is the feebleness of reason to oppose religious or even political enthusiasm. It is not only the vulgar, but it is men of education the most liberal, of talents the most brilliant, men like Sir Harry Vane, who are almost equally exposed to these fatal eclipses of the understanding. Every protection that can be afforded to us by the powers of reasoning has been offered to us by Locke in his observations on enthusiasm. Practically, there seems nothing to be added, in the way of caution, but in religion never to lose sight of morality; and in political speculation, never to depart from the great leading forms and maxims of the constitution.

These humble principles, however, so obvious and so safe, are soon despised by men of ardent temperament; and it is the first symptom of religious or political enthusiasm to deny or disregard them.

The feelings of the public do not appear to have been outraged by the horrid mode of the execution of these regicides; and as they would be so at the present day, the national humanity must be considered as having most materially improved: an indication this of improvement in many other important points.

With respect to the number that were put to death, the conclusion is on the whole, considering the nature of these times and the occasion, tolerably favourable to the court and to the kingdom. About thirteen were executed; but most of the regicides lost their estates; and of those who did not fly, many were kept to die in imprisonment, and very improper cruelty seems here to have been exercised.

Men must, no doubt, be deterred from crimes against the state by positive punishments; but the more complete and wide the acts of indemnity and oblivion are made in national dissensions, the better. The rancour of contending parties is thus softened. What is of still more consequence, the returns peace in the course of national contests are afterwards more practicable. The great impediment to conciliation is always that the parties dare not trust each other.

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He who draws his sword against the prince must throw away the scabbard. The steps between the prisons and graves of princes are few. These maxims, the dreadful maxims of civil dispute, have been the cause of more misery and destruction to sovereigns and their subjects than all the real causes of contention that ever existed between them.

The history of our country during these wars was not defiled by those massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, or, with the exception of the execution of the king, with those outrages which have marked the progress of civil and religious fury in other countries and ages: a striking testimony to the merits of the English constitution, which could have alone infused into all ranks those manly feelings which are so indispensably necessary to the maintenance of honourable warfare; an indirect proof, at the same time, that the constitution had not been of the arbitrary nature that was by some supposed.

This lecture was written many years ago, and there has been lately published a work on this subject by Mr. Godwin. It should by all means be read; it is always interesting, and sometimes contains anecdotes and passages that are curious and striking. Godwin is always a powerful writer, and, above all, it is the statement of the case of the Republicans.

But, on the whole, in these volumes of Godwin there is no sufficient intimation given of the religious hypocrisy and cant of the Presbyterians first, or of the Independents and Cromwell after. The history is an effort in favour of the Republicans of those times, founded on the paramount merit of a republic at all times. It is also very nearly a panegyric of Cromwell; certainly so, as far as regard for the Republicans admitted.

From these pages it may be collected that Charles was never sincere; that is, would never have adhered to any engagements if he could have helped it; that the Presbyterians sacrificed everything to their hatred of Episcopacy, as Charles did his love of it; that the English nation was never suffi

ciently republican for the purposes of the Independents; afterwards, that Cromwell could never manage Royalists, Presbyterians, and Republicans, all of whom united against

him.

It is not sufficiently shown how Cromwell contrived to manage those whom he did manage: all is made to depend on his personal powers of persuasion; but it is plain that his was an unsuccessful usurpation after all.

LECTURE XVIII.

CHARLES II.

TOWARDS the close of my last lecture I alluded to the opening scenes of the Restoration. I then reminded you of the remark that political reasoners have always made on occasions of this nature, that, as mankind are ever in extremes, their resistance or rebellion no sooner ceases and changes into obedience, than their obedience becomes servility; and that such renewals of an ancient government form an epoch of all others the most critical and dangerous to the liberties of a people.

The scenes that took place everywhere in the metropolis and through the kingdom, during the first stages of the Restoration, certainly confirmed such general conclusions.

To a certain degree, so did even the proceedings of the Restoration parliament. Still it must be allowed that more care was taken of the liberties of the subject by the House of Commons than the general principles of human nature would have led us to expect; and this, as I then observed, is an important merit that belongs to the Presbyterians, who constituted so large a portion of its members, particularly to Sir Matthew Hale, the judge so justly celebrated.

Hale is understood not to have been wanting to his country at this memorable period. He endeavoured to take proper securities for the constitution; to come to some understanding with the king on this subject before he was finally restored; but all proposals of this kind were overruled.

You will do well, therefore, to observe the events that followed in consequence of these securities not having been taken. You will observe the conduct of the king through

the whole of his reign, and finally the revolution that at length became necessary, in the short space of less than thirty years; and that, at this revolution, the patriotic party did only take such securities as Sir Matthew Hale would probably have proposed at the Restoration. You will then make your own inferences with respect to the propriety of all principles of general confidence, when interests so delicate, so fugitive, so important, are concerned, as those of civil liberty. Men of peaceable dispositions and refined minds are always the first to countenance these principles of general confidence in rulers and government; they are the very men, as I have once before observed, who should be the last; for they are the very men who of all others would stand most aghast, when things are at last driven to the dreadful alternative either of asserting the liberties of a people by force, or losing them for ever.

We now proceed to the history of the reign. The first parliament, the Convention or Restoration parliament, was soon dissolved, and a new and regular parliament was immediately summoned, and met in May, 1661.

This was the Pensionary parliament, as it was called, the parliament that sat afterwards for so many years.

Great exertions had been made by Clarendon in the elections, and it is understood that only about fifty-three of the Presbyterian interest were returned.

The settlement of the nation after the rebellion was the great work before them, and was in fact entrusted to Lord Clarendon. This settlement was principally to be directed to two main points. In the first place the state of the property was to be adjusted. Great transmutations had taken place, amid the rapine and confiscations, forced sales and purchases, which had been made under the authority of parliament and the protectorate.

The adherents of the king were visibly those who had suffered during the commotions.

This subject is left in great perplexity by the account of