None, we confess, altogether free from objection. But, on the whole, we conceive that the best measure would have been that which the Parliament over and over proposed,―that for a limited time the power of the sword should be left to the two Houses, and that it should revert to the Crown when the constitution should be firmly established; when the new securities of freedom should be so far strengthened by prescription, that it would be difficult to employ even a standing army for the purpose of subverting

them.

Mr. Hallam thinks that the dispute might easily have been compromised, by enacting that the King should have no power to keep a standing army on foot without the consent of Parliament. He reasons as if the question had been merely theoretical-as if, at that time, no army had been wanted. "The kingdom," he says, "might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military organization." Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks the most important circumstance in the whole case. Ireland was at that moment in rebellion; and a great expedition would obviously be necessary to reduce that kingdom to obedience. The Houses had therefore to consider, not an abstract question of law, but an urgent practical question, directly involving the safety of the state. They had to consider the expediency of immediately giving a great army to a King who was at least as desirous to put down the Parliament of England as to conquer the insurgents of Ireland.

Of course, we do not mean to defend all their measures. Far from it. There never was a perfect man: it would, therefore, be the height of absurdity to expect a perfect party or a perfect assembly. For large bodies are far more likely to err than individuals. The passions are inflamed by sympathy; the fear of punishment and the sense of shame are diminished by partition. Every day we see men do for their faction what they would die rather than do for themselves.

No private quarrel ever happens, in which the right and wrong are so exquisitely divided that all the right lies on one side and all the wrong on the other. But here was a schism which separated a great nation into two parties. Of these parties, each was composed of many smaller parties. Each contained many members, who differed far less from their moderate opponents than from their violent allies. Each reckoned among its supporters many who were determined in their choice by some accident of birth, of connexion, or of local situation. Each of them attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and turbid spirits, to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political hurricane are the atmosphere of life. A party, like a camp, has its sutlers and camp-followers, as well as its soldiers. In its progress it collects round it a vast retinue, composed of people who thrive by its custom, or are amused by its display; who may be sometimes reckoned, in an ostentatious enumeration, as forming a part of it, but who give no aid to its operations, and take but a languid interest in its success; who relax its discipline and dishonour its flag by their irregularities; and who, after a disaster are perfectly ready to cut the throats and rifle the baggage of their companions. Thus it is in every great division; and thus it was in our civil war. On both sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and enough of error to disgust any man who did not reflect that the whole history of the species is nothing but a comparison of crimes and errors. Misanthropy is not the temper which qualifies a man to act in great affairs or to judge of them. "Of the Parliament," says Mr. Hallam, "it may be said, I think, with

not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are ecorded of them, from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell." Those who may agree with us in the opinion which we have expressed as to the original demands of the Parliament, will scarcely concur n this strong censure. The propositions which the Houses made at Oxford, t Uxbridge, and at Newcastle, were in strict accordance with these denands. In the darkest period of the war, they showed no disposition to oncede any vital principle: in the fulness of their success, they showed no isposition to encroach beyond these limits. In this respect we cannot but hink that they showed justice and generosity, as well as political wisdom nd courage.

The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with Ir. Hallam in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual, ndeed, we entertain a more unmitigated contempt than for any other haracter in our history. The fondness with which a portion of the church egards his memory can be compared only to that perversity of affection which sometimes leads a mother to select the monster or the idiot of the mily as the object of her especial favour. Mr. Hallam has incidentally bserved, that, in the correspondence of Laud with Strafford, there are no dications of a sense of duty towards God or man. The admirers of the rchbishop have, in consequence, inflicted upon the public a crowd of exacts, designed to prove the contrary. Now, in all those passages, we see othing which a prelate as wicked as Pope Alexander or Cardinal Dubois ight not have written. They indicate no sense of duty to God or man; but mply a strong interest in the prosperity and dignity of the order to which he writer belonged; an interest which, when kept within certain limits, oes not deserve censure, but which can never be considered as a virtue. aud is anxious to accommodate satisfactorily the disputes in the University Dublin. He regrets to hear that a church is used as a stable, and that e benefices of Ireland are very poor. He is desirous that, however small congregation may be, service should be regularly performed. He exesses a wish that the judges of the court before which questions of tithe e generally brought, should be selected with a view to the interest of the ergy. All this may be very proper; and it may be very proper that an derman should stand up for the tolls of his borough, and an East Indian rector for the charter of his company. But it is ridiculous to say that ese things indicate piety and benevolence. No primate, though he were e most abandoned of mankind, would wish to see the body, with the conquence of which his own consequence was identical, degraded in the pubestimation by internal dissensions, by the ruinous state of its edifices, d the slovenly performance of its rites. We willingly acknowledge that e particular letters in question have very little harm in them ;-a complient which cannot often be paid either to the writings or to the actions of ud.

Bad as the Archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the tute. Nor was he by any means so formidable as to be a proper subject a retrospective ordinance of the legislature. His mind had not expansion ough to comprehend a great scheme, good or bad. His oppressive acts re not, like those of the Earl of Strafford, parts of an extensive system. ey were the luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition indulges elf from day to day, the excesses natural to a little mind in a great

place. The severest punishment which the two Houses could have inflicte on him would have been to set him at liberty, and send him to Oxfor There he might have staid, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hunge ing for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the cavaliers, for want somebody else to plague, with his peevishness and absurdity, performi grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable dia which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart in the abje imbecility of his intellect, minuting down his dreams, counting the dro of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction of the salt, al listening for the note of the screech-owl! Contemptuous mercy was t only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculo old bigot.

The Houses, it must be acknowledged, committed great errors in t conduct of the war; or rather one great error, which brought their affai into a condition requiring the most perilous expedients. The parliamenta leaders of what may be called the first generation, Essex, Mancheste Northumberland, Hollis, even Pym,-all the most eminent men, in sho Hampden excepted, were inclined to half measures, They dreaded a d cisive victory almost as much as a decisive overthrow. They wished bring the King into a situation which might render it necessary for him grant their just and wise demands, but not to subvert the constitution or change the dynasty. They were afraid of serving the purposes of tho fiercer and more determined enemies of monarchy who now began to sho themselves in the lower ranks of the party. The war was, therefore, co ducted in a languid and inefficient manner. A resolute leader might ha brought it to a close in a month. At the end of three campaigns, howeve the event was still dubious; and that it had not been decidedly unfavourab to the cause of liberty was principally owing to the skill and energy whi the more violent Roundheads had displayed in subordinate situations. Th conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell at Marston had exhibited a remarkab contrast to that of Essex at Edgehill, and Waller at Lansdown.

If there be any truth established by the universal experience of nation it is this, that to carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cru policy. The time of negociation is the time for deliberation and delay. B when an extreme case calls for that remedy, which is in its own nature mo violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing whi negociation or submission will not do better; and to act on any other princip is not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

This the Parliamentary leaders found. The third year of hostilities w drawing to a close, and they had not conquered the King. They had n obtained even those advantages which they had expected, from a poli obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished husband their resources. They now found that, in enterprises like their parsimony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliatio The event taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the wo of destruction to a speedy termination. By their moderation, many liv and much property had been wasted. The angry passions which, if th contest had been short, would have died away almost as soon as they ap peared, had fixed themselves in the form of deep and lasting hatred. military caste had grown up. Those who had been induced to take up arn by the patriotic feelings of citizens, had begun to entertain the professiona

feelings of soldiers. Above all, the leaders of the party had forfeited its confidence. If they had, by their valour and abilities, gained a complete victory, their influence might have been sufficient to prevent their associates from abusing it. It was now necessary to choose more resolute and uncom→ promising commanders. Unhappily, the illustrious man who alone united in himself all the talents and virtues which the crisis required, who alone could have saved his country from the present dangers, without plunging her into others, who alone could have united all the friends of liberty in obedience to his commanding genius and his venerable name, was no more. Something might still be done. The Houses might still avert that worst of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious and unprincipled master. They might still preserve London from all the horrors of a rapine, massacre, and lust. But their hopes of a victory spotless as their cause—of a reconciliation which might knit together the hearts of all honest Englishmen for the defence of the public good,-of durable tranquility,-of temperate freedom, were buried in the grave of Hampden.

The self-denying ordinance was passed, and the army was remodelled. These measures were, undoubtedly, full of danger. But all that was left to the Parliament was to take the less of two danger. And we think that, even if they could have accurately foreseen all that followed, their decision ought to have been the same. Under any circumstances, we should have preferred Cromwell to Charles. But there could be no comparison between Cromwell, and Charles victorious, Charles restored, - Charles enabled to feed fat all the hungry judges of his smiling rancour and his cringing pride. The next visit of his Majesty to his faithful Commons would have been more serious than that with which he last honoured them, serious than that which their own general paid them some years after. The King would scarce have been content with collaring Marten, and praying that the Lord would deliver him from Vane. If, by fatal mismanagement, nothing was left to England but a choice of tyrants, the last tyrant whom she should have chosen was Charles.

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From the apprehension of this worst evil the Houses were soon delivered by their new leader. The armies of Charles were everywhere routed; his fortresses stormed; his party humbled and subjugated. The King himself fell into the hands of the Parliament; and both the King and the Parliament soon fell into the hands of the army. The fate of both the captives was the same both were treated alternately with respect and with insult. At length the natural life of the one, and the political life of the other, were terminated by violence; and the power for which both had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally sympathise with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity, Thus misfortune turned the greatest of Parliaments into the despised Rump, and the worst of Kings into the Blessed Martyr.

Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in all that he says on that subject we heartily agree. We fully concur with him in thinking that a great social schism, such as the civil war, is not to be confounded with an ordinary treason; and that the vanquished ought to be treated according to the rules, not of municipal, but of international law. In this case the distinction is of the less importance, because both international and municipal law were in favour of Charles. He was a prisoner of war by the former, a king by the latter. By neither was he a traitor. he had been successful, and had put his leading opponents to death, he

If

would have deserved severe censure; and this without reference to the justice or injustice of his cause. Yet the opponents of Charles, it must be admitted, were technically guilty of treason. He might have sent them to the scaffold without violating any established principle of jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to overturn the whole constitution in order to reach them. Here his own case differed widely from theirs. Not only was his condemnation in itself a measure which only the strongest necessity could vindicate, but it could not be procured without taking several previous steps, every one of which would have required the strongest necessity to vindicate it. It could not be procured without dissolving the government by military force, without establishing precedents of the most dangerous description, without creating difficulties which the next ten years were spent in removing, without pulling down institutions which it soon became necessary to reconstruct, and setting up others which almost every man was soon impatient to destroy. It was necessary to strike the House of Lords out of the constitution, to exclude members of the House of Commons by force, to make a new crime, a new tribunal, a new mode of procedure. The whole legislative and judicial systems were trampled down for the purpose of taking a single head. Not only those parts of the constitution which the republicans were desirous to destroy, but those which they wished to retain and exalt, were deeply injured by these transactions. High Courts of justice began to usurp the functions of juries. The remaining delegates of the people were soon driven from their seats by the same military violence which had enabled them to exclude their colleagues.

If Charles had been the last of his line, there would have been an intelligible reason for putting him to death. But the blow which terminated his life, at once transferred the allegiance of every royalist to an heir, and an heir who was at liberty. To kill the individual was truly, under such circumstances, not to destroy; but to release the king.

We detest the character of Charles, but a man ought not to be removed by a law ex post facto, even constitutionally procured, merely because he is detestable. He must also be very dangerous. We can scarcely conceive that any danger which a state can apprehend from any individual could justify the violent measures which were necessary to procure a sentence against Charles. But in fact the danger amounted to nothing. There was indeed danger from the attachment of a large party to his office; but this danger his execution only increased. His personal influence was little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party. Churchmen, Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies, his friends, his tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions and subdivisions of his people had been deceived by him. His most attached councillors turned away with shame and anguish from his false and hollow policy; plot intertwined with plot, mine sprung beneath mine, agents disowned, promises evaded, one pledge given in private, another in public. "Oh, Mr. Secretary," says Clarendon, in a letter to Nicholas, "those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have befallen the King, and look like the effects of God's anger towards us."

The abilities of Charles were not formidable. His taste in the fine arts was indeed exquisite. He was as good a writer and speaker as any modern sovereign has been. But he was not fit for active life. In negociation he was always trying to dupe others, and duping only himself. As a soldier, he was feeble, dilatory, and miserably wanting, not in persona!