the assembling of the Lords and Commons were issued, at the beginning of 1640.

THE "SHORT PARLIAMENT" AND ITS
FATE.

From the day when parliamentay government was once more re-established in England, until the sad hour that saw the country deprived of his services when she needed them most, the life of Hampden forms part of the history of England. He was chosen to represent his native county, Buckinghamshire, and at once came to London to enter upon his duties. He was now in close intimacy and companionship with Pym, who divided with him the care and labour of leading the popular party in the House of Commons.

The Parliament met in April 1640; and the first question to be brought under its consideration was that of ship-money. The King, whose necessities were pressing, offered to give up the prerogative of levying this tax, in consideration of twelve subsidies; and here at once arose an occasion of difference.

For

the King had already surrendered the right (if he ever possessed it) on a former occasion, receiving five subsidies as the price of the concession; and had afterwards resumed the alleged right so soon as it suited him to take back his words. The Commons were willing to grant supplies, but not exactly in the form demanded by His Majesty. As Macaulay observes, they could hardly be expected to purchase over again what they had already bought and paid for.

They were not allowed time for deliberating, nor for discussing the question. So soon as he found there was to be a debate, Charles angrily dissolved the parliament, to the sorrow and indignation of the country, and to the surprise and bewilderment of the King's own friends, who, like Clarendon, could not imagine in what way the Commons had offended him. Clarendon himself describes the House as very loyal and anxious to serve His Majesty. "It could never be hoped," he says, "that more sober and dispassionate men would ever meet together in that place, or fewer who brought ill purposes with them." But the fact of their questioning the legality of ship-money, his favourite impost, seems to have been enough to set the King against the Commons.

And so this emphatically short parliament separated after a session of only a few days. THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND ITS DOINGS; A GREAT OPPORTUNITY.

Again the system of despotism was tried in England. Ship-money was exacted more rigorously than ever, and the assessments were to a larger amount. Forced loans and other similar expedients were also brought

into action; and it seemed as though the government were ready to brave any amount of unpopularity in the frantic endeavour to obtain the sinews of war" for combating the Scots. All was in vain. The army raised by the King would not face the enemy. The flight of the troops has been attributed to disaffection rather than to cowardice. Be that as it may, they ran away; and the Scottish army advanced into England. There was no resource but to call a parliament; and accordingly that celebrated assembly, known as the Long Parliament, met in the beginning of November 1640, under circumstances that gave to it a power no previous House of Commons had possessed.

And the members were conscious of their power, and determined to use it without stint. Clarendon tells us how "the same men who, six months before, were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, talked now in another dialect, both of kings and other persons; and said that they must now be of another temper than they were the last parliament." Hampden again sat for Buckinghamshire. He had been elected both for the county and for his old borough of Wendover.

And now, more than ever, were all eyes turned on John Hampden, the patriot. Clarendon describes him as being generally considered, at this period, as pater patria, the pilot who was to guide the ship of the state through the perils and quicksands that surrounded it, and to whose unswerving integrity, unerring sagacity, and tried rectitude of conduct, followers and opponents alike paid ungrudging testimony. His rare talent for parliamentary debate, his power of swaying to his will a large and turbulent assemblage, the convincing strength of his logic, are seen everywhere during that eventful session, in which the parliament, alike determined and indignant, pulled down so much that had long formed part of the government of the country, the Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Northern Court; besides executing vengeance on Strafford and Laud, and calling to account the timid and venal judges who, by their judgments in the great ship-money case, had virtually surrendered the property of every man in England into the hands of the sovereign. Everywhere the presence of the great statesman is felt, everywhere his voice is heard, advising, admonishing, pleading for justice, and advocating moderation in the hour of triumph. Clarendon's opinion of his talents and character is pronounced in no doubtful terms. “Of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle and sharp." "His reputation of honesty was uni

versal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided that no corrupt or private ends could bind them." Such, with a high appreciation of his statesmanship, is Clarendon's opinion of the character of Hampden.

It was a great opportunity that which now presented itself to the Long Parliament; and to Hampden is greatly due the credit of the fact that on the whole the opportunity was well used for the honour and advantage of the country.

HOW THE COUNTRY DRIFTED INTO THE CIVIL WAR; CONCLUSION.

During the first session of the Long Parliament, there was general unanimity among the members in the Commons as to the necessity of sweeping away abuses, and taking vengeance on evil doers. But when the Houses met again, after the recess, there was considerable difference of opinion; a reaction had set in in favour of the King, with whom many sympathized in his humiliation and helplessness; and stormy debates took place in the House, in which the wisdom and moderation of the great popular leader were more than ever called into request. This was especially the case in the debate whether the Grand Remonstrance-a document in which all the misrule of his reign was set forth should be presented to the King or not. One of the members emphatically declares that but for the restraining influence of Hampden they would have been sheathing their swords in each other's bosoms.

At one time it was in contemplation to form a Ministry from among the chief members of the House, and the office of tutor to the Prince of Wales was to have been entrusted to Hampden; but on the death of the Earl of Bedford, the negotiation fell through.

The last chance of the re-establishment of confidence between the King and his Parliament was lost when, on the 5th of January, 1642, Charles came down to the House of Parliament with an armed force, to arrest the great patriot and four of his colleagues in the Commons, on a charge of high treason. This flagrant violation of law and justice filled up the measure of the unhappy monarch's errors. It astounded and bewildered his friends, and lost him many waverers who

were ready to turn to him, but now felt convinced that no compact worthy of the name could be made with the ruler who could take such a step. And so Charles quitted London; and in a few months the royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and the Civil War began. Of that great struggle Hampden only saw the commencement. No greater calamity could have befallen the Parliamentary party than the loss of the one man in whose patriotism there was not the smallest leaven of self-seeking; whose thoughts and hopes and aspirations from the commencement were for his country. From the beginning of the war, Hampden seemed to have recognised it as one in which it was necessary not only to draw the sword, but to throw away the scabbard. He deprecated the negligence which left the marauding cavalry of the Royalists to range through the country at will; and it was in an attempt to remedy errors of this kind, committed by the languid Essex, that a life, invaluable to his country and her cause, was sacrificed. In a skirmish on Chalgrove field, against the cavalry of Rupert, he was severely and, as it proved, mortally wounded; and rode slowly out of the field to die. His last words and his last thoughts were for the country he had loved so well, and served so faithfully. “He was buried," says Lord Macaulay, "in the parish church of Hampden. His soldiers, bare-headed, with reversed arms and muffled drums and colours, escorted his body to the grave, singing, as they marched, that lofty and melancholy psalm, in which the fragility of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him to whom a thousand years are as yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the night." And long afterwards, when he was Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell spoke to those around him of the days when the great struggle began. "I had a very worthy friend then," said the Protector,—we may imagine with a touch of pathos in his voice," and he was a very noble person, and I know his memory is very grateful to all, Mr. John Hampden." And so, after a lapse of two centuries and a half, the name of John Hampden is still grateful, and represents all that is good and noble, in the affectionate remembrance of the nation, in whose name he dared to stand up alone and undaunted for liberty.

H. W. D.

mitted "that great crime memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed," generally known as the Massacre of the Black Hole. Here it was, the spectator reads, that in one burning night of a Bengal summer a hundred and twenty-three out of a hundred and forty-six English people were done to death by the cruelty of their guards; and from the atrocity then accomplished arose the train of events which ended in making the English masters of Hindostan.

For with the massacre of the Black Hole of Calcutta is intimately associated the great victory of Plassey, with all its momentous consequences. Seldom in history has a great and important series of events, involving consequences of no less magnitude than the transfer of a vast empire, been accomplished within so short a space of time as in that memorable epoch in the annals of India. In 1756 was the massacre of the Black Hole. In the next year the English were virtually masters of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar, and had the undoubted supremacy over the various European powers located in India.

INDIA UNDER AURUNGZEBE AND HIS

SUCCESSORS.

Early in the sixteenth century a great conqueror, a descendant of Timur Beg or Timur the Lame, came marching through the mountain passes which separate the Afghan territories from Hindostan; and succeeded, after a series of sanguinary combats, in establishing himself, by the decisive battle of Panipat, near Delhi, in 1526, as the ruler of India. This conqueror was Baber, the first of the Great Moguls; and at Delhi he established his throne, from which his descendants continued for centuries to sway the destinies of the mighty realm that extended from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. The empire of the Moguls was remarkable for its splendour and magnificence. Roe, Bernier, and various travellers tell of the glories of Delhi; of Agra, the second city in the empire, and of the various rich and fertile provinces whose wealth was poured into the treasury of the great Moguls. About a hundred and thirty years after the commencement of the Mogul rule, Aurang Zib, the ornament of the throne," generally known as Aurungzebe, began his long reign of half a century. He was the craftiest and most astute ruler of his race; and when he at length died, at the age of eighty-nine, the empire he governed appeared outwardly vigorous, and retained the semblance of prosperity; he had considerably widened the borders of the country that obeyed his mandates. In reality, however, the seeds of

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decay were already in the empire, though hidden by Aurungzebe's energy and ability. He was no sooner dead than the disorganization of the state began to show itself in the most lamentable form; and throughout the first half of the eighteenth century the once proud supremacy of the Moguls existed only in name.

As in various countries, in mediæval and earlier times, the weakness of the chief government led to the establishment of separate authorities, only nominally subservient to the central power. The rulers of the various parts of India, still calling themselves vassals to the Great Mogul, became virtually independent; the various Nizams, Nabobs, Rajahs, and others, doing what seemed right in their own eyes, without reference to the sluggish ruler at Delhi. The land was full of violence and bloodshed, various foreign invaders, Persians, Afghans, and numerous fierce tribes, contending with the natives for the mastery; and in certain districts irregular governments were set up by freebooting chiefs, who held their illgotten power in spite of all efforts to overthrow them. Among these, the most noted for courage and ferocity were the Mahrattas, who not only levied contributions, or as Lord Macaulay designates it, “black-mail,” upon the sovereign himself at Delhi, but extended their depredations to Calcutta itself, so that it became necessary to erect fortifications, and to dig the celebrated Mahratta ditch, in the hope of ensuring safety against them.

THE EAST INDIA COMPANIES, AND THEIR RIVALRIES.

Since the period when the discovery of the maritime route to India opened a new way for commerce between the western nations and the opulent East, various nations had endeavoured to engross to themselves, as far as possible, the great advantages accruing from the trade with India. At the end of Elizabeth's reign the East India Company had been formed; and during the seventeenth century it had continued to grow in importance and wealth. In the reign of William III., great dissentions had occurred, in consequence of the formation of a new company, which was alleged to have infringed the rights of the older institution; but the two rivals very sensibly effected an amalgamation, and after 1708 appeared as one, under the name of the United East India Company. This corporation possessed a very valuable monopoly of the trade to India; and one of the chief duties of its agents and servants consisted in keeping a vigilant eye upon all private traders who attempted to infringe the right granted to the Company by its