“Would it were so!” said Dr. Reede, “for then would the last days of war be come, and Satan would find much of his occupation gone. Edmund, if thou wilt invent such an engine as may mow down a host at a blow, I will promise thee a triumph on that battle-field, and the intercession of every church in Christendom. Such a deed shall one day be done. War shall one day be ended; but not by you, Edmund. Men must enact the wild beast yet a few centuries longer, to furnish forth a barbarous show to their rulers, till men shall call instead for a long age of fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.”
“Meantime,” said Edmund, “they call impertinently for certain accounts of the charges of our wars which his Majesty is over gracious in permitting them to demand.”
“Do they think so?”
“They cannot but see,” said the Duke, “by the way his Majesty gave his speech to the Parliament, that he desires no meddling from them.”
“And how did I speak?” asked the King. “Did I not assure the Commons that I would not have asked for their subsidies if I had not had need; and that through no extravagance of my own, but the disorder of the times? And is not that much to say when I am daily told by my gentlemen of the palace, and others who know better still, that my will is above all privilege of Parliament or city, and that I have no need to account to any at all? How did I speak?”
"Only as if your wits were with your queen, or some other lady, while the words of your speech lay under your eye. Some words your Commons must needs remember, from the many times they were said over; but further——"
“Pshaw!” cried the King, vexed at the description he had himself asked for. “This learned divine knows not what our Parliament is made of. There are but two seamen and about twenty merchants, and the rest have no scruple in coming drunk to the house, and making a mockery of the country people when they are sober. How matters it how I give my speech to them?”
“They are indeed not the people,” observed Reede; "and I forewarn your Majesty that their consent is not the consent of the people; and that however they may clap the hands at your Majesty’s enterprises and private sales, the people will not be the less employed in looking back upon Oliver——"
“And forward to me?” inquired the Duke, laughing.
"And forward to the time when the proud father shall not be liable to see his only son return barefoot and tattered from a war where he has spilled his blood; or a daughter made the victim, first of violence, and then of mockery, through the example of the King’s court; and no justice to be had but by him who brings the heaviest bribe:—forward to the time when drunken cavaliers shall be thought unfitting representatives of a hungering people; and when the money which is raised by the toils of the nation shall be spent for the benefit of the nation; when men shall inquire how Rome fell, and why France is falling; and shall find that decay ensues when that which is a trust is still pertinaciously used as prerogative, and when the profusion in high places is answerable to the destitution below!"