2

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11.

21.

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iterated urgency of the king compelled his attendance. CHAP. His arraignment, within eight days of the commencement of the session, marks the resolute spirit of the Nov. commons; his attainder was the sign of their ascend- 1641. ency. "On the honor of a king," wrote1 Charles to April the prisoner," you shall not be harmed in life, fortune, or honor;" and the fourth day after the passage of the bill of attainder, as if to reveal his weakness, the king could send his adhesion to the commons, adding, "If Strafford must die, it were charity to reprieve him till May Saturday." Men dreaded the service of a sovereign whose love was so worthless, and whose prerogative was so weak; safety was found on the side of the people; and the parliament was left without control to its work of reform. Its earliest acts were worthy of all praise. The liberties of the people were recovered and strengthened by appropriate safeguards; the arbitrary courts of High Commission, and the court of Wards, were broken up; the Star Chamber, doubly hated by the aristocracy, as "ever a great eclipse to the whole nobility," was with one voice abolished; the administration of justice was rescued from the paramount influence of the crown; and taxation, except by consent, was forbidden. The principle of the writ of habeas corpus was introduced; and the kingdom of England was lifted out of the bondage of feudalism by a series of reforms, which were afterwards renewed, and which, when successfully imbodied among the statutes, the commentator on English law esteemed above Magna Charta itself.1 These measures were national, were adopted almost without opposition, and

1 Strafford's Letters, ii. 416. 2 Burnet, i. 43. Compare Lingard's note, x. c. ii. 108, 109.

3 Lord Andover, in Macauley, iii. 3. Rushworth, iv. 204.

4 Blackstone, b. iv. c. xxxiii. 437.

CHAP. received the nearly unanimous assent of the nation. XI. They were truly English measures, directed in part 1641 against the abuses introduced at the Norman conquest, in part against the encroachments of the sovereign. They wiped away the traces that England had been governed as a conquered country; they were in harmony with the intelligence and the pride, the prejudices and the wants of England. Public opinion was the ally of the parliament.

But an act declaring that the parliament should neither be prorogued nor dissolved, unless with its own consent, had also been proposed, and urged with pertinacity till it received the royal concurrence. Parliament, in its turn, subverted the constitution, by establishing its own paramount authority, and making itself virtually irresponsible to its constituents; it was evident a parliamentary despotism would ensue. The English government was substantially changed, in a manner injurious to the power of the executive, and still more dangerous to the freedom of the people. The king, in so far as he opposed the measure, was the friend of popular liberty; the passage of the act placed the people of England, not less than the king, at the mercy of the parliament. The methods of tyranny are always essentially the same; the freedom of the press was subjected to parliamentary censors. The usurpation foreboded the subversion of the throne, and the subjection of the people. The liberators of England were become its tyrants; the rights of the nation had been asserted only to be sequestered for their use.

The spirit of loyalty was still powerful in the commons; as the demands of the commons advanced, stormy debates and a close division ensued. Falkland, and Capel, and Hyde, now acted with the court. The

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remonstrance on the state of the kingdom, an uncom- CHAP. promising manifesto against the arbitrary measures of Charles, was democratic in its tendency; because it 1641. proposed no specific reform, but was rather a general and exciting appeal to popular opinion. The English mind was already as restless as the waves of the ocean by which the island is environed; the remonstrance was designed to increase that restlessness; in a house of more than five hundred members, it was adopted by the meagre majority of eleven. "Had it not been Nov. carried,” said Cromwell to Falkland, "I should have sold all I possess, and left the kingdom; many honest men were of the same resolution." From the contest for "English liberties" men advanced to the discussion of natural rights; with the expansion of their views, their purposes ceased to be definite; and already reform was changing into a revolution. They were prepared to strip the church of its power, and royalty of its prescriptive sanctity; and it was observable, that religious faith was on the side of innovation, while incredulity abounded among the supporters of the divine right.

Jan.

4.

The policy of the king preserved its character of variableness. He had yielded where he should have been firm; and he now invited a revolution by the violence of his counsels. Moderation and sincerity would have restored his influence. But when, attended 1642 by armed men, he repaired in person to the house of commons, with the intent of seizing six of the leaders of the patriot party, whose execution was to soothe his fears, and tranquillize his hatred, the extreme procedure, so bloody in its purpose, and so illegal in its course, could only rouse the nation to anger against its sovereign, justify for the time every diminution of his

CHAP. prerogative, and, by inspiring settled distrust, animate XI. the leaders of the popular party to a gloomy inflexi1642. bility. There was no room to hope for peace. The monarch was faithless, and the people knew no remedy. A change of dynasty was not then proposed; and England languished of a disease for which no cure had been discovered. It was evident that force must decide the struggle. The parliament demanded the control of the national militia with the possession of the fortified towns. But would the Cavaliers consent to surrender all military power to plebeian statesmen ? Would the nobility endure that men should exercise dominion over the king, whose predecessors their an cestors had hardly been permitted to serve ? Το Charles, who had had neither firmness to maintain his just authority, nor sincerity to effect a safe reconciliation, no alternative remained, but resistance or the surrender of all power; and, unfurling the royal standard, he began a civil war.

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The contest was between a permanent parliament and an arbitrary king. The people had no mode of intervention except by serving in the armies; they could not come forward as mediators or as masters. The parliament was become a body, of which the duration depended on its own will; unchecked by a supreme executive, or by an independent coördinate branch of legislation; and, therefore, of necessity, a multitudinous despot, unbalanced and irresponsible; levying taxes, enlisting soldiers, commanding the navy and the army, enacting laws, and changing at its will the forms of the English constitution. The issue was certain. Every representative body is swayed by the interests of its constituents, the interests of its own assembly, and the personal interests of its respective

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members; and never was the successive predominance CHAP. of each of these sets of motives more clear than in the Long Parliament. Its first acts were mainly for its constituents, whose rights it vindicated, and whose liberties it increased; its corporate ambition next prevailed, and it set itself against the throne and the peerage, both of which it was hurried forward to subvert; individual selfishness at last had its triumph, and there were not wanting men who sought lucrative jobs, and grasped at disproportioned emoluments. Nothing could check the progress of degeneracy and corruption; the example, the ability, and the conscientious purity of Henry Vane were unavailing. Had the life of Hampden been spared, he could not have changed the course of events, for he could not have changed the laws of nature, and the principles of human action.

The majority in parliament was become the despot of England; and after one hundred and eighteen 1644. royalist members, obeying the summons of the king, had repaired to Oxford, the cause of royalty was powerless in the legislature. The party of the Church of England was prostrate; but religious and political parties were identified; and the new division conformed itself to the rising religious sects. Now that the friends of the Church had withdrawn, the commons were at once divided into two imposing parties-the Presbyterians and the Independents; the friends of a political revolution which should yet establish a nobility and a limited monarchy; and the friends of an entire revolution on the principle of equality.

The majority was with the Presbyterians, who were elated with the sure hope of a triumph. They represented a powerful portion of the aristocracy of Eng