intelligent men, with regard to the constitution itself, were very fully adjusted before the Revolution in 1688, and were, at that great epoch, rather confirmed than altered or improved.

But the reasonings of Sir William Jones were of no effect. "The king," says the historian Ralph, "had the advantage of the dispute (page 589). His condescending to appeal to his people softened their hearts, if it did not convince their understandings; he appeared to be an object of compassion; he appeared to have been all this while on the defensive. The offers he had made were thought more weighty than his adversaries' objections; and, in short, he was no sooner pitied than he was believed; and, above all, the artful turn given in his declaration to the commons' vote in favour of the nonconformists, drew in all the clergy and their followers to his side in a body. The cry of Church and king' was again renewed, was echoed from one end of the kingdom to the other; and, as if it were a charm to debase the spirit and cloud the understanding, produced," says the historian, "such a train of detestable flatteries to the throne, mingled with so many flagrant proofs of a sordid disposition to enter into a voluntary vassalage, as might very easily make an Englishman blush for his country while he read them, and would have made a Roman or a Spartan exclaim, 'The gods created these barbarians to be slaves.""

The address of our own university on this occasion may be seen in Ralph, and the anathemas of the sister university, two years afterwards, in Rapin or Kennet. At Cambridge they were tolerably satisfied, when they laid down, with due earnestness, first, the merits of the king (i. e. of Charles II.), and then the doctrine of passive obedience. But at Oxford the tenets of loyalty were announced in a far more effectual manner; "a judgment and decree is passed against certain pernicious books and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and to all human society;" certain propositions are produced;

some few of the twenty-seven, that are brought forward, no doubt, to be reprobated, and some few despised, but many of them the common political maxims of the Whigs; the compact, &c.; but all and every one of them were now pronounced to be false, seditious, impious, and most of them also heretical, blasphemous, &c. The members of the university are to be interdicted from reading of the books containing them; the books themselves to be publicly burnt, &c.

"The floodgates of loyalty being opened," says Ralph (592), "the gazettes from the middle of May to the January following (that is, from the publication of the declaration) are little more than a collection of testimonies, that the people were weary of all those rights and privileges that make subjection safe and honourable."

Quotations to show the folly of some, the prostitution of all, would be endless, and at last it seems even Lord Halifax, the minister, turned squeamish, and grew sick of them.

Whatever difficulty may belong to the question of the Exclusion Bill, and whether it might or might not be necessary at the time, still if we consider what had long been the known characters of Charles and James, the licentiousness of the court, its connection with France (which had been publicly proved in the course of Danby's impeachment), its measures through the whole of the reign, and the idea then entertained of the deadliness of the sin of Popery, it must be confessed that the manner in which the community totally deserted the leaders of the House of Commons on this occasion, was not very creditable to the national character. The result was, a new temptation to the political virtues of the king, in which, as usual, he failed. Instead of justifying the unbounded and headlong attachment of his people, by showing in his turn a due care and veneration for their constitutional rights, a dishonest advantage was taken of their blind partiality, and the administration of the government became, in every point, as arbitrary and unprincipled as brutal judges, dishonourable magistrates, and wicked ministers, under the

patronage and protection of the court, could possibly render it.

And then commenced, in like manner, the temptation of the popular leaders; they had been defeated-what were they to do? The measures of the court were detestable; this must be allowed. The constitution of England seemed to be, certainly for a season, perhaps for ever, at an end. Charles might live long, or, as James II. was to succeed, the violations of the law might by prescription become the law. All this was true, and might very naturally affect the popular leaders with sentiments of the deepest mortification and sorrow; more especially as they saw, that the public had abandoned them, and, with some few exceptions, everywhere continued to abandon them. But what then was the effect produced on the minds of the patriotic leaders? Instead of reflecting how capricious a master they served, when the public was that master, how prone to run into extremes, how easily deceived, how little either able or disposed to take care of itself, how pardonable in its follies, because always honest in its intentions; instead of meditating on topics so obvious as these, most of the popular leaders, particularly Shaftesbury, seemed to have lost on this occasion all temper and prudence, and to have thought of nothing but an insurrection and force; an insurrection which was only called for by the rabble in London-force, which can never be justified, even with right, but under the strongest assurance of success.

And in this manner are we conducted to the last important transaction of the reign, known under the general name of the Ryehouse Plot; a plot, as it was supposed, of the patriotic leaders against the king.

It appears, however, to have been rather a treasonable plot and insurrection intended by the lower and more desperate members of the party, and countenanced by Shaftesbury, than a regular project formed by the whole party, the more respectable leaders included.

But these machinations, however various their description,

were fatal to many who were connected with them—they were fatal to Algernon Sidney and Lord Russell. These distinguished men were tried for treason, and found guilty, with what propriety I cannot now discuss. Sidney marched to the scaffold as to a victory, displaying at his execution, as on his trial, all the bold and sublime traits of the republican character. The steady step, the serene eye, the untroubled pulse, the unabated resolve, "the unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame;" the memory, that still lingered with delight on the good old cause, as he termed it, for which he was to shed his blood; the imagination, that even in the moments of death, disdainful alike of the government, its judges, its indictments, and its executioners, soared away to some loftier code of justice and of right, and hung enamoured on its own more splendid visions of equality and freedom.

The spectators presumed not to shed tears in the presence of Sidney, but their tears had bedewed the scaffold of Lord Russell; Lord Russell, the amiable and the good; the husband with whom the bitterness of death was past, when the partner of his bosom had looked her last farewell; the friend, whom the faithful Cavendish would have died to save; the lover of truth, the lover of England; the patriot who had laboured to assert, not change her constitution; filled with no images of liberty, as Sidney had been, drawn from the imperfect models of Greece and Rome, but intent on a monarchy, restrained by popular freedom, and on popular freedom civilised by a monarchy; imprudent, rather than criminal; a memorable instance to show, that they who would serve their country, are not to mix their own good intentions and virtuous characters with those of men of doubtful principles, irregular and violent in their spirit; men whom it is idle for them to suppose they can long control, and whose faults they may discern clearly, but by no means their ultimate designs.

Such was the termination of the struggle between prerogative and privilege, which, after all the horrors of the civil war, it is most afflicting and mortifying to observe, had, in the

first place, once more to be renewed during the reign of the restored monarch, and in the second, to terminate entirely against the patriotic cause.

I now consider myself as having arrived at the close of the reign of Charles. But I have passed by many transactions, both curious and important, because they were not only too numerous to mention, but because I was unwilling to have your attention withdrawn for a moment from the great subject of the reign-the resistance of the popular leaders to Charles, and more especially the measure of the Exclusion Bill.

Those transactions omitted by me-the bribes received, as appears from Dalrymple, by the popular leaders, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Test Act, the Popish Plot, must be well observed by you.

I will say a word on the last. This most extraordinary affair may reasonably excite the curiosity, but will in vain exercise the inquiries of the most laborious student.

It was impossible at the time, it has been ever since impossible, properly to understand it, or many of the circumstances which so contributed to its success; for instance, Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's murder.

Instead of labouring to investigate what the fury of those times leaves us little chance of understanding, there is much remains which may be perfectly understood, and to which it may be far more important for you to direct your reflections: I mean the consequences of the plot, the consequences of the alarm excited by this plot. The rage, for instance, and stupidity of which a community are capable when their religious prejudices are worked upon; the outrages that may be committed by judges, juries, and all the regular authorities of a state, the moment that the great maxims and established forms of equity and law are dispensed with; the melancholy excesses of injustice, cruelty, and absurdity, that in times of public alarm may disgrace the most civilised society.

When the more enlightened part of a nation share, for a