Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3

by Henry Hallam

CHAPTER XII

EARL OF DANBY'S ADMINISTRATION—DEATH OF CHARLES II.

The period of Lord Danby's administration, from 1673 to 1678, was full of chicanery and dissimulation on the king's side, of increasing suspiciousness on that of the Commons. Forced by the voice of parliament, and the bad success of his arms, into peace with Holland, Charles struggled hard against a co-operation with her in the great confederacy of Spain and the empire to resist the encroachments of France on the Netherlands. Such was in that age the strength of the barrier fortresses, and so heroic the resistance of the Prince of Orange, that, notwithstanding the extreme weakness of Spain, there was no moment in that war, when the sincere and strenuous intervention of England would not have compelled Louis XIV. to accept the terms of the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. It was the treacherous attachment of Charles II. to French interests that brought the long congress of Nimeguen to an unfortunate termination; and, by surrendering so many towns of Flanders as laid the rest open to future aggression, gave rise to the tedious struggles of two more wars.[696]

Opposition in the commons.—In the behaviour of the House of Commons during this period, previously at least to the session of 1678, there seems nothing which can incur much reprehension from those who reflect on the king's character and intentions; unless it be that they granted supplies rather too largely, and did not sufficiently provide against the perils of the time. But the House of Lords contained unfortunately an invincible majority for the court, ready to frustrate any legislative security for public liberty. Thus the habeas corpus act, first sent up to that house in 1674, was lost there in several successive sessions. The Commons therefore testified their sense of public grievances, and kept alive an alarm in the nation by resolutions and addresses, which a phlegmatic reader is sometimes too apt to consider as factious or unnecessary. If they seem to have dwelt more, in some of these, on the dangers of religion, and less on those of liberty, than we may now think reasonable, it is to be remembered that the fear of popery has always been the surest string to touch for effect on the people; and that the general clamour against that religion was all covertly directed against the Duke of York, the most dangerous enemy of every part of our constitution.

Corruption of the parliament.—The real vice of this parliament was not intemperance, but corruption. Clifford, and still more Danby, were masters in an art practised by ministers from the time of James I. (and which indeed can never be unknown where there exists a court and a popular assembly), that of turning to their use the weapons of mercenary eloquence by office, or blunting their edge by bribery.[697] Some who had been once prominent in opposition, as Sir Robert Howard and Sir Richard Temple, became placemen; some, like Garraway and Sir Thomas Lee, while they continued to lead the country party, took money from the court for softening particular votes;[698] many, as seems to have been the case with Reresby, were won by promises, and the pretended friendship of men in power.[699] On two great classes of questions, France and popery, the Commons broke away from all management; nor was Danby unwilling to let his master see their indocility on these subjects. But, in general, till the year 1678, by dint of the means before mentioned, and partly no doubt through the honest conviction of many that the king was not likely to employ any minister more favourable to the protestant religion and liberties of Europe, he kept his ground without any insuperable opposition from parliament.[700]

Character of the Earl of Danby.—The Earl of Danby had virtues as an English minister, which serve to extenuate some great errors and an entire want of scrupulousness in his conduct. Zealous against the church of Rome and the aggrandisement of France, he counteracted, while he seemed to yield to, the prepossessions of his master. If the policy of England before the peace of Nimeguen was mischievous and disgraceful, it would evidently have been far more so, had the king and Duke of York been abetted by this minister in their fatal predilection for France. We owe to Danby's influence, it must ever be remembered, the marriage of Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange, the seed of the revolution and the act of settlement—a courageous and disinterested counsel, which ought not to have proved the source of his greatest misfortunes.[701] But we cannot pretend to say that he was altogether as sound a friend to the constitution of his country, as to her national dignity and interests. I do not mean that he wished to render the king absolute. But a minister, harassed and attacked in parliament, is tempted to desire the means of crushing his opponents, or at least of augmenting his own sway. The mischievous bill that passed the House of Lords in 1675, imposing as a test to be taken by both houses of parliament, as well as all holding beneficed offices, a declaration that resistance to persons commissioned by the king was in all cases unlawful, and that they would never attempt any alteration in the government in church or state, was promoted by Danby, though it might possibly originate with others.[702] It was apparently meant as a bone of contention among the country party, in which presbyterians and old parliamentarians were associated with discontented cavaliers. Besides the mischief of weakening this party, which indeed the minister could not fairly be expected to feel, nothing could have been devised more unconstitutional, or more advantageous to the court's projects of arbitrary power.

It is certainly possible that a minister who, aware of the dangerous intentions of his sovereign or his colleagues, remains in the cabinet to thwart and countermine them, may serve the public more effectually than by retiring from office; but he will scarcely succeed in avoiding some material sacrifices of integrity, and still less of reputation. Danby, the ostensible adviser of Charles II., took on himself the just odium of that hollow and suspicious policy which appeared to the world. We know indeed that he was concerned, against his own judgment, in the king's secret receipt of money from France, the price of neutrality, both in 1676 and in 1678, the latter to his own ruin.[703] Could the opposition, though not so well apprised of these transactions as we are, be censured for giving little credit to his assurances of zeal against that power; which, though sincere in him, were so little in unison with the disposition of the court? Had they no cause to dread that the great army suddenly raised in 1677, on pretence of being employed against France, might be turned to some worse purposes more congenial to the king's temper?[704]

Connection of the popular party with France—Its motives on both sides.—This invincible distrust of the court is the best apology for that which has given rise to so much censure, the secret connections formed by the leaders of opposition with Louis XIV., through his ambassadors Barillon and Rouvigny, about the spring of 1678.[705] They well knew that the king's designs against their liberties had been planned in concert with France, and could hardly be rendered effectual without her aid in money, if not in arms.[706] If they could draw over this dangerous ally from his side, and convince the King of France that it was not his interest to crush their power, they would at least frustrate the suspected conspiracy, and secure the disbanding of the army; though at a great sacrifice of the continental policy which they had long maintained, and which was truly important to our honour and safety. Yet there must be degrees in the scale of public utility; and, if the liberties of the people were really endangered by domestic treachery, it was ridiculous to think of saving Tournay and Valenciennes at the expense of all that was dearest at home. This is plainly the secret of that unaccountable, as it then seemed, and factious opposition, in the year 1678; which cannot be denied to have served the ends of France, and thwarted the endeavours of Lord Danby and Sir William Temple to urge on the uncertain and half-reluctant temper of the king into a decided course of policy.[707] Louis, in fact, had no desire to see the King of England absolute over his people, unless it could be done so much by his own help as to render himself the real master of both. In the estimate of kings, or of such kings as Louis XIV., all limitations of sovereignty, all co-ordinate authority of estates and parliaments, are not only derogatory to the royal dignity, but injurious to the state itself, of which they distract the councils and enervate the force. Great armies, prompt obedience, unlimited power over the national resources, secrecy in council, rapidity in execution, belong to an energetic and enlightened despotism: we should greatly err in supposing that Louis XIV. was led to concur in projects of subverting our constitution from any jealousy of its contributing to our prosperity. He saw, on the contrary, in the perpetual jarring of kings and parliaments, a source of feebleness and vacillation in foreign affairs, and a field for intrigue and corruption. It was certainly far from his design to see a republic, either in name or effect, established in England; but an unanimous loyalty, a spontaneous submission to the court, was as little consonant to his interests; and, especially if accompanied with a willing return of the majority to the catholic religion, would have put an end to his influence over the king, and still more certainly over the Duke of York.[708] He had long been sensible of the advantage to be reaped from a malcontent party in England. In the first years after the restoration, he kept up a connection with the disappointed commonwealth's men, while their courage was yet fresh and unsubdued; and in the war of 1665 was very nearly exciting insurrections both in England and Ireland.[709] These schemes of course were suspended, as he grew into closer friendship with Charles, and saw a surer method of preserving an ascendancy over the kingdom. But, as soon as the Princess Mary's marriage, contrary to the King of England's promise, and to the plain intent of all their clandestine negotiations, displayed his faithless and uncertain character to the French cabinet, they determined to make the patriotism, the passion, and the corruption of the House of Commons minister to their resentment and ambition.

The views of Lord Hollis and Lord Russell in this clandestine intercourse with the French ambassador were sincerely patriotic and honourable: to detach France from the king; to crush the Duke of York and popish faction; to procure the disbanding of the army, the dissolution of a corrupted parliament, the dismissal of a bad minister.[710] They would indeed have displayed more prudence in leaving these dark and dangerous paths of intrigue to the court which was practised in them. They were concerting measures with the natural enemy of their country, religion, honour, and liberty; whose obvious policy was to keep the kingdom disunited that it might be powerless; who had been long abetting the worst designs of our own court, and who could never be expected to act against popery and despotism, but for the temporary ends of his ambition. Yet, in the very critical circumstances of that period, it was impossible to pursue any course with security; and the dangers of excessive circumspection and adherence to general rules may often be as formidable as those of temerity. The connection of the popular party with France may very probably have frustrated the sinister intentions of the king and duke, by compelling the reduction of the army, though at the price of a great sacrifice of European policy.[711] Such may be, with unprejudiced men, a sufficient apology for the conduct of Lord Russell and Lord Hollis, the most public-spirited and high-minded characters of their age, in this extraordinary and unnatural alliance. It would have been unworthy of their virtue to have gone into so desperate an intrigue with no better aim than that of ruining Lord Danby; and of this I think we may fully acquit them. The nobleness of Russell's disposition beams forth in all that Barillon has written of their conferences. Yet, notwithstanding the plausible grounds of his conduct, we can hardly avoid wishing that he had abstained from so dangerous an intercourse, which led him to impair, in the eyes of posterity, by something more like faction than can be ascribed to any other part of his parliamentary life, the consistency and ingenuousness of his character.[712]

Doubt as to the acceptance of money by the popular party.—I have purposely mentioned Lord Russell and Lord Hollis apart from others who were mingled in the same intrigues of the French ambassador, both because they were among the first with whom he tampered, and because they are honourably distinguished by their abstinence from all pecuniary remuneration, which Hollis refused, and which Barillon did not presume to offer to Russell. It appears however from this minister's accounts of the money he had expended in this secret service of the French Crown, that, at a later time, namely about the end of 1680, many of the leading members of opposition, Sir Thomas Littleton, Mr. Garraway, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Powle, Mr. Sacheverell, Mr. Foley, received sums of 500 or 300 guineas, as testimonies of the King of France's munificence and favour. Among others, Algernon Sidney, who, though not in parliament, was very active out of it, is more than once mentioned. Chiefly because the name of Algernon Sidney had been associated with the most stern and elevated virtue, this statement was received with great reluctance; and many have ventured to call the truth of these pecuniary gratifications in question. This is certainly a bold surmise; though Barillon is known to have been a man of luxurious and expensive habits, and his demands for more money on account of the English court, which continually occur in his correspondence with Louis, may lead to a suspicion that he would be in some measure a gainer by it. This however might possibly be the case without actual peculation. But it must be observed that there are two classes of those who are alleged to have received presents through his hands; one, of such as were in actual communication with himself; another, of such as Sir John Baber, a secret agent, had prevailed upon to accept it. Sidney was in the first class; but, as to the second, comprehending Littleton, Hampden, Sacheverell, in whom it is as difficult to suspect pecuniary corruption as in him, the proof is manifestly weaker, depending only on the assertion of an intriguer that he had paid them the money. The falsehood either of Baber or Barillon would acquit these considerable men. Nor is it to be reckoned improbable that persons employed in this clandestine service should be guilty of a fraud, for which they could evidently never be made responsible. We have indeed a remarkable confession of Coleman, the famous intriguer executed for the popish plot, to this effect. He deposed in his examination before the House of Commons, in November 1678, that he had received last session of Barillon £2500 to be distributed among members of parliament, which he had converted to his own use.[713] It is doubtless possible that Coleman having actually expended this money in the manner intended, bespoke the favour of those whose secret he kept by taking the discredit of such a fraud on himself. But it is also possible that he spoke the truth. A similar uncertainty hangs over the transactions of Sir John Baber. Nothing in the parliamentary conduct of the above-mentioned gentlemen in 1680 corroborates the suspicion of an intrigue with France, whatever may have been the case in 1678.

I must fairly confess however that the decided bias of my own mind is on the affirmative side of this question; and that principally because I am not so much struck, as some have been, by any violent improbability in what Barillon wrote to his court on the subject. If indeed we were to read that Algernon Sidney had been bought over by Louis XIV. or Charles II. to assist in setting up absolute monarchy in England, we might fairly oppose our knowledge of his inflexible and haughty character, of his zeal, in life and death, for republican liberty. But there is, I presume, some moral distinction between the acceptance of a bribe to desert or betray our principles and that of a trifling present for acting in conformity to them. The one is, of course, to be styled corruption; the other is repugnant to a generous and delicate mind, but too much sanctioned by the practice of an age far less scrupulous than our own, to have carried with it any great self-reproach or sense of degradation. It is truly inconceivable that men of such property as Sir Thomas Littleton or Mr. Foley should have accepted 300 or 500 guineas, the sums mentioned by Barillon, as the price of apostasy from those political principles to which they owed the esteem of their country, or of an implicit compliance with the dictates of France. It is sufficiently discreditable to the times in which they lived, that they should have accepted so pitiful a gratuity; unless indeed we should in candour resort to an hypothesis which seems not absurd, that they agreed among themselves not to offend Louis, or excite his distrust, by a refusal of this money. Sidney indeed was, as there is reason to think, a distressed man; he had formerly been in connection with the court of France,[714] and had persuaded himself that the countenance of that power might one day or other be afforded to his darling scheme of a commonwealth; he had contracted a dislike to the Prince of Orange, and consequently to the Dutch alliance, from the same governing motive: is it strange that one so circumstanced should have accepted a small gratification from the King of France which implied no dereliction of his duty as an Englishman, or any sacrifice of political integrity? And I should be glad to be informed by the idolaters of Algernon Sidney's name, what we know of him from authentic and contemporary sources which renders this incredible.

Secret treaties of the king with France.—France, in the whole course of these intrigues, held the game in her hands. Mistress of both parties, she might either embarrass the king through parliament, if he pretended to an independent course of policy, or cast away the latter, when he should return to his former engagements. Hence, as early as May 1678, a private treaty was set on foot between Charles and Louis, by which the former obliged himself to keep a neutrality, if the allies should not accept the terms offered by France, to recall all his troops from Flanders within two months, to disband most of his army and not to assemble his parliament for six months; in return he was to receive 6,000,000 livres. This was signed by the king himself on May 27; none of his ministers venturing to affix their names.[715] Yet at this time he was making outward professions of an intention to carry on the war. Even in this secret treaty, so thorough was his insincerity, he meant to evade one of its articles, that of disbanding his troops. In this alone he was really opposed to the wishes of France; and her pertinacity in disarming him seems to have been the chief source of those capricious changes of his disposition, which we find for three or four years at this period.[716] Louis again appears not only to have mistrusted the king's own inclinations after the Prince of Orange's marriage, and his ability to withstand the eagerness of the nation for war, but to have apprehended he might become absolute by means of his army, without standing indebted for it to his ancient ally. In this point therefore he faithfully served the popular party. Charles used every endeavour to evade this condition; whether it were that he still entertained hopes of attaining arbitrary power through intimidation, or that, dreading the violence of the House of Commons, and ascribing it rather to a republican conspiracy than to his own misconduct, he looked to a military force as his security. From this motive we may account for his strange proposal to the French king of a league in support of Sweden, by which he was to furnish fifteen ships and 10,000 men, at the expense of France, during three years, receiving six millions for the first year, and four for each of the two next. Louis, as is highly probable, betrayed this project to the Dutch government; and thus frightened them into that hasty signature of the treaty of Nimeguen, which broke up the confederacy and accomplished the immediate objects of his ambition. No longer in need of the court of England, he determined to punish it for that duplicity, which none resent more in others than those who are accustomed to practise it. He refused Charles the pension stipulated by the private treaty, alleging that its conditions had not been performed; and urged on Montagu, with promises of indemnification, to betray as much as he knew of that secret, in order to ruin Lord Danby.[717]

Fall of Danby—His impeachment.—The ultimate cause of this minister's fall may thus be deduced from the best action of his life; though it ensued immediately from his very culpable weakness in aiding the king's base inclinations towards a sordid bargaining with France. It is well known that the famous letter to Montagu, empowering him to make an offer of neutrality for the price of 6,000,000 livres, was not only written by the king's express order, but that Charles attested this with his own signature in a postscript.

This bears date five days after an act had absolutely passed to raise money for carrying on the war; a circumstance worthy of particular attention, as it both puts an end to every pretext or apology which the least scrupulous could venture to urge in behalf of this negotiation, but justifies the whig party of England in an invincible distrust, an inexpiable hatred, of so perfidious a cozener as filled the throne. But as he was beyond their reach, they exercised a constitutional right in the impeachment of his responsible minister. For responsible he surely was; though, strangely mistaking the obligations of an English statesman, Danby seems to fancy in his printed defence that the king's order would be a sufficient warrant to justify obedience in any case not literally unlawful. "I believe," he says, "there are very few subjects but would take it ill not to be obeyed by their servants; and their servants might as justly expect their master's protection for their obedience." The letter to Montagu, he asserts, "was written by the king's command, upon the subject of peace and war, wherein his majesty alone is at all times sole judge, and ought to be obeyed not only by any of his ministers of state, but by all his subjects."[718] Such were, in that age, the monarchical or tory maxims of government, which the impeachment of this minister contributed in some measure to overthrow. As the king's authority for the letter to Montagu was an undeniable fact, evidenced by his own handwriting, the Commons in impeaching Lord Danby went a great way towards establishing the principle that no minister can shelter himself behind the throne by pleading obedience to the orders of his sovereign. He is answerable for the justice, the honesty, the utility of all measures emanating from the Crown, as well as for their legality; and thus the executive administration is, or ought to be, subordinate, in all great matters of policy, to the superintendence and virtual control of the two Houses of Parliament. It must at the same time be admitted that, through the heat of honest indignation and some less worthy passions on the one hand, through uncertain and crude principles of constitutional law on the other, this just and necessary impeachment of the Earl of Danby was not so conducted as to be exempt from all reproach. The charge of high treason for an offence manifestly amounting only to misdemeanour, with the purpose, not perhaps of taking the life of the accused, but at least of procuring some punishment beyond the law,[719] the strange mixture of articles, as to which there was no presumptive proof, or which were evidently false, such as concealment of the popish plot, gave such a character of intemperance and faction to these proceedings, as may lead superficial readers to condemn them altogether.[720] The compliance of Danby with the king's corrupt policy had been highly culpable, but it was not unprecedented; it was even conformable to the court standard of duty; and as it sprung from too inordinate a desire to retain power, it would have found an appropriate and adequate chastisement in exclusion from office. We judge perhaps somewhat more favourably of Lord Danby than his contemporaries at that juncture were warranted to do; but even then he was rather a minister to be pulled down than a man to be severely punished. His one great and undeniable service to the protestant and English interests should have palliated a multitude of errors. Yet this was the mainspring and first source of the intrigue that ruined him.

Questions arising on the impeachment—Danby's commitment to the Tower.—The impeachment of Lord Danby brought forward several material discussions on that part of our constitutional law, which should not be passed over in this place. 1. As soon as the charges presented by the Commons at the bar of the upper house had been read, a motion was made that the earl should withdraw; and another afterwards, that he should be committed to the Tower: both of which were negatived by considerable majorities.[721] This refusal to commit on a charge of treason had created a dispute between the two houses in the instance of Lord Clarendon.[722] In that case, however, one of the articles of impeachment did actually contain an unquestionable treason. But it was contended with much force on the present occasion that, if the Commons, by merely using the word traitorously, could alter the character of offences which, on their own showing, amounted only to misdemeanours, the boasted certainty of the law in matters of treason would be at an end; and unless it were meant that the Lords should pass sentence in such a case against the received rules of law, there could be no pretext for their refusing to admit the accused to bail. Even in Strafford's case, which was a condemned precedent, they had a general charge of high treason upon which he was committed; while the offences alleged against Danby were stated with particularity, and upon the face of the articles could not be brought within any reasonable interpretation of the statutes relating to treason. The House of Commons faintly urged a remarkable clause in the act of Edward III., which provides that, in case of any doubt arising as to the nature of an offence charged to amount to treason, the judges should refer it to the sentence of parliament; and maintained that this invested the two houses with a declaratory power to extend the penalties of the law to new offences which had not been clearly provided for in its enactments. But, though something like this might possibly have been in contemplation with the framers of that statute, and precedents were not absolutely wanting to support the construction, it was so repugnant to the more equitable principles of criminal law which had begun to gain ground, that even the heat of faction did not induce the Commons to insist upon it. They may be considered however as having carried their point; for, though the prorogation and subsequent dissolution of the present parliament ensued so quickly that nothing more was done in the matter, yet when the next House of Commons revived the impeachment, the Lords voted to take Danby into custody without any further objection.[723] It ought not to be inferred from hence, that they were wrong in refusing to commit; nor do I conceive, notwithstanding the latter precedent of Lord Oxford, that any rule to the contrary is established. In any future case it ought to be open to debate, whether articles of impeachment pretending to contain a charge of high treason do substantially set forth overt acts of such a crime; and, if the House of Lords shall be of opinion, either by consulting the judges or otherwise, that no treason is specially alleged, they should, notwithstanding any technical words, treat the offence as a misdemeanour, and admit the accused to bail.[724]

2. Pardon pleaded in bar.—A still more important question sprung up as to the king's right of pardon upon a parliamentary impeachment. Danby, who had absconded on the unexpected revival of these proceedings in the new parliament, finding that an act of attainder was likely to pass against him in consequence of his flight from justice, surrendered himself to the usher of the black rod; and, on being required to give in his written answer to the charges of the Commons, pleaded a pardon, secretly obtained from the king, in bar of the prosecution.[725] The Commons resolved that the pardon was illegal and void, and ought not to be pleaded in bar of the impeachment of the Commons of England. They demanded judgment at the Lords' bar against Danby, as having put in a void plea. They resolved, with that culpable violence which distinguished this and the succeeding House of Commons, in order to deprive the accused of the assistance of counsel, that no commoner whatsoever should presume to maintain the validity of the pardon pleaded by the Earl of Danby without their consent, on pain of being accounted a betrayer of the liberties of the Commons of England.[726] They denied the right of the bishops to vote on the validity of this pardon. They demanded the appointment of a committee from both houses to regulate the form and manner of proceeding on this impeachment, as well as on that of the five lords accused of participation in the popish plot. The upper house gave some signs of a vacillating and temporising spirit, not by any means unaccountable. They acceded, after a first refusal, to the proposition of a committee, though manifestly designed to encroach on their own exclusive claim of judicature.[727] But they came to a resolution that the spiritual Lords had a right to sit and vote in parliament in capital cases, until judgment of death shall be pronounced.[728] The Commons of course protested against this vote;[729] but a prorogation soon dropped the curtain over their differences; and Danby's impeachment was not acted upon in the next parliament.

Votes of bishops.—There seems to be no kind of pretence for objecting to the votes of the bishops on such preliminary questions as may arise in an impeachment of treason. It is true that ancient custom has so far ingrafted the provisions of the ecclesiastical law on our constitution, that they are bound to withdraw when judgment of life or death is pronounced; though even in this they always do it with a protestation of their right to remain. This, once claimed as a privilege of the church, and reluctantly admitted by the state, became, in the lapse of ages, an exclusion and badge of inferiority. In the constitutions of Clarendon, under Henry II., it is enacted, that the bishops and others holding spiritual benefices "in capite" should give their attendance at trials in parliament, till it come to sentence of life or member. This, although perhaps too ancient to have authority as statute law, was a sufficient evidence of the constitutional usage, where nothing so material could be alleged on the other side. And, as the original privilege was built upon nothing better than the narrow superstitions of the canon law, there was no reasonable pretext for carrying the exclusion of the spiritual lords farther than certain and constant precedents required. Though it was true, as the enemies of Lord Danby urged, that by voting for the validity of his pardon, they would in effect determine the whole question in his favour, yet there seemed no serious reasons, considering it abstractedly from party views, why they should not thus indirectly be restored for once to a privilege, from which the prejudices of former ages alone had shut them out.

The main point in controversy, whether a general or special pardon from the king could be pleaded in answer to an impeachment of the Commons so as to prevent any further proceedings in it, never came to a regular decision. It was evident that a minister who had influence enough to obtain such an indemnity, might set both houses of parliament at defiance; the pretended responsibility of the Crown's advisers, accounted the palladium of our constitution, would be an idle mockery, if not only punishment could be averted, but enquiry frustrated. Even if the king could remit the penalties of a guilty minister's sentence upon impeachment, it would be much, that public indignation should have been excited against him, that suspicion should have been turned into proof, that shame and reproach, irremissible by the great seal, should avenge the wrongs of his country. It was always to be presumed that a sovereign, undeceived by such a judicial inquiry, or sensible to the general voice it roused, would voluntarily, or at least prudently, abandon an unworthy favourite. Though it might be admitted that long usage had established the royal prerogative of granting pardons under the great seal, even before trial, and that such pardons might be pleaded in bar (a prerogative indeed which ancient statutes, not repealed, though gone into disuse, or rather in no time acted upon, had attempted to restrain), yet we could not infer that it extended to cases of impeachment. In ordinary criminal proceedings by indictment the king was before the court as prosecutor, the suit was in his name; he might stay the process at his pleasure, by entering a "noli prosequi;" to pardon, before or after judgment, was a branch of the same prerogative; it was a great constitutional trust, to be exercised at his discretion. But in an appeal or accusation of felony, brought by the injured party, or his next of blood, a proceeding wherein the king's name did not appear, it was undoubted that he could not remit the capital sentence. The same principle seemed applicable to an impeachment at the suit of the Commons of England, demanding justice from the supreme tribunal of the other house of parliament. It could not be denied that James had remitted the whole sentence upon Lord Bacon. But impeachments were so unusual at that time, and the privileges of parliament so little out of dispute, that no great stress could be laid on this precedent.

Such must have been the course of arguing, strong on political, and specious on legal grounds, which induced the Commons to resist the plea put in by Lord Danby. Though this question remained in suspense on the present occasion, it was finally decided by the legislature in the act of settlement; which provides that no pardon under the great seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment of the Commons in parliament.[730] These expressions seem tacitly to concede the Crown's right of granting a pardon after sentence; which, though perhaps it could not well be distinguished in point of law from a pardon pleadable in bar, stands on a very different footing, as has been observed above, with respect to constitutional policy. Accordingly, upon the impeachment of the six peers who had been concerned in the rebellion of 1715, the House of Lords after sentence passed, having come to a resolution on debate that the king had a right to reprieve in cases of impeachment, addressed him to exercise that prerogative as to such of them as should deserve his mercy; and three of the number were in consequence pardoned.[731]

3. Abatement of impeachments by dissolution.—The impeachment of Danby first brought forward another question of hardly less magnitude, and remarkable as one of the few great points in constitutional law, which have been discussed and finally settled within the memory of the present generation: I mean the continuance of an impeachment by the Commons from one parliament to another. Though this has been put at rest by a determination altogether consonant to maxims of expediency, it seems proper in this place to show briefly the grounds upon which the argument on both sides rested.

In the earlier period of our parliamentary records, the business of both houses, whether of a legislative or judicial nature, though often very multifarious, was despatched, with the rapidity natural to comparatively rude times, by men impatient of delay, unused to doubt, and not cautious in the proof of facts or attentive to the subtleties of reasoning. The session, generally speaking, was not to terminate till the petitions in parliament for redress had been disposed of, whether decisively or by reference to some more permanent tribunal. Petitions for alteration of the law, presented by the Commons, and assented to by the Lords, were drawn up into statutes by the king's council just before the prorogation or dissolution. They fell naturally to the ground, if the session closed before they could be submitted to the king's pleasure. The great change that took place in the reign of Henry VI., by passing bills complete in their form through the two houses instead of petitions, while it rendered manifest to every eye that distinction between legislative and judicial proceedings which the simplicity of older times had half concealed, did not affect this constitutional principle. At the close of a session, every bill then in progress through parliament became a nullity, and must pass again through all its stages before it could be tendered for the royal assent. No sort of difference existed in the effect of a prorogation and a dissolution; it was even maintained that a session made a parliament.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, writs of error from inferior courts to the House of Lords became far less usual than in the preceding age; and when they occurred, as error could only be assigned on a point of law appearing on the record, they were quickly decided with the assistance of the judges. But, when they grew more frequent, and especially when appeals from the chancellor, requiring often a tedious examination of depositions, were brought before the Lords, it was found that a sudden prorogation might often interrupt a decision; and the question arose, whether writs of error, and other proceedings of a similar nature, did not, according to precedent or analogy, cease, or in technical language abate, at the close of a session. An order was accordingly made by the house on March 11, 1673, that "the Lords committees for privileges should inquire whether an appeal to this house either by writ of error or petition, from the proceedings of any other court being depending, and not determined in one session of parliament, continue in statu quo unto the next session of parliament, without renewing the writ of error or petition, or beginning all anew." The committee reported on the 29th of March, after mis-reciting the order of reference to them in a very remarkable manner, by omitting some words and interpolating others, so as to make it far more extensive than it really was,[732] that upon the consideration of precedents, which they specify, they came to a resolution that "businesses depending in one parliament or session of parliament have been continued to the next session of the same parliament, and the proceedings thereupon have remained in the same state in which they were left when last in agitation." The house approved of this resolution, and ordered it accordingly.[733]

This resolution was decisive as to the continuance of ordinary judicial business beyond the termination of a session. It was still open to dispute whether it might not abate by a dissolution. And the peculiar case of impeachment, to which, after the dissolution of the long parliament in 1678, every one's attention was turned, seemed to stand on different grounds. It was referred therefore to the committee of privileges, on the 11th of March 1679, to consider whether petitions of appeal which were presented to this house in the last parliament be still in force to be proceeded on. Next day it is referred to the same committee, on a report of the matter of fact as to the impeachments of the Earl of Danby and the five popish lords in the late parliament, to consider of the state of the said impeachments and all the incidents relating thereto, and to report to the house. On the 18th of March Lord Essex reported from the committee, that, "upon perusal of the judgment of this house of the 29th of March 1673, they are of opinion, that in all cases of appeals and writs of error they continue, and are to be proceeded on, in statu quo, as they stood at the dissolution of the last parliament, without beginning de novo.... And, upon consideration had of the matter referred to their lordships concerning the state of the impeachments brought up from the House of Commons the last parliament, etc.... they are of opinion that the dissolution of the last parliament doth not alter the state of the impeachments brought up by the Commons in that parliament." This report was taken into consideration next day by the house; and after a debate, which appears from the journals to have lasted some time, and the previous question moved and lost, it was resolved to agree with the committee.[734]

This resolution became for some years the acknowledged law of parliament. Lord Stafford, at his trial in 1680, having requested that his counsel might be heard as to the point, whether impeachments could go from one parliament to another, the house took no notice of this question; though they consulted the judges about another which he had put, as to the necessity of two witnesses to every overt act of treason.[735] Lord Danby and Chief-Justice Scroggs petitioned the Lords in the Oxford parliament, one to have the charges against him dismissed, the other to be bailed; but neither take the objection of an intervening dissolution.[736] And Lord Danby, after the dissolution of three successive parliaments since that in which he was impeached, having lain for three years in the Tower, when he applied to be enlarged on bail by the court of king's bench in 1682, was refused by the judges, on the ground of their incompetency to meddle in a parliamentary impeachment; though, if the prosecution were already at an end, he would have been entitled to an absolute discharge. On Jefferies becoming chief justice of the king's bench, Danby was admitted to bail.[737] But in the parliament of 1685, the impeached lords having petitioned the house, it was resolved, that the order of the 19th of March 1679 be reversed and annulled as to impeachments; and they were consequently released from their recognisances.[738]

The first of these two contradictory determinations is not certainly free from that reproach which so often contaminates our precedents of parliamentary law, and renders an honest man reluctant to show them any greater deference than is strictly necessary. It passed during the violent times of the popish plot; and a contrary resolution would have set at liberty the five catholic peers committed to the Tower, and enabled them probably to quit the kingdom before a new impeachment could be preferred. It must be acknowledged, at the same time, that it was borne out, in a considerable degree, by the terms of the order of 1673, which seems liable to no suspicion of answering a temporary purpose; and that the court party in the House of Lords were powerful enough to have withstood any flagrant innovation in the law of parliament. As for the second resolution, that of 1685, which reversed the former, it was passed in the very worst of times; and, if we may believe the protest, signed by the Earl of Anglesea and three other peers, with great precipitation and neglect of usual forms. It was not however annulled after the revolution; but, on the contrary, received what may seem at first sight a certain degree of confirmation, from an order of the House of Lords in 1690, on the petitions of Lords Salisbury and Peterborough, who had been impeached in the preceding parliament, to be discharged; which was done after reading the resolutions of 1679 and 1685, and a long debate thereon. But as a general pardon had come out in the meantime, by which the judges held that the offences imputed to these two lords had been discharged, and as the Commons showed no disposition to follow up their impeachment against them, no parliamentary reasoning can perhaps be founded on this precedent.[739] In the case of the Duke of Leeds, impeached by the Commons in 1695, no further proceedings were had; but the Lords did not make an order for his discharge from the accusation till five years after three dissolutions had intervened; and grounded it upon the Commons not proceeding with the impeachment. They did not however send a message to enquire if the Commons were ready to proceed, which, according to parliamentary usage, would be required in case of a pending impeachment. The cases of Lords Somers, Orford, and Halifax, were similar to that of the Duke of Leeds, except that so long a period did not intervene. These instances therefore rather tend to confirm the position, that impeachments did not ipso facto abate by a dissolution, notwithstanding the reversal of the order of 1679. In the case of the Earl of Oxford, it was formally resolved in 1717, that an impeachment does not determine by a prorogation of parliament; an authority conclusive to those who maintain that no difference exists in the law of parliament between the effects of a prorogation and a dissolution. But it is difficult to make all men consider this satisfactory.

The question came finally before both houses of parliament in 1791, a dissolution having intervened during the impeachment of Mr. Hastings; an impeachment which, far unlike the rapid proceedings of former ages, had already been for three years before the House of Lords, and seemed likely to run on to an almost interminable length. It must have been abandoned in despair, if the prosecution had been held to determine by the late dissolution. The general reasonings, and the force of precedents on both sides, were urged with great ability, and by the principal speakers in both houses; the lawyers generally inclining to maintain the resolution of 1685, that impeachments abate by a dissolution, but against still greater names which were united on the opposite side. In the end, after an ample discussion, the continuance of impeachments, in spite of a dissolution, was carried by very large majorities; and this decision, so deliberately taken, and so free from all suspicion of partiality (the majority in neither house, especially the upper, bearing any prejudice against the accused person), as well as so consonant to principles of utility and constitutional policy, must for ever have set at rest all dispute upon the question.

Popish plot.—The year 1678, and the last session of the parliament that had continued since 1661, were memorable for the great national delusion of the popish plot. For national it was undoubtedly to be called, and by no means confined to the whig or opposition party, either in or out of parliament, though it gave them much temporary strength. And though it were a most unhappy instance of the credulity begotten by heated passions and mistaken reasoning, yet there were circumstances, and some of them very singular in their nature, which explain and furnish an apology for the public error, and which it is more important to point out and keep in mind, than to inveigh, as is the custom in modern times, against the factitiousness and bigotry of our ancestors. For I am persuaded that we are far from being secure from similar public delusions, whenever such a concurrence of coincidences and seeming probabilities shall again arise, as misled nearly the whole people of England in the popish plot.[740]

Coleman's letters.—It is first to be remembered that there was really and truly a popish plot in being, though not that which Titus Oates and his associates pretended to reveal—not merely in the sense of Hume, who, arguing from the general spirit of proselytism in that religion, says there is a perpetual conspiracy against all governments, protestant, Mahometan, and pagan, but one alert, enterprising, effective, in direct operation against the established protestant religion in England. In this plot the king, the Duke of York, and the King of France were chief conspirators; the Romish priests, and especially the jesuits, were eager co-operators. Their machinations and their hopes, long suspected, and in a general sense known, were divulged by the seizure and publication of Coleman's letters. "We have here," he says, in one of these, "a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that perhaps the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has a long time domineered over this northern world. There were never such hopes since the death of our queen Mary as now in our days. God has given us a prince, who is become (I may say by miracle) zealous of being the author and instrument of so glorious a work; but the opposition we are sure to meet with is also like to be great; so that it imports us to get all the aid and assistance we can." These letters were addressed to Father la Chaise, confessor of Louis XIV., and displayed an intimate connection with France for the great purpose of restoring popery. They came to light at the very period of Oates's discovery; and though not giving it much real confirmation, could hardly fail to make a powerful impression on men unaccustomed to estimate the value and bearings of evidence.[741]

The conspiracy supposed to have been concerted by the jesuits at St. Omers, and in which so many English catholics were implicated, chiefly consisted, as is well known, in a scheme of assassinating the king. Though the obvious falsehood and absurdity of much that the witnesses deposed in relation to this plot render it absolutely incredible, and fully acquit those unfortunate victims of iniquity and prejudice, it could not appear at the time an extravagant supposition, that an eager intriguing faction should have considered the king's life a serious obstacle to their hopes. Though as much attached in heart as his nature would permit to the catholic religion, he was evidently not inclined to take any effectual measures in its favour; he was but one year older than his brother, on the contingency of whose succession all their hopes rested, since his heiress was not only brought up in the protestant faith, but united to its most strenuous defender. Nothing could have been more anxiously wished at St. Omers than the death of Charles; and it does not seem improbable that the atrocious fictions of Oates may have been originally suggested by some actual, though vague, projects of assassination, which he had heard in discourse among the ardent spirits of that college.

Murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey.—The popular ferment which this tale, however undeserving of credit, excited in a predisposed multitude, was naturally wrought to a higher pitch by the very extraordinary circumstances of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey's death. Even at this time, although we reject the imputation thrown on the catholics, and especially on those who suffered death for that murder, it seems impossible to frame any hypothesis which can better account for the facts that seem to be authenticated. That he was murdered by those who designed to lay the charge on the papists, and aggravate the public fury, may pass with those who rely on such writers as Roger North,[742] but has not the slightest corroboration from any evidence; nor does it seem to have been suggested by the contemporary libellers of the court party. That he might have had, as an active magistrate, private enemies, whose revenge took away his life, which seems to be Hume's conjecture, is hardly more satisfactory; the enemies of a magistrate are not likely to have left his person unplundered, nor is it usual for justices of the peace, merely on account of the discharge of their ordinary duties, to incur such desperate resentment. That he fell by his own hands was doubtless the suggestion of those who aimed at discrediting the plot; but it is impossible to reconcile this with the marks of violence which are so positively sworn to have appeared on his neck; and, on a later investigation of the subject in the year 1682, when the court had become very powerful, and a belief in the plot had grown almost a mark of disloyalty, an attempt made to prove the self-murder of Godfrey, in a trial before Pemberton, failed altogether; and the result of the whole evidence, on that occasion, was strongly to confirm the supposition that he had perished by the hands of assassins.[743] His death remains at this moment a problem for which no tolerably satisfactory solution can be offered. But at the time, it was a very natural presumption to connect it with the plot, wherein he had not only taken the deposition of Oates, a circumstance not in itself highly important, but was supposed to have received the confidential communications of Coleman.[744]

Another circumstance, much calculated to persuade ordinary minds of the truth of the plot, was the trial of Reading, a Romish attorney, for tampering with the witnesses against the accused catholic peers, in order to make them keep out of the way.[745] As such clandestine dealing with witnesses creates a strong, and perhaps with some too strong a presumption of guilt, where justice is sure to be uprightly administered, men did not make a fair distinction as to times when the violence of the court and jury gave no reasonable hope of escape; and when the most innocent party would much rather procure the absence of a perjured witness than trust to the chance of disproving his testimony.

Injustice of judges on the trials.—There was indeed good reason to distrust the course of justice. Never were our tribunals so disgraced by the brutal manners and iniquitous partiality of the bench as in the latter years of this reign. The State Trials, none of which appear to have been published by the prisoners' friends, bear abundant testimony to the turpitude of the judges. They explained away and softened the palpable contradictions of the witnesses for the Crown, insulted and threatened those of the accused, checked all cross-examination, assumed the truth of the charge throughout the whole of every trial.[746] One Whitbread, a jesuit, having been indicted with several others, and the evidence not being sufficient, Scroggs discharged the jury of him, but ordered him to be kept in custody till more proof might come in. He was accordingly indicted again for the same offence. On his pleading that he had been already tried, Scroggs and North had the effrontery to deny that he had been ever put in jeopardy, though the witnesses for the Crown had been fully heard before the jury were most irregularly and illegally discharged of him on the former trial. North said he had often known it done, and it was the common course of law. In the course of this proceeding, Bedloe, who had deposed nothing explicit against the prisoner on the former trial, accounted for this by saying, it was not then convenient; an answer with which the court and jury were content.[747]

It is remarkable that, although the king might be justly surmised to give little credence to the pretended plot, and the Duke of York was manifestly affected in his interests by the heats it excited, yet the judges most subservient to the court, Scroggs, North, Jones, went with all violence into the popular cry, till, the witnesses beginning to attack the queen, and to menace the duke, they found it was time to rein in, as far as they could, the passions they had instigated.[748] Pemberton, a more honest man in political matters, showed a remarkable intemperance and unfairness in all trials relating to popery. Even in that of Lord Stafford in 1680, the last, and perhaps the worst, proceeding under this delusion, though the court had a standing majority in the House of Lords, he was convicted by fifty-five peers against thirty-one; the Earl of Nottingham, lord chancellor, the Duke of Lauderdale, and several others of the administration voting him guilty, while he was acquitted by the honest Hollis and the acute Halifax.[749] So far was the belief in the popish plot, or the eagerness in hunting its victims to death, from being confined to the whig faction, as some writers have been willing to insinuate. None had more contributed to rouse the national outcry against the accused, and create a firm persuasion of the reality of the plot, than the clergy in their sermons, even the most respectable of their order, Sancroft, Sharp, Barlow, Burnet, Tillotson, Stillingfleet; inferring its truth from Godfrey's murder or Coleman's letters, calling for the severest laws against catholics, and imputing to them the fire of London, nay, even the death of Charles I.[750]

Exclusion of Duke of York proposed.—Though the Duke of York was not charged with participation in the darkest schemes of the popish conspirators, it was evident that his succession was the great aim of their endeavours, and evident also that he had been engaged in the more real and undeniable intrigues of Coleman. His accession to the throne, long viewed with just apprehension, now seemed to threaten such perils to every part of the constitution, as ought not supinely to be waited for, if any means could be devised to obviate them. This gave rise to the bold measure of the exclusion bill, too bold indeed for the spirit of the country, and the rock on which English liberty was nearly shipwrecked. In the long parliament, full as it was of pensioners and creatures of court influence, nothing so vigorous would have been successful. Even in the bill which excluded catholic peers from sitting in the House of Lords, a proviso, exempting the Duke of York from its operation, having been sent down from the other house, passed by a majority of two voices.[751] But the zeal they showed against Danby induced the king to put an end to this parliament of seventeen years' duration; an event long ardently desired by the popular party, who foresaw their ascendancy in the new elections.[752] The next House of Commons accordingly came together with an ardour not yet quenched by corruption; and after reviving the impeachments commenced by their predecessors, and carrying a measure long in agitation, a test[753] which shut the catholic peers out of parliament, went upon the exclusion bill. Their dissolution put a stop to this; and in the next parliament the Lords rejected it.[754]

The right of excluding an unworthy heir from the succession was supported not only by the plain and fundamental principles of civil society, which establish the interest of the people to be the paramount object of political institutions, but by those of the English constitution. It had always been the better opinion among lawyers, that the reigning king with consent of parliament was competent to make any changes in the inheritance of the Crown; and this, besides the acts passed under Henry VIII. empowering him to name his successor, was expressly enacted, with heavy penalties against such as should contradict it, in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth. The contrary doctrine indeed, if pressed to its legitimate consequences, would have shaken all the statutes that limit the prerogative; since, if the analogy of entails in private inheritances were to be resorted to, and the existing legislature should be supposed incompetent to alter the line of succession, they could as little impair as they could alienate the indefeasible rights of the heir; nor could he be bound by restrictions to which he had never given his assent. It seemed strange to maintain that the parliament could reduce a king of England to the condition of a doge of Venice, by shackling and taking away his authority, and yet could not divest him of a title which they could render little better than a mockery. Those accordingly who disputed the legislative omnipotence of parliament did not hesitate to assert that statutes infringing on the prerogative were null of themselves. With the court lawyers conspired the clergy, who pretended these matters of high policy and constitutional law to be within their province; and, with hardly an exception, took a zealous part against the exclusion. It was indeed a measure repugnant to the common prejudices of mankind; who, without entering on the abstract competency of parliament, are naturally accustomed in an hereditary monarchy to consider the next heir as possessed of a right, which, except through necessity, or notorious criminality, cannot be justly divested. The mere profession of a religion different from the established, does not seem, abstractedly considered, an adequate ground for unsettling the regular order of inheritance. Yet such was the narrow bigotry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which died away almost entirely among protestants in the next, that even the trifling differences between Lutherans and Calvinists had frequently led to alternate persecutions in the German states, as a prince of one or the other denomination happened to assume the government. And the Romish religion, in particular, was in that age of so restless and malignant a character, that unless the power of the Crown should be far more strictly limited than had hitherto been the case, there must be a very serious danger from any sovereign of that faith; and the letters of Coleman, as well as other evidences, made it manifest that the Duke of York was engaged in a scheme of general conversion, which, from his arbitrary temper and the impossibility of succeeding by fair means, it was just to apprehend, must involve the subversion of all civil liberty. Still this was not distinctly perceived by persons at a distance from the scene, imbued, as most of the gentry were, with the principles of the old cavaliers, and those which the church had inculcated. The king, though hated by the dissenters, retained the affections of that party, who forgave the vices they deplored, to his father's memory and his personal affability. It appeared harsh and disloyal to force his consent to the exclusion of a brother in whom he saw no crime, and to avoid which he offered every possible expedient.[755] There will always be found in the people of England a strong unwillingness to force the reluctance of their sovereign—a latent feeling, of which parties in the heat of their triumphs are seldom aware, because it does not display itself until the moment of reaction. And although, in the less settled times before the revolution, this personal loyalty was highly dangerous, and may still, no doubt, sometimes break out so as to frustrate objects of high import to the public weal, it is on the whole a salutary temper for the conservation of the monarchy, which may require such a barrier against the encroachments of factions and the fervid passions of the multitude.

Schemes of Shaftesbury and Monmouth.—The bill of exclusion was drawn with as much regard to the inheritance of the Duke of York's daughters as they could reasonably demand, or as any lawyer engaged for them could have shown; though something different seems to be insinuated by Burnet. It provided that the imperial crown of England should descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons successively during the life of the Duke of York, as should have inherited or enjoyed the same in case he were naturally dead. If the Princess of Orange was not expressly named (which, the bishop tells us, gave a jealousy, as though it were intended to keep that matter still undetermined), this silence was evidently justified by the possible contingency of the birth of a son to the duke, whose right there was no intention in the framers of the bill to defeat. But a large part of the opposition had unfortunately other objects in view. It had been the great error of those who withstood the arbitrary counsels of Charles II. to have admitted into their closest confidence, and in a considerable degree to the management of their party, a man so destitute of all honest principle as the Earl of Shaftesbury. Under his contaminating influence their passions became more untractable, their connections more seditious and democratical, their schemes more revolutionary, and they broke away more and more from the line of national opinion, till a fatal reaction involved themselves in ruin, and exposed the cause of public liberty to its most imminent peril. The countenance and support of Shaftesbury brought forward that unconstitutional and most impolitic scheme of the Duke of Monmouth's succession. There could hardly be a greater insult to a nation used to respect its hereditary line of kings, than to set up the bastard of a prostitute, without the least pretence of personal excellence or public services, against a princess of known virtue and attachment to the protestant religion. And the effrontery of this attempt was aggravated by the libels eagerly circulated to dupe the credulous populace into a belief of Monmouth's legitimacy. The weak young man, lured on to destruction by the arts of intriguers and the applause of the multitude, gave just offence to sober-minded patriots, who knew where the true hopes of public liberty were anchored, by a kind of triumphal procession through parts of the country, and by other indications of a presumptuous ambition.[756]

Unsteadiness of the king.—If any apology can be made for the encouragement given by some of the whig party (for it was by no means general) to the pretensions of Monmouth, it must be found in their knowledge of the king's affection for him, which furnished a hope that he might more easily be brought in to the exclusion of his brother for the sake of so beloved a child than for the Prince of Orange. And doubtless there was a period when Charles's acquiescence in the exclusion did not appear so unattainable as, from his subsequent line of behaviour, we are apt to consider it. It appears from the recently published life of James, that in the autumn of 1680 the embarrassment of the king's situation, and the influence of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who had gone over to the exclusionists, made him seriously deliberate on abandoning his brother.[757] Whether from natural instability of judgment, from the steady adherence of France to the Duke of York, or from observing the great strength of the tory party in the House of Lords, where the bill was rejected by a majority of 63 to 30, he soon returned to his former disposition. It was long however before he treated James with perfect cordiality. Conscious of his own insincerity in religion, which the duke's bold avowal of an obnoxious creed seemed to reproach, he was provoked at bearing so much of the odium, and incurring so many of the difficulties, which attended a profession that he had not ventured to make. He told Hyde, before the dissolution of the parliament in 1680, that it would not be in his power to protect his brother any longer, if he did not conform and go to church.[758] Hyde himself, and the duke's other friends, had never ceased to urge him on this subject. Their importunity was renewed by the king's order, even after the dissolution of the Oxford parliament; and it seems to have been the firm persuasion of most about the court that he could only be preserved by conformity to the protestant religion. He justly apprehended the consequences of a refusal; but, inflexibly conscientious on this point, he braved whatever might arise from the timidity or disaffection of the ministers and the selfish fickleness of the king.

In the apprehensions excited by the king's unsteadiness and the defection of the Duchess of Portsmouth, he deemed his fortunes so much in jeopardy, as to have resolved on exciting a civil war, rather than yield to the exclusion. He had already told Barillon that the royal authority could be re-established by no other means.[759] The episcopal party in Scotland had gone such lengths that they could hardly be safe under any other king. The catholics of England were of course devoted to him. With the help of these he hoped to show himself so formidable that Charles would find it his interest to quit that cowardly line of politics, to which he was sacrificing his honour and affections. Louis, never insensible to any occasion of rendering England weak and miserable, directed his ambassador to encourage the duke in this guilty project with the promise of assistance.[760] It seems to have been prevented by the wisdom or public spirit of Churchill, who pointed out to Barillon the absurdity of supposing that the duke could stand by himself in Scotland. This scheme of lighting up the flames of civil war in three kingdoms, for James's private advantage, deserves to be more remarked than it has hitherto been at a time when the apologists seem to have become numerous. If the designs of Russell and Sidney for the preservation of their country's liberty are blamed as rash and unjustifiable, what name shall we give to the project of maintaining the pretensions of an individual by means of rebellion and general bloodshed?

It is well known that those who took a concern in the maintenance of religion and liberty, were much divided as to the best expedients for securing them; some, who thought the exclusion too violent, dangerous, or impracticable, preferring the enactment of limitations on the prerogatives of a catholic king. This had begun in fact from the court, who passed a bill through the House of Lords in 1677, for the security, as it was styled, of the protestant religion. This provided that a declaration and oath against transubstantiation should be tendered to every king within fourteen days after his accession; that, on his refusal to take it, the ecclesiastical benefices in the gift of the Crown should vest in the bishops, except that the king should name to every vacant see one out of three persons proposed to him by the bishops of the province. It enacted also, that the children of a king refusing such a test should be educated by the archbishop and two or three more prelates. This bill dropped in the Commons; and Marvell speaks of it as an insidious stratagem of the ministry.[761] It is more easy, however, to give hard names to a measure originating with an obnoxious government, than to prove that it did not afford a considerable security to the established church, and impose a very remarkable limitation on the prerogative. But the opposition in the House of Commons had probably conceived their scheme of exclusion, and would not hearken to any compromise. As soon as the exclusion became the topic of open discussion, the king repeatedly offered to grant every security that could be demanded consistently with the lineal succession. Hollis, Halifax, and for a time Essex, as well as several eminent men in the lower house, were in favour of limitations.[762] But those which they intended to insist upon were such encroachments on the constitutional authority of the Crown, that, except a title and revenue, which Charles thought more valuable than all the rest, a popish king would enjoy no one attribute of royalty. The king himself, on the 30th of April 1679, before the heats on the subject had become so violent as they were the next year, offered not only to secure all ecclesiastical preferments from the control of a popish successor, but to provide that the parliament in being at a demise of the Crown or the last that had been dissolved, should immediately sit and be indissoluble for a certain time; that none of the privy council, nor judges, lord lieutenant, deputy lieutenant, nor officer of the navy, should be appointed during the reign of a catholic king, without consent of parliament. He offered at the same time most readily to consent to any further provision that could occur to the wisdom of parliament for the security of religion and liberty consistently with the right of succession. Halifax, the eloquent and successful opponent of the exclusion, was the avowed champion of limitations. It was proposed, in addition to these offers of the king, that the duke, in case of his accession, should have no negative voice on bills; that he should dispose of no civil or military posts without consent of parliament; that a council of forty-one, nominated by the two houses, should sit permanently during the recess or interval of parliament, with power of appointing to all vacant offices, subject to the future approbation of the Lords and Commons.[763] These extraordinary innovations would, at least for the time, have changed our constitution into a republic; and justly appeared to many persons more revolutionary than an alteration in the course of succession. The Duke of York looked on them with dismay; Charles indeed privately declared that he would never consent to such infringements of the prerogative.[764] It is not however easy to perceive how he could have escaped from the necessity of adhering to his own propositions, if the House of Commons would have relinquished the bill of exclusion. The Prince of Orange, who was doubtless in secret not averse to the latter measure, declared strongly against the plan of restrictions, which a protestant successor might not find it practicable to shake off. Another expedient, still more ruinous to James than that of limitations, was what the court itself suggested in the Oxford parliament, that the duke retaining the title of king, a regent should be appointed, in the person of the Princess of Orange, with all the royal prerogatives; nay, that the duke, with his pageant crown on his head, should be banished from England during his life.[765] This proposition, which is a great favourite with Burnet, appears liable to the same objections as were justly urged against a similar scheme at the revolution. It was certain that in either case James would attempt to obtain possession of power by force of arms; and the law of England would not treat very favourably those who should resist an acknowledged king in his natural capacity, while the statute of Henry VII. would, legally speaking, afford a security to the adherents of a de facto sovereign.

Upon the whole, it is very unlikely, when we look at the general spirit and temper of the nation, its predilection for the ancient laws, its dread of commonwealth and fanatical principles, the tendency of the upper ranks to intrigue and corruption, the influence and activity of the church, the bold counsels and haughty disposition of James himself, that either the exclusion, or such extensive limitations as were suggested in lieu of it, could have been carried into effect with much hope of a durable settlement. It would, I should conceive, have been practicable to secure the independence of the judges, to exclude unnecessary placemen and notorious pensioners from the House of Commons, to render the distribution of money among its members penal, to remove from the protestant dissenters, by a full toleration, all temptation to favour the court, and, above all, to put down the standing army. Though none perhaps of these provisions would have prevented the attempts of this and the next reign to introduce arbitrary power, they would have rendered them still more grossly illegal; and, above all, they would have saved that unhappy revolution of popular sentiment which gave the court encouragement and temporary success.

Names of Whig and Tory.—It was in the year 1679, that the words Whig and Tory first were heard in their application to English factions; and, though as senseless as any cant terms that could be devised, they became instantly as familiar in use as they have since continued. There were then indeed questions in agitation, which rendered the distinction more broad and intelligible than it has generally been in later times. One of these, and the most important, was the bill of exclusion; in which, as it was usually debated, the republican principle, that all positive institutions of society are in order to the general good, came into collision with that of monarchy, which rests on the maintenance of a royal line, as either the end, or at least the necessary means, of lawful government. But, as the exclusion was confessedly among those extraordinary measures, to which men of tory principles are sometimes compelled to resort in great emergencies, and which no rational whig espouses at any other time, we shall better perhaps discern the formation of these grand political sects in the petitions for the sitting of parliament, and in the counter addresses of the opposite party.

New council formed by Sir William Temple.—In the spring of 1679, Charles established a new privy council, by the advice of Sir William Temple, consisting in great part of those eminent men in both houses of parliament, who had been most prominent in their opposition to the late ministry.[766] He publicly declared his resolution to govern entirely by the advice of this council and that of parliament. The Duke of York was kept in what seemed a sort of exile at Brussels.[767] But the just suspicion attached to the king's character prevented the Commons from placing much confidence in this new ministry; and, as frequently happens, abated their esteem for those who, with the purest intentions, had gone into the council.[768] They had soon cause to perceive that their distrust had not been excessive. The ministers were constantly beaten in the House of Lords; an almost certain test, in our government, of the court's insincerity.[769]

Long prorogation of parliament.—The parliament was first prorogued, then dissolved; against the advice, in the latter instance, of the majority of that council by whom the king had pledged himself to be directed. A new parliament, after being summoned to meet in October 1679, was prorogued for a twelve-month without the avowed concurrence of any member of the council. Lord Russell, and others of the honester party, withdrew from a board where their presence was only asked in mockery or deceit; and the whole specious scheme of Temple came to nothing before the conclusion of the year which had seen it displayed.[770] Its author, chagrined at the disappointment of his patriotism and his vanity, has sought the causes of failure in the folly of Monmouth and perverseness of Shaftesbury. He was not aware, at least in their full extent, of the king's intrigues at this period. Charles, who had been induced to take those whom he most disliked into his council, with the hope of obtaining money from parliament, or of parrying the exclusion bill, and had consented to the Duke of York's quitting England, found himself enthralled by ministers whom he could neither corrupt nor deceive; Essex, the firm and temperate friend of constitutional liberty in power as he had been out of it, and Halifax, not yet led away by ambition or resentment from the cause he never ceased to approve. He had recourse therefore to his accustomed refuge, and humbly implored the aid of Louis against his own council and parliament. He conjured his patron not to lose this opportunity of making England for ever dependent upon France. These are his own words, such at least as Barillon attributes to him.[771] In pursuance of this overture, a secret treaty was negotiated between the two kings; whereby, after long haggling, Charles, for a pension of 1,000,000 livres annually during three years, obliged himself not to assemble parliament during that time. This negotiation was broken off, through the apprehensions of Hyde and Sunderland who had been concerned in it, about the end of November 1679, before the long prorogation which is announced in the Gazette by a proclamation of December 11th. But, the resolution having been already taken not to permit the meeting of parliament, Charles persisted in it as the only means of escaping the bill of exclusion, even when deprived of the pecuniary assistance to which he had trusted.

Though the king's behaviour on this occasion exposed the fallacy of all projects for reconciliation with the House of Commons, it was very well calculated for his own ends; nor was there any part of his reign wherein he acted with so much prudence, as from this time to the dissolution of the Oxford parliament. The scheme concerted by his adversaries, and already put in operation, of pouring in petitions from every part of the kingdom for the meeting of parliament, he checked in the outset by a proclamation, artfully drawn up by Chief-Justice North; which, while it kept clear of anything so palpably unconstitutional as a prohibition of petitions, served the purpose of manifesting the king's dislike to them, and encouraged the magistrates to treat all attempts that way as seditious and illegal, while it drew over the neutral and lukewarm to the safer and stronger side.[772] Then were first ranged against each other the hosts of whig and tory, under their banners of liberty or loyalty; each zealous, at least in profession, to maintain the established constitution, but the one seeking its security by new maxims of government, the other by an adherence to the old.

Petitions and addresses.—It must be admitted that petitions to the king from bodies of his subjects, intended to advise or influence him in the exercise of his undoubted prerogatives, such as the time of calling parliament together, familiar as they may now have become, had no precedent, except one in the dark year 1640, and were repugnant to the ancient principles of our monarchy. The cardinal maxim of toryism is, that the king ought to exercise all his lawful prerogatives without the interference, or unsolicited advice, even of parliament, much less of the people. These novel efforts therefore were met by addresses from most of the grand juries, from the magistrates at quarter sessions, and from many corporations, expressing not merely their entire confidence in the king, but their abhorrence of the petitions for the assembling of parliament; a term which, having been casually used in one address, became the watchword of the whole party.[773] Some allowance must be made for the exertions made by the court, especially through the judges of assize, whose charges to grand juries were always of a political nature. Yet there can be no doubt that the strength of the tories manifested itself beyond expectation. Sluggish and silent in its fields, like the animal which it has taken for its type, the deep-rooted loyalty of the English gentry to the Crown may escape a superficial observer, till some circumstance calls forth an indignant and furious energy. The temper shown in 1680 was not according to what the late elections would have led men to expect, not even to that of the next elections for the parliament at Oxford. A large majority returned on both these occasions, and that in the principal counties as much as in corporate towns, were of the whig principle. It appears that the ardent zeal against popery in the smaller freeholders must have overpowered the natural influence of the superior classes. The middling and lower orders, particularly in towns, were clamorous against the Duke of York and the evil counsellors of the Crown. But with the country gentlemen, popery was scarce a more odious word than fanaticism; the memory of the late reign and of the usurpation was still recent, and in the violence of the Commons, in the insolence of Monmouth and Shaftesbury, in the bold assaults upon hereditary right, they saw a faint image of that confusion which had once impoverished and humbled them. Meanwhile the king's dissimulation was quite sufficient for these simple loyalists; the very delusion of the popish plot raised his name for religion in their eyes, since his death was the declared aim of the conspirators; nor did he fail to keep alive this favourable prejudice by letting that imposture take its course, and by enforcing the execution of the penal laws against some unfortunate priests.[774]

Violence of the Commons.—It is among the great advantages of a court in its contention with the asserters of popular privileges, that it can employ a circumspect and dissembling policy, which is never found on the opposite side. The demagogues of faction, or the aristocratic leaders of a numerous assembly, even if they do not feel the influence of the passions they excite, which is rarely the case, are urged onwards by their headstrong followers, and would both lay themselves open to the suspicion of unfaithfulness and damp the spirit of their party, by a wary and temperate course of proceeding. Yet that incautious violence, to which ill-judging men are tempted by the possession of power, must in every case, and especially where the power itself is deemed an usurpation, cast them headlong. This was the fatal error of that House of Commons which met in October 1680; and to this the king's triumph may chiefly be ascribed. The addresses declaratory of abhorrence of petitions for the meeting of parliament were doubtless intemperate with respect to the petitioners; but it was preposterous to treat them as violations of privilege. A few precedents, and those in times of much heat and irregularity, could not justify so flagrant an encroachment on the rights of the private subject, as the commitments of men for a declaration so little affecting the constitutional rights and functions of parliament.[775] The expulsion of Withens, their own member, for promoting one of these addresses, though a violent measure, came in point of law within their acknowledged authority.[776] But it was by no means a generally received opinion in that age that the House of Commons had an unbounded jurisdiction, directly or indirectly, over their constituents. The lawyers, being chiefly on the side of prerogative, inclined at least to limit very greatly this alleged power of commitment for breach of privilege or contempt of the house. It had very rarely, in fact, been exerted, except in cases of serving legal process on members or other molestation, before the long parliament of Charles I.; a time absolutely discredited by one party, and confessed by every reasonable man to be full of innovation and violence. That the Commons had no right of judicature was admitted; was it compatible to principles of reason and justice, that they could, merely by using the words contempt or breach of privilege in a warrant, deprive the subject of that liberty which the recent statute of habeas corpus had secured against the highest ministers of the Crown? Yet one Thompson, a clergyman at Bristol, having preached some virulent sermons, wherein he had traduced the memory of Hampden for refusing the payment of ship-money, and spoken disrespectfully of Queen Elizabeth, as well as insulted those who petitioned for the sitting of parliament, was sent for in custody of the serjeant to answer at the bar for his high misdemeanour against the privileges of that house; and was afterwards compelled to find security for his forthcoming to answer to an impeachment voted against him on these strange charges.[777] Many others were brought to the bar, not only for the crime of abhorrence, but for alleged misdemeanours still less affecting the privileges of parliament, such as remissness in searching for papists. Sir Robert Cann, of Bristol, was sent for in custody of the serjeant-at-arms, for publicly declaring that there was no popish, but only a presbyterian plot. A general panic, mingled with indignation, was diffused through the country, till one Stawell, a gentleman of Devonshire, had the courage to refuse compliance with the speaker's warrant; and the Commons, who hesitated at such a time to risk an appeal to the ordinary magistrates, were compelled to let this contumacy go unpunished. If indeed we might believe the journals of the house, Stawell was actually in custody of the serjeant, though allowed a month's time on account of sickness. This was most probably a subterfuge to conceal the truth of the case.[778]

These encroachments under the name of privilege were exactly in the spirit of the long parliament, and revived too forcibly the recollection of that awful period. It was commonly in men's mouths, that 1641 was come about again. There appeared indeed for several months a very imminent danger of civil war. I have already mentioned the projects of the Duke of York, in case his brother had given way to the exclusion bill. There could be little reason to doubt that many of the opposite leaders were ready to try the question by arms. Reresby has related a conversation he had with Lord Halifax immediately after the rejection of the bill,[779] which shows the expectation of that able statesman, that the differences about the succession would end in civil war. The just abhorrence good men entertain for such a calamity excites their indignation against those who conspicuously bring it on. And, however desirous some of the court might be to strengthen the prerogative by quelling a premature rebellion, the Commons were, in the eyes of the nation, far more prominent in accelerating so terrible a crisis. Their votes in the session of November 1680 were marked by the most extravagant factiousness.[780]

Oxford parliament.—Their conduct in the short parliament held at Oxford in March 1681, served still more to alienate the peaceable part of the community. That session of eight days was marked by the rejection of a proposal to vest all effective power during the Duke of York's life in a regent, and by an attempt to screen the author of a treasonable libel from punishment under the pretext of impeaching him at the bar of the upper house. It seems difficult not to suspect that the secret instigations of Barillon, and even his gold, had considerable influence on some of those who swayed the votes of this parliament.

Impeachment of commoners for treason constitutional.—Though the impeachment of Fitzharris, to which I have just alluded, was in itself a mere work of temporary faction, it brought into discussion a considerable question in our constitutional law, which deserves notice, both on account of its importance, and because a popular writer has advanced an untenable proposition on the subject. The Commons impeached this man of high treason. The Lords voted, that he should be proceeded against at common law. It was resolved, in consequence, by the lower house, "that it is the undoubted right of the Commons in parliament assembled, to impeach before the Lords in parliament any peer or commoner for treason, or any other crime or misdemeanour: and that the refusal of the Lords to proceed in parliament upon such impeachment is a denial of justice, and a violation of the constitution of parliament."[781] It seems indeed difficult to justify the determination of the Lords. Certainly the declaration in the case of Sir Simon de Bereford, who having been accused by the king, in the fourth year of Edward III. before the Lords, of participating in the treason of Roger Mortimer, that noble assembly protested, with the assent of the king in full parliament, that, albeit they had taken upon them, as judges of the parliament in the presence of the king, to render judgment, yet the peers, who then were or should be in time to come, were not bound to render judgment upon others than peers, nor had power to do so; and that the said judgment thus rendered should never be drawn to example or consequence in time to come, whereby the said peers of the land might be charged to judge others than their peers, contrary to the laws of the land; certainly, I say, this declaration, even if it amounted to a statute, concerning which there has been some question,[782] was not necessarily to be interpreted as applicable to impeachments at the suit of the Commons, wherein the king is no ways a party. There were several precedents in the reign of Richard II. of such impeachments for treason. There had been more than one in that of Charles I. The objection indeed was so novel, that Chief-Justice Scroggs, having been impeached for treason in the last parliament, though he applied to be admitted to bail, had never insisted on so decisive a plea to the jurisdiction. And if the doctrine, adopted by the Lords, were to be carried to its just consequences, all impeachment of commoners must be at an end; for no distinction is taken in the above declaration as to Bereford between treason and misdemeanour. The peers had indeed lost, except during the session of parliament, their ancient privilege in cases of misdemeanour, and were subject to the verdict of a jury; but the principle was exactly the same, and the right of judging commoners upon impeachment for corruption or embezzlement, which no one called in question, was as much an exception from the ordinary rules of law as in the more rare case of high treason. It is hardly necessary to observe, that the 29th section of Magna Charta, which establishes the right of trial by jury, is by its express language solely applicable to the suits of the Crown.

This very dangerous and apparently unfounded theory, broached upon the occasion of Fitzharris's impeachment by the Earl of Nottingham, never obtained reception; and was rather intimated than avowed in the vote of the Lords, that he should be proceeded against at common law. But after the revolution, the Commons having impeached Sir Adam Blair and some others of high treason, a committee was appointed to search for precedents on this subject; and after full deliberation, the House of Lords came to a resolution, that they would proceed on the impeachments.[783] The inadvertent position therefore of Blackstone,[784] that a commoner cannot be impeached for high treason, is not only difficult to be supported upon ancient authorities, but contrary to the latest determination of the supreme tribunal.

Proceedings against Shaftesbury and College.—No satisfactory elucidation of the strange libel for which Fitzharris suffered death has yet been afforded. There is much probability in the supposition that it was written at the desire of some in the court, in order to cast odium on their adversaries; a very common stratagem of unscrupulous partisans.[785] It caused an impression unfavourable to the whigs in the nation. The court made a dexterous use of that extreme credulity, which has been supposed characteristic of the English, though it belongs at least equally to every other people. They seized into their hands the very engines of delusion that had been turned against them. Those perjured witnesses, whom Shaftesbury had hallooed on through all the infamy of the popish plot, were now arrayed in the same court to swear treason and conspiracy against him.[786] Though he escaped by the resoluteness of his grand jury, who refused to find a bill of indictment on testimony, which they professed themselves to disbelieve, and which was probably false; yet this extraordinary deviation from the usual practice did harm rather than otherwise to the general cause of his faction. The judges had taken care that the witnesses should be examined in open court, so that the jury's partiality, should they reject such positive testimony, might become glaring. Doubtless it is, in ordinary cases, the duty of a grand juror to find a bill upon the direct testimony of witnesses, where they do not contradict themselves or each other, and where their evidence is not palpably incredible or contrary to his own knowledge.[787] The oath of that inquest is forgotten, either where they render themselves, as seems too often the case, the mere conduit-pipes of accusation, putting a prisoner in jeopardy upon such slender evidence as does not call upon him for a defence; or where, as we have sometimes known in political causes, they frustrate the ends of justice by rejecting indictments which are fully substantiated by testimony. Whether the grand jury of London, in their celebrated ignoramus on the indictment preferred against Shaftesbury, had sufficient grounds for their incredulity, I will not pretend to determine.[788] There was probably no one man among them, who had not implicitly swallowed the tales of the same witnesses in the trials for the plot. The nation however in general, less bigoted, or at least more honest in their bigotry, than those London citizens, was staggered by so many depositions to a traitorous conspiracy, in those who had pretended an excessive loyalty to the king's person.[789] Men unaccustomed to courts of justice are naturally prone to give credit to the positive oaths of witnesses. They were still more persuaded, when, as in the trial of College at Oxford, they saw this testimony sustained by the approbation of a judge (and that judge a decent person who gave no scandal), and confirmed by the verdict of a jury. The gross iniquity practised towards the prisoner in that trial was not so generally bruited as his conviction.[790] There is in England a remarkable confidence in our judicial proceedings, in part derived from their publicity, and partly from the indiscriminate manner in which jurors are usually summoned. It must be owned that the administration of the two last Stuarts was calculated to show how easily this confiding temper might be the dupe of an insidious ambition.

Triumph of the court.—The king's declaration of the reasons that induced him to dissolve the last parliament, being a manifesto against the late majority of the House of Commons, was read in all churches. The clergy scarcely waited for this pretext to take a zealous part for the Crown. Every one knows their influence over the nation in any cause which they make their own. They seemed to change the war against liberty into a crusade. They re-echoed from every pulpit the strain of passive obedience, of indefeasible hereditary right, of the divine origin and patriarchal descent of monarchy. Now began again the loyal addresses, more numerous and ardent than in the last year, which overspread the pages of the London Gazette for many months. These effusions stigmatise the measures of the three last parliaments, dwelling especially on their arbitrary illegal votes against the personal liberty of the subject. Their language is of course not alike; yet amidst all the ebullitions of triumphant loyalty, it is easy in many of them to perceive a lurking distrust of the majesty to which they did homage, insinuated to the reader in the marked satisfaction with which they allude to the king's promise of calling frequent parliaments and of governing by the laws.[791]

The whigs, meantime, so late in the heyday of their pride, lay, like the fallen angels, prostrate upon the fiery lake. The scoffs and gibes of libellers, who had trembled before the resolutions of the Commons, were showered upon their heads. They had to fear, what was much worse than the insults of these vermin, the perjuries of mercenary informers suborned by their enemies to charge false conspiracies against them, and sure of countenance from the contaminated benches of justice. The court, with an artful policy, though with detestable wickedness, secured itself against its only great danger, the suspicion of popery, by the sacrifice of Plunket, the titular archbishop of Dublin.[792] The execution of this worthy and innocent person cannot be said to have been extorted from the king in a time of great difficulty, like that of Lord Stafford. He was coolly and deliberately permitted to suffer death, lest the current of loyalty, still sensitive and suspicious upon the account of religion, might be somewhat checked in its course. Yet those who heap the epithets of merciless, inhuman, sanguinary, on the whig party for the impeachment of Lord Stafford, in whose guilt they fully believed, seldom mention, without the characteristic distinction of "good-natured," that sovereign, who signed the warrant against Plunket, of whose innocence he was assured.[793]

Forfeiture of the charter of London, and of other places.—The hostility of the city of London, and of several other towns, towards the court, degenerating no doubt into a factious and indecent violence, gave a pretext for the most dangerous aggression on public liberty that occurred in the present reign. The power of the democracy in that age resided chiefly in the corporations. These returned, exclusively or principally, a majority of the representatives of the commons. So long as they should be actuated by that ardent spirit of protestantism and liberty which prevailed in the middling classes, there was little prospect of obtaining a parliament that would co-operate with the Stuart scheme of government. The administration of justice was very much in the hands of their magistrates; especially in Middlesex, where all juries are returned by the city sheriffs. It was suggested therefore by some crafty lawyers that a judgment of forfeiture obtained against the corporation of London would not only demolish that citadel of insolent rebels, but intimidate the rest of England by so striking an example. True it was, that no precedent could be found for the forfeiture of corporate privileges. But general reasoning was to serve instead of precedents; and there was a considerable analogy in the surrenders of the abbeys under Henry VIII., if much authority could be allowed to that transaction. An information, as it is called, quo warranto, was accordingly brought into the court of king's bench against the corporation. Two acts of the common council were alleged as sufficient misdemeanours to warrant a judgment of forfeiture; one, the imposition of certain tolls on goods brought into the city markets, by an ordinance or by-law of their own; the other, their petition to the king in December 1679 for the sitting of parliament, and its publication throughout the country.[794] It would be foreign to the purpose of this work to enquire whether a corporation be in any case subject to forfeiture, the affirmative of which seems to have been held by courts of justice since the revolution; or whether the exaction of tolls in their markets, in consideration of erecting stalls and standings, were within the competence of the city of London; or, if not so, whether it were such an offence as could legally incur the penalty of a total forfeiture and disfranchisement; since it was manifest that the Crown made use only of this additional pretext, in order to punish the corporation for its address to the king. The language indeed of their petition had been uncourtly, and what the adherents of prerogative would call insolent; but it was at the worst rather a misdemeanour for which the persons concerned might be responsible than a breach of the trust reposed in the corporation. We are not however so much concerned to argue the matter of law in this question, as to remark the spirit in which the attack on this stronghold of popular liberty was conceived. The court of king's bench pronounced judgment of forfeiture against the corporation; but this judgment, at the request of the attorney-general, was only recorded: the city continued in appearance to possess its corporate franchises, but upon submission to certain regulations; namely, that no mayor, sheriff, recorder, or other chief officer, should be admitted until approved by the king; that in the event of his twice disapproving their choice of a mayor, he should himself nominate a fit person, and the same in case of sheriffs, without waiting for a second election; that the court of aldermen, with the king's permission, should remove any one of their body; that they should have a negative on the elections of common councilmen, and in case of disapproving a second choice, to have themselves the nomination. The corporation submitted thus to purchase the continued enjoyment of its estates, at the expense of its municipal independence; yet, even in the prostrate condition of the whig party, the question to admit these regulations was carried by no great majority in the common councils.[795] The city was of course absolutely subservient to the court from this time to the revolution.

After the fall of the capital, it was not to be expected that towns less capable of defence should stand out. Informations quo warranto were brought against several corporations; and a far greater number hastened to anticipate the assault by voluntary surrenders. It seemed to be recognised as law by the judgment against London, that any irregularity or misuse of power in a corporation might incur a sentence of forfeiture; and few could boast that they were invulnerable at every point. The judges of assize in their circuits prostituted their influence and authority to forward this and every other encroachment of the Crown. Jefferies, on the northern circuit in 1684, to use the language of Charles II.'s most unblushing advocate, "made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns."[796] They received instead, new charters, framing the constitution of these municipalities on a more oligarchical model, and reserving to the Crown the first appointment of those who were to form the governing part of the corporation. These changes were gradually brought about in the last three years of Charles's reign, and in the beginning of the next.

Projects of Lord Russell and Sidney.—There can be nothing so destructive to the English constitution, not even the introduction of a military force, as the exclusion of the electoral body from their franchises. The people of this country are, by our laws and constitution, bound only to obey a parliament duly chosen; and this violation of charters, in the reigns of Charles and James, appears to be the great and leading justification of that event which drove the latter from the throne. It can therefore be no matter of censure, in a moral sense, that some men of pure and patriotic virtue, mingled, it must be owned, with others of a far inferior temper, began to hold consultations as to the best means of resisting a government, which, whether to judge from these proceedings, or from the language of its partisans, was aiming without disguise at an arbitrary power. But as resistance to established authority can never be warrantable until it is expedient, we could by no means approve any schemes of insurrection that might be projected in 1682, unless we could perceive that there was a fair chance of their success. And this we are not led, by what we read of the spirit of those times, to believe. The tide ran violently in another direction; the courage of the whigs was broken; their adversaries were strong in numbers and in zeal. But from hence it is reasonable to infer that men, like Lord Essex and Lord Russell, with so much to lose by failure, with such good sense, and such abhorrence of civil calamity, would not ultimately have resolved on the desperate issue of arms, though they might deem it prudent to form estimates of their strength, and to knit together a confederacy which absolute necessity might call into action. It is beyond doubt that the supposed conspirators had debated among themselves the subject of an insurrection, and poised the chances of civil war. Thus much the most jealous lawyer, I presume, will allow might be done, without risking the penalties of treason. They had however gone farther; and by concerting measures in different places as well as in Scotland, for a rising, though contingently, and without any fixed determination to carry it into effect, most probably (if the whole business had been disclosed in testimony) laid themselves open to the law, according to the construction it has frequently received. There is a considerable difficulty, after all that has been written, in stating the extent of their designs; but I think we may assume, that a wide-spreading and formidable insurrection was for several months in agitation.[797] But the difficulties and hazards of the enterprise had already caused Lord Russell and Lord Essex to recede from the desperate counsels of Shaftesbury; and but for the unhappy detection of the conspiracy and the perfidy of Lord Howard, these two noble persons, whose lives were untimely lost to their country, might have survived to join the banner and support the throne of William. It is needless to observe that the minor plot, if we may use that epithet in reference to the relative dignity of the conspirators, for assassinating the king and the Duke of York, had no immediate connection with the schemes of Russell, Essex, and Sidney.[798]

But it is by no means a consequence from the admission we have made, that the evidence adduced on Lord Russell's trial was sufficient to justify his conviction.[799] It appears to me that Lord Howard, and perhaps Rumsey, were unwilling witnesses; and that the former, as is frequently the case with those who betray their friends in order to save their own lives, divulged no more than was extracted by his own danger. The testimony of neither witness, especially Howard, was given with any degree of that precision which is exacted in modern times; and, as we now read the trial, it is not probable that a jury in later ages would have found a verdict of guilty, or would have been advised to it by the court. But, on the other hand, if Lord Howard were really able to prove more than he did, which I much suspect, a better conducted examination would probably have elicited facts unfavourable to the prisoner, which at present do not appear. It may be doubtful whether any overt act of treason is distinctly proved against Lord Russell, except his concurrence in the project of a rising at Taunton, to which Rumsey deposes. But this depending on the oath of a single witness, could not be sufficient for a conviction.

Pemberton, chief justice of the common pleas, tried this illustrious prisoner with more humanity than was usually displayed on the bench; but, aware of his precarious tenure in office, he did not venture to check the counsel for the Crown, Sawyer and Jefferies, permitting them to give a great body of hearsay evidence, with only the feeble and useless remark that it did not affect the prisoner.[800] Yet he checked Lord Anglesea, when he offered similar evidence for the defence. In his direction to the jury, it deserves to be remarked that he by no means advanced the general proposition, which better men have held, that a conspiracy to levy war is in itself an overt act of compassing the king's death; limiting it to cases where the king's person might be put in danger, in the immediate instance, by the alleged scheme of seizing his guards.[801] His language indeed, as recorded in the printed trial, was such as might have produced a verdict of acquittal from a jury tolerably disposed towards the prisoner; but the sheriffs, North and Rich, who had been illegally thrust into office, being men wholly devoted to the prerogative, had taken care to return a panel in whom they could confide.[802]

The trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jefferies, now raised to the post of chief justice of the king's bench, presided, is as familiar to all my readers as that of Lord Russell.[803] Their names have been always united in grateful veneration and sympathy. It is notorious that Sidney's conviction was obtained by a most illegal distortion of the evidence. Besides Lord Howard, no living witness could be produced to the conspiracy for an insurrection; and though Jefferies permitted two others to prepossess the jury by a second-hand story, he was compelled to admit that their testimony could not directly affect the prisoner.[804] The attorney-general therefore had recourse to a paper found in his house, which was given in evidence, either as an overt act of treason by its own nature, or as connected with the alleged conspiracy; for though it was only in the latter sense that it could be admissible at all, yet Jefferies took care to insinuate, in his charge to the jury, that the doctrines it contained were treasonable in themselves, and without reference to other evidence. In regard to truth, and to that justice which cannot be denied to the worst men in their worst actions, I must observe that the common accusation against the court in this trial, of having admitted insufficient proof by the mere comparison of handwriting, though alleged, not only in most of our historians, but in the act of parliament reversing Sidney's attainder, does not appear to be well founded; the testimony to that fact, unless the printed trial is falsified in an extraordinary degree, being such as would be received at present.[805] We may allow also that the passages from this paper, as laid in the indictment, containing very strong assertions of the right of the people to depose an unworthy king, might by possibility, if connected by other evidence with the conspiracy itself, have been admissible as presumptions for the jury to consider whether they had been written in furtherance of that design. But when they came to be read on the trial with their context, though only with such parts of that as the attorney-general chose to produce out of a voluminous manuscript, it was clear that they belonged to a theoretical work on government, long since perhaps written, and incapable of any bearing upon the other evidence.[806]

The manifest iniquity of this sentence upon Algernon Sidney, as well as the high courage he displayed throughout these last scenes of his life, have inspired a sort of enthusiasm for his name, which neither what we know of his story, nor the opinion of his contemporaries seem altogether to warrant. The crown of martyrdom should be suffered perhaps to exalt every virtue, and efface every defect in patriots, as it has often done in saints. In the faithful mirror of history, Sidney may lose something of this lustre. He possessed no doubt a powerful, active, and undaunted mind, stored with extensive reading on the topics in which he delighted. But having proposed one only object for his political conduct, the establishment of a republic in England, his pride and inflexibility, though they gave a dignity to his character, rendered his views narrow and his temper unaccommodating. It was evident to every reasonable man that a republican government, being adverse to the prepossessions of a great majority of the people, could only be brought about and maintained by the force of usurpation. Yet for this idol of his speculative hours, he was content to sacrifice the liberties of Europe, to plunge the country in civil war, and even to stand indebted to France for protection. He may justly be suspected of having been the chief promoter of the dangerous cabals with Barillon; nor could any tool of Charles's court be more sedulous in representing the aggressions of Louis XIV. in the Netherlands as indifferent to our honour and safety.

Sir Thomas Armstrong, who had fled to Holland on the detection of the plot, was given up by the States. A sentence of outlawry, which had passed against him in his absence, is equivalent, in cases of treason, to a conviction of the crime. But the law allows the space of one year, during which the party may surrender himself to take his trial. Armstrong, when brought before the court, insisted on this right, and demanded a trial. Nothing could be more evident, in point of law, than that he was entitled to it. But Jefferies, with inhuman rudeness, treated his claim as wholly unfounded, and would not even suffer counsel to be heard in his behalf. He was executed accordingly without trial.[807] But it would be too prolix to recapitulate all the instances of brutal injustice, or of cowardly subserviency, which degraded the English lawyers of the Stuart period, and never so infamously as in these last years of Charles II. From this prostitution of the tribunals, from the intermission of parliaments, and the steps taken to render them in future mere puppets of the Crown, it was plain that all constitutional securities were at least in abeyance; and those who felt themselves most obnoxious, or whose spirit was too high to live in an enslaved country, retired to Holland as an asylum in which they might wait the occasion of better prospects, or, at the worst, breathe an air of liberty.

Meanwhile the prejudice against the whig party, which had reached so great a height in 1681, was still farther enhanced by the detection of the late conspiracy. The atrocious scheme of assassination, alleged against Walcot and some others who had suffered, was blended by the arts of the court and clergy, and by the blundering credulity of the gentry, with those less heinous projects ascribed to Lord Russell and his associates.[808] These projects, if true in their full extent, were indeed such as men honestly attached to the government of their country could not fail to disapprove. For this purpose, a declaration full of malicious insinuations was ordered to be read in all churches.[809] It was generally commented upon, we may make no question, in one of those loyal discourses, which, trampling on all truth, charity, and moderation, had no other scope than to inflame the hearers against nonconforming protestants, and to throw obloquy on the constitutional privileges of the subject.

High tory principles of the clergy.—It is not my intention to censure, in any strong sense of the word, the Anglican clergy at this time for their assertion of absolute non-resistance, so far as it was done without calumny and insolence towards those of another way of thinking, and without self-interested adulation of the ruling power. Their error was very dangerous, and had nearly proved destructive of the whole constitution; but it was one which had come down with high recommendation, and of which they could only perhaps be undeceived, as men are best undeceived of most errors, by experience that it might hurt themselves. It was the tenet of their homilies, their canons, their most distinguished divines and casuists; it had the apparent sanction of the legislature in a statute of the present reign. Many excellent men, as was shown after the revolution, who had never made use of this doctrine as an engine of faction or private interest, could not disentangle their minds from the arguments or the authority on which it rested. But by too great a number it was eagerly brought forward to serve the purposes of arbitrary power, or at best to fix the wavering protestantism of the court by professions of unimpeachable loyalty. To this motive, in fact, we may trace a good deal of the vehemence with which the non-resisting principle had been originally advanced by the church of England under the Tudors, and was continually urged under the Stuarts. If we look at the tracts and sermons published by both parties after the restoration, it will appear manifest that the Romish and Anglican churches bade, as it were, against each other for the favour of the two royal brothers. The one appealed to its acknowledged principles, while it denounced the pretensions of the holy see to release subjects from their allegiance, and the bold theories of popular government which Mariana and some other Jesuits had promulgated. The others retaliated on the first movers of the reformation, and expatiated on the usurpation of Lady Jane Grey, not to say Elizabeth, and the republicanism of Knox or Calvin.

Passive obedience.—From the æra of the exclusion bill especially, to the death of Charles II., a number of books were published in favour of an indefeasible hereditary right of the Crown, and of absolute non-resistance. These were however of two very different classes. The authors of the first, who were perhaps the more numerous, did not deny the legal limitations of monarchy. They admitted that no one was bound to concur in the execution of unlawful commands. Hence the obedience they deemed indispensable was denominated passive; an epithet which, in modern usage, is little more than redundant, but at that time made a sensible distinction. If all men should confine themselves to this line of duty, and merely refuse to become the instruments of such unlawful commands, it was evident that no tyranny could be carried into effect. If some should be wicked enough to co-operate against the liberties of their country, it would still be the bounden obligation of Christians to submit. Of this, which may be reckoned the moderate party, the most eminent were Hickes in a treatise called "Jovian," and Sherlock in his case of resistance to the supreme powers.[810] To this also must have belonged Archbishop Sancroft, and the great body of non-juring clergy who had refused to read the declaration of indulgence under James II., and whose conduct in that respect would be utterly absurd, except on the supposition that there existed some lawful boundaries of the royal authority.

Some contend for absolute-power.—But besides these men, who kept some measures with the constitution, even while, by their slavish tenets, they laid it open to the assaults of more intrepid enemies, another and a pretty considerable class of writers did not hesitate to avow their abhorrence of all limitations upon arbitrary power. Brady went back to the primary sources of our history, and endeavoured to show that Magna Charta, as well as every other constitutional law, were but rebellious encroachments on the ancient uncontrollable imprescriptible prerogatives of the monarchy. His writings, replete with learning and acuteness, and in some respects with just remarks, though often unfair and always partial, naturally produced an effect on those who had been accustomed to value the constitution rather for its presumed antiquity, than its real excellence. But the author most in vogue with the partisans of despotism was Sir Robert Filmer. He had lived before the civil war, but his posthumous writings came to light about this period. They contain an elaborate vindication of what was called the patriarchal scheme of government, which, rejecting with scorn that original contract whence human society had been supposed to spring, derives all legitimate authority from that of primogeniture, the next heir being king by divine right, and as incapable of being restrained in his sovereignty, as of being excluded from it. "As kingly power," he says, "is by the law of God, so hath it no inferior power to limit it. The father of a family governs by no other law than his own will, not by the laws and wills of his sons and servants."[811] "The direction of the law is but like the advice and direction which the king's council gives the king, which no man says is a law to the king."[812] "General laws," he observes, "made in parliament, may, upon known respects to the king, by his authority be mitigated or suspended upon causes only known to him; and by the coronation oath, he is only bound to observe good laws, of which he is the judge."[813] "A man is bound to obey the king's command against law, nay, in some cases, against divine laws."[814] In another treatise, entitled "The Anarchy of a Mixed or Limited Monarchy," he inveighs, with no kind of reserve or exception, against the regular constitution; setting off with an assumption that the parliament of England was originally but an imitation of the States General of France, which had no further power than to present requests to the king.[815]

These treatises of Filmer obtained a very favourable reception. We find the patriarchal origin of government frequently mentioned in the publications of this time as an undoubted truth. Considered with respect to his celebrity rather than his talents, he was not, as some might imagine, too ignoble an adversary for Locke to have combated. Another person, far superior to Filmer in political eminence, undertook at the same time an unequivocal defence of absolute monarchy. This was Sir George Mackenzie, the famous lord advocate of Scotland. In his "Jus Regium," published in 1684, and dedicated to the university of Oxford, he maintains, that "monarchy in its nature is absolute, and consequently these pretended limitations are against the nature of monarchy."[816] "Whatever proves monarchy to be an excellent government, does by the same reason prove absolute monarchy to be the best government; for if monarchy be to be commended, because it prevents divisions, then a limited monarchy, which allows the people a share, is not to be commended, because it occasions them; if monarchy be commended, because there is more expedition, secrecy, and other excellent qualities to be found in it, then absolute monarchy is to be commended above a limited one, because a limited monarch must impart his secrets to the people, and must delay the noblest designs, until malicious and factious spirits be either gained or overcome; and the same analogy of reason will hold in reflecting upon all other advantages of monarchy, the examination whereof I dare trust to every man's own bosom."[817] We can hardly, after this, avoid being astonished at the effrontery even of a Scots crown lawyer, when we read in the preface to this very treatise of Mackenzie, "Under whom can we expect to be free from arbitrary government, when we were and are afraid of it under King Charles I. and King Charles II.?"

Decree of the university of Oxford.—It was at this time that the university of Oxford published their celebrated decree against pernicious books and damnable doctrines, enumerating as such above twenty propositions which they anathematised as false, seditious, and impious. The first of these is, that all civil authority is derived originally from the people; the second, that there is a compact, tacit or express, between the king and his subjects: and others follow of the same description. They do not explicitly condemn a limited monarchy, like Filmer, but evidently adopt his scheme of primogenitary right, which is incompatible with it. Nor is there the slightest intimation that the university extended their censure to such praises of despotic power as have been quoted in the last pages.[818] This decree was publicly burned by an order of the House of Lords in 1709: nor does there seem to have been a single dissent in that body to a step that cast such a stigma on the university. But the disgrace of the offence was greater than that of the punishment.

We can frame no adequate conception of the jeopardy in which our liberties stood under the Stuarts, especially in this particular period, without attending to this spirit of servility which had been so sedulously excited. It seemed as if England was about to play the scene which Denmark had not long since exhibited, by a spontaneous surrender of its constitution. And although this loyalty were much more on the tongue than in the heart, as the next reign very amply disclosed, it served at least to deceive the court into a belief that its future steps would be almost without difficulty. It is uncertain whether Charles would have summoned another parliament. He either had the intention, or professed it in order to obtain money from France, of convoking one at Cambridge in the autumn of 1681.[819] But after the scheme of new-modelling corporations began to be tried, it was his policy to wait the effects of this regeneration. It was better still, in his judgment, to dispense with the Commons altogether. The period fixed by law had elapsed nearly twelve months before his death; and we have no evidence that a new parliament was in contemplation. But Louis, on the other hand, having discontinued his annual subsidy to the king in 1684, after gaining Strasburg and Luxemburg by his connivance, or rather co-operation,[820] it would not have been easy to avoid a recurrence to the only lawful source of revenue. The King of France, it should be observed, behaved towards Charles as men usually treat the low tools by whose corruption they have obtained any end. During the whole course of their long negotiations, Louis, though never the dupe of our wretched monarch, was compelled to endure his shuffling evasions, and pay dearly for his base compliances. But when he saw himself no longer in need of them, it seems to have been in revenge that he permitted the publication of the secret treaty of 1670, and withdrew his pecuniary aid. Charles deeply resented both these marks of desertion in his ally. In addition to them he discovered the intrigues of the French ambassadors with his malcontent Commons. He perceived also that by bringing home the Duke of York from Scotland, and restoring him in defiance of the test act to the privy council, he had made the presumptive heir of the throne, possessed as he was of superior steadiness and attention, too near a rival to himself. These reflections appear to have depressed his mind in the latter months of his life, and to have produced that remarkable private reconciliation with the Duke of Monmouth, through the influence of Lord Halifax; which, had he lived, would very probably have displayed one more revolution in the uncertain policy of this reign.[821] But a death, so sudden and inopportune as to excite suspicions of poison in some most nearly connected with him, gave a more decisive character to the system of government.[822]

THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH