hands. But allowing that, so long as the monarch lived, the danger of his former power being one day restored to him would not cease to exist and add, that Cromwell's personal safety would be hazarded, at least, by such a restoration-still, no apprehension of prospective evils could excuse the commission of present glaring injustice; nor could even the darkly conveyed intimation of a future and uncertain vengeance, once meditated by Charles, and which had become known to Cromwell, in any christian or patriotic sense, have authorised his immediately heading the conspiracy that had been formed against his sovereign's life. The most critical moment of his existence was this; and it escaped him worse than unimproved. Through his use of it, both himself, and the whole band of patriots who so nobly commenced with him their political career, have been branded in all succeeding years with the names of traitors, regicides, usurpers; and the death of Charles has lain as a blot upon their fame, obscuring all the worthiness of their original intentions, and all the virtue of their first conduct. By his use of it, he facilitated, indeed, his way to a throne, which it shortened his days to preserve to himself, in perpetual anxiety, during their troubled remnant; and which, at his death, reverted to the despotically-principled family from whom it was taken. But, had he

successfully interposed himself as a shield from the factious republicans for a monarch, too amiable as a man to be unworthy to live, though too vicious as a king to be yet worthy to reign, it was more than possible, in the then circumstances of the nation, that the hearts of a grateful and admiring people, touched by such, noble intrepidity, true dignity, and attractive clemency, would have made the same throne his; -to possess, not only in usefulness and honour, but in peace ;-and from him to be transmitted to a posterity that might still adorn it. And who (that reverences as he ought the rights, solely founded on the national conference, of the present King of England) shall say, that a throne so won, and so transmitted, would not have been legitimate?

Charles, in a declaration he had framed of his reasons for disallowing the authority of the court at whose bar he was arraigned, but which he was prevented from delivering, observes, that admitting the people's commission could grant this power,' (to bring him to trial), the poorest ploughman was manifestly wronged, his free consent not demanded :' a principle as sound, as his forced and arbitrary contruction of the text- Where the word of a King is, there is power; and who may say unto him, what doest thou?'-was the contrary. Yet Charles was justified in wresting scripture to

his purpose, if any thing could justify it, by the practice of the republican fanatics; who were ever ready with line upon line, and precept upon precept,' to prove that the Lord had rejected the King,' and that they were in conscience bound to destroy him. It is apparent, however, from this intended declaration, that he maintained to the last his doctrines of divine right, passive obedience, and non-resistance; and his so doing argues more than his bitterest enemies could then advance, for his deposition, though not for his death. But, nothing in his whole life became him like the leaving of it.' Indeed, his courage and fortitude upon his trial, during the intervening days between it and his execution, and at the last awful hour,` were such, as evinced that his intentions must have been upright in the main, to enable him to draw from them, as he did, his latest earthly consolations; and that his errors had arisen more from greatly too exalted notions of the extent and irresponsibility of his kingly power, than from any inherent disposition to abuse it. Much indecent mockery and insult were cast upon him, at every opportunity, by the lowest of the soldiery and the mob, from the time of his last arrival in London, till his unhappy exit from every scene of worldly woe and splendour: but to all this, their superiors, it must be observed, were no parties. These, on the con

trary, President Bradshaw alone perhaps excepted, never failed in outward respect, at least, toward him. The Commons even voted five hundred pounds, to defray the expences of his funeral; which took place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor: where, not many years back, (1813), his coffin was discovered; and, being opened in the presence of his present Majesty, and others, his body was found in a state of perfect preservation. Hume, copying from a writer in that instance incorrect, states that, on the night previous to his execution, he slept sound as usual, though the noise of the workmen employed in framing the scaffold continually resounded in his ears.' This must have been said, upon the supposition that Charles remained at Whitehall from the time the sentence was passed, till the morning he was executed but the fact was, that he was removed from thence to St. James's the morning previously, (till when the place of execution was not so much as determined on); and that he walked on the fatal day through the Park to his former customary residence, in front of which the awful ceremony was to be performed, attended by his private guard, his gentlemen, bare-headed, and Dr. Juxon, (the late Bishop of London), the whole guarded by a regiment of foot soldiers. Lord Clarendon sums up his panegyric, perhaps without much exaggeration, as to the latter period

of his life at least, thus: He was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best christian, that the age in which he lived produced and, if he was not the greatest kingif he were without some parts and qualities, (indeed he was lamentably deficient in them), which have made some kings great and happyno other prince was ever unhappy, who was possessed of half his virtues and endowments, and so much without any kind of vice.'