Commons. The power of money,' said Whitelock, who adhered to the patriot party, 'is solely in this House; and without the power of money to pay the soldiers, the power of the militia will be of little force.' It was by urging outrageous demands upon the sovereign, and giving him, in consequence, half the kingdom kingdom for his allies, that the liberal leaders imperilled the cause of the country. The contest, long doubtful, was indeed decided in their favour; but the incalculable misery they occasioned only resulted in establishing a tyranny, and when freedom again dawned upon England, the innovations for which they fought were abandoned, and the son of the monarch they had rejected was restored. In truth, their proceedings are as little to be reconciled to policy as to humanity and justice. The key to their conduct must probably be sought in their ambition. They had tasted the sweets of power, and could endure no longer either a superior or an equal. The same lust of sway, which they had denounced at the outset, had taken possession of their minds, and they believed, as despots always will, that no power could be safe in any hands but their own. Having converted themselves into an irremoveable and irresponsible oligarchy, they wished to complete the usurpation by rendering themselves absolute. They had ceased to conceal their design, and openly proclaimed it, both in the ordinances they passed, and in the nineteen propositions they presented to the King on the eve of the war as the condition of peace. The glory which has been given to the Hampdens and Pyms is far more due to the men like Falkland, who were equally opposed to the ambition of the sovereign and the ambition of democrats-who joined in obtaining every valuable concession, and stopped short at the point which wisdom prescribed-and who, having won for their countrymen all the benefits of a free constitution, would have spared them the years of useless and immeasurable suffering which ensued. An actor, who hitherto had made no great figure upon the stage, however busy he may have been behind the scenes, was now to advance to the foremost place. There was one person, at least, who discerned his fitness for the coming crisis. Who is that sloven who spoke just now?' said Lord Digby to Hampden, in the early days of the Long Parliament. That sloven,' replied Hampden, whom you see before you hath no ornament in his speech-that sloven, I say, if we should ever come to a breach with the King, which God forbid! in such a case, I say, that sloven will be the greatest man in England.' Even he who uttered the prophecy could little have divined the extent to which it was to be fulfilled, and imagine that the sloven' was hereafter to subjugate both King and Parliament. But the rise of that extraordinary man, the causes which produced, and the events which attended it, must form the subject of another article, in which we shall endeavour to embody the sagacious and dispassionate views of M. Guizot. ART. ART. IV.-Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the alleged Disturbances in Hyde Park, with Minutes of Evidence. 1856. 2. General Regulations, Instructions and Orders for the Government and Guidance of the Metropolitan Police Force. 1851. MOST OST men who have arrived at that age when the last one or two buttons of the waistcoat are allowed to be unloosened after dinner, can remember the time when the safety of life and property in the metropolis depended upon the efforts of the parochial watchman, a species of animal after the model of the old hackney coachman, encumbered with the self same drab greatcoat, with countless capes, with the self same Belcher handkerchief, or comforter, speaking in the same husky voice, and just as sottish, stupid, and uncivil. At night-for it was not thought worth while to set a watch in the day time-the authorities provided him with a watch-box in order that he might enjoy his snooze in comfort, and furnished him with a huge lantern in order that its rays might enable the thief to get out of his way in time. As if these aids to escape were not sufficient for the midnight marauder, the watchman was provided with a staff with which he thundered on the pavement as he walked, a noise which he alternated with crying the hour and the state of the weather in a loud singing voice, and which told of his whereabouts when he himself was far out of sight. Up to the year 1828, and indeed for ten years later, in the City these men were the sole defence by night of the first metropolis in the world. The Charlies, as they were familiarly termed, had very little fight in them at any time, but it is well known that they 'winked hard,' when required to do so by people who could afford to pay them for it. It is not astonishing that crimes under such a police flourished apace, or that robberies increased to an extent which alarmed all thoughtful people. Mr. Colquhoun, a magistrate, whose work on the police, written at the beginning of the century, gave the first ideas of the reforms which have been since adopted, estimates that the annual value of the property stolen at the time at which he wrote, was at least 1,500,000%; and that the evil was gaining ground may be judged from the fact that the number of receivers of stolen goods had increased between 1780 and 1800 from 300 to 3000! In addition to the nightly watch there was another class of persons who, if more active, were calculated in a still greater degree to defeat justice, but in a totally opposite direction: we allude to those men who made their bread out of the blood of the criminal population. The Government of the country was |