retain more by dividing their power with a grateful people, than will ever fall to their fhare when the divifion is made for them, by an enemy juftly enraged with repeated wrongs. When violence is once offered, when hoftilities are once commenced between the prince and the people, the alternative left to both fides, is, to conquer or to perifh. Subjects would be taught, to reftrain within reafonable bounds, one of the nobleft paffions that warms the human heart; they would be inftructed, that refiftance ought ever to be the laft expedient to which they have recourfe. For liberty is of too delicate a frame to fuftain without injury, the fhock of arms. From this fhock it always efcapes with the greatest advantage, when it efcapes without total deftruction.

THE reign of Charles II. exhibits almoft one continued ftretch of prerogative, to destroy the liberties of England. It was filled up with invafions of the privileges of parliament, with the dishonourable breach of public faith, with the forcible disfranchifement of cities and corporations, with fuccefsful attempts to pack juries, with murders committed under colour of law, and, in the conclufion, with the violent perfecution of the Diffenters, in oppofition to the proteftations of the Commons. But thefe proceedings were gentle and moderate, if we compare them with the adminiftration of the government in Scotland. There, a fcene was opened, the most barbarous and infernal that ever was acted on the theatre of the world: a fcene, to which the hiftory of Turkey, the favourite feat of relentlefs tyranny, muft, with blufhes, confefs that it contains not a parallel. The Netherlands have however been more fortunate. Allowance being made for two diffimilar circumflances, the reprefentation inade on that ftage, by that monfter, Philip the fecond, and his brutal ruffian of a minifter, the Duke of Alva, might perhaps be a precedent. The inhuman cruelties commited

committed in the Netherlands were done, to uphold an antient religious eftablishment. They were inflicted, to support a religious establishment, which the bigotry of that despicable tyrant made him confider, as abfolutely neceffary to the eternal happinefs of his fubjects. The deteftable murders perpetrated by Charles and his minifters in Scotland, were employed to force men into the bofom of a church, erected on the ruins of their antient establishment; and they had this fingular circumftance to heighten them, that they were committed to drive men into the bofom of a fociety, which the king, as a deift, must have confidered as ufelefs, and which, as a Papift, he must have accounted heretical and dangerous. I fhall not enter into the detail of this hiftory, which, for the honour of the Chriftian name, ought to be buried in eternal oblivion, were it not neceffary to warn mankind of the infamy, as well as of the folly, of ever acting the fame tragedy over again. "It were endless as well as fhocking” says an historian, who certainly was not prejudiced in favour of the fufferers to enumerate all the in"ftances of perfecution, or, in other words, of abfurd tyranny, which at this time prevailed in Scotland." Leighton, Archbishop of Glafgow, a man of true worth and piety, declared he would not concur in planting the Chriftian religion in fuch a manner, much lefs a form of government, and foon after refigned his Archbishopric.

66

It is fometimes the good, and fometimes the bad fortune of princes, to have their characters drawn, neither from their public conduct, nor from the private actions of their lives. As great events often turn on the smallest circumftances, fo the ftrokes of a painter often borrow their colours, rather from his own ideas of beauty and deformity, than from nature. The empire of Charles's mind was

Hume's History vol. viii. p. 138.

divided

divided between deifin and popery. When he could not laugh at all religion, he refolutely fwallowed the abfurdities of the worst. His faith has, to many of the Catholics, apologized for his villanies. As he was a man of pleasure, and spent his whole life in the purfuit of it, the general libertinifin of his principles, and the conftant licentioufnefs of his practice, have fo powerfully recommended him to the esteem of free-thinkers and free-livers, that the crimes of his government have been reprefented, with every poffible alleviation. But characters are justly drawn, only when the great lineaments exhibit a brief history of the lives of men, and of the fhare they had in promoting the happiness, or increafing the mifery of the human race. A man's true character, is nothing but the history of his life in few words.

WERE we to take the characters of men from the politeness or bluntness of their manners, and distribute good or evil qualities according to that ftandard, there have been few perfonages better intitled to our approbation than Charles the Second; but, if we furvey him ftripped of every difguife, and determine the qualities of his mind from the complexion of his actions, his indolence is perhaps the only aufpicious feature of his character. It probably preserved himself from the block, and his kingdoms from the convulfions of a civil war. He had wit without wifdom; foftnefs of manners without humanity; the polifh of a gentleman, without the feelings of a man. He was a king without dignity, a prince without honour, a man of pleasure without decency, an hypocrite without the profeffion of religion. He was frolicfome without good nature; he was civil to all men, without poffeffing friendship for any of them; he was refentful without gratitude; prodigal without generofity; and flexible to every impulfe, but to that of virtue. He was long exercised in the fchool of adverfity, without being prepared for better

fortune.

fortune. He fuffered the difcipline of the one, without improvement; and he enjoyed the advantages of the other, without moderation. He was acquainted with the catastrophe of his father's reign; but he was not inftructed by his example. He was fo gracious, that he not only forgave, but rewarded robbers and murderers; fo juft, that he inflicted the punishment due to their crimes, on patriots and martyrs. So fenfible was he of national, and fo ambitious of princely honour, that to the King of England, he added the fuperior glory of a French penfioner; fo friendly to the Protestant religion and the liberties of Europe, that with his master, the King of France, he contrived their utter deftruction: fo deeply interested in the happiness of his subjects, that when they were oppreffed and murdered, he declared the actors had done nothing contrary to his fervice. He was a prince of so easy access, that impiety was a powerful, and blafphemy a certain recommendation, if not to his attachment, yet to his efteem. Such a friend was he to liberty, that he boldly trampled on the laws of God; and yet fo fond was he of poffeffing abfolute power himfelf, that he devoted to ruin every perfon who oppofed his pleasure. His affection to his brother had a powerful cement, in their mutual hatred to the religion and to the rights of their country. He was fo obliging as a husband, that every day, in the face of the world, he violated his marriage vows. His generofity as a lover, is of a piece with the unbounded profligatenefs of his whole life, and the hiftorian + might, with equal juftice, have mentioned his inimitable perfeverance in the service of the devil, as an

*It is with wonderful propriety, that Atterbury, in his fermon before the fons of the clergy, calls him a Gracious Prince. + See Hume's character of him. Bishop Burnet's has lefs of elegance, but infinitely more of truth.

inftance

inftance of difinterested friendships. We are told that he was an indulgent father, and a good-natured mafter. Perhaps the illegitimacy of the relation might, on the mind of such a man, be an argument of confiderable force in the first cafe, and, as for the laft, if we can fuppofe the character of his fervants to be such, that the facility of his temper (for it deferves not the name of good-nature) amounts to no crime, it is the fartheft length to which charity can go. Had this the appearance of a virtue, as it ftands a detached folitary figure in the piece, it might attract our notice; but it could never hide the deformities of a character, in every other inftance, totally abandoned.

I HAVE endeavoured the more fully to represent the merits of this Prince, because they prefent us with a perfect history not only of his life, but also of his reign. Before the revolution, the perfonal character of the fovereign entered into every department of the goverenment. Its qualities mingled, not only with the public administration of the ftate, but with the diftribution of juftice to individuals. Poffeffed by the confent of the people of the executive, he often ufurped the whole legiflative power. When he did not openly venture to enact new laws, his exorbitant prerogative enabled him to do it in effect, by the perverfion of the old. When an innocent, but obnoxious man was marked out for a facrifice, the law and the judge, who ought to have been his protectors, were eafily made the altar and the prieft, for offering him up. Under our prefent happy government, the liberties of the people are, in a great measure, independent of the good difpofitions of the prince. It has provided against both the weakness and the paffions of our rulers. A weak king is taught the boundaries of his authority, and a wicked king is restrained from paffing them, by the great lines of the constitution. The property, the liberty, and the life of the lowest subject, are fecured to him by laws, equally facred as thofe

by