circumstances of this transaction, with a sort of brutal exultation, which, as a specimen of the excitement of the times, it is worth while to transcribe :

"The lieutenant of Ireland came but on Monday to town late, on Tuesday rested, on Wednesday came to parliament, but ere night he was caged. Intolerable pride and oppression cries to Heaven for a vengeance. The lower house closed their doors, the speaker kept the keys till his accusation was concluded. Thereafter Mr. Pym went up, with a number at his back, to the higher house; and, in a pretty short speech, did, in the name of the lower house, and in the name of the commons of all England, accuse Thomas earl of Strafford, lord lieutenant of Ireland, of high treason; and required his person to be arrested till probation might be heard: so Mr. Pym and his back were removed. The lords began to consult on that strange and unexpected motion. The word goes in haste to the lord lieutenant, where he was with the king; with speed he comes to the house; he calls rudely at the door; James Maxwell, keeper of the black rod, opens: his lordship, with a proud glooming countenance, makes towards his place at the board head: but at once many bid him void the house; so he is forced, in confusion, to go to the door till he was called. After consultation, being called in, he stands, but is commanded to kneel; and on his knees to hear the sentence. Being on his knees, he is delivered to the keeper of the black rod, to be prisoner till he was cleared of these crimes the house of commons had charged him with. He offered to speak, but was commanded to be gone, without a word. In the outer room, James Maxwell required him, as prisoner, to deliver his sword. When he had got it, he cries, with a loud voice, for his man to carry my lord lieutenant's sword. This done, he makes through a number of people towards his coach, all gazing, no man capping to him, before whom, that morning, the greatest of England would have stood discovered, all crying, 'what is the matter? He said, 'A small matter, I warrant you.' They replied, ‘Yes, indeed, high treason is a small matter.' Coming to the place where he expected his coach, it was not there; so he behoved to return that same way, through a world of gazing people. When at last he had found his coach, and was entering, James Maxwell told him, Your lordship is my prisoner, and must go in my coach,' so he behoved to do."

Mr. Hallam observes, that Strafford's unpopularity would have prevented his gaining any sympathy; but, from the harshness of his condemnation, and the magnanimity it enabled him to display, "they have half redeemed his forfeit fame, and misled a generous posterity."

The great measure which inevitably led to the destruction of this imprudent monarch,-the law, enacting that the Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent,-is attributed by the author generally to the distrust they entertained of the King's sincerity, and particularly to the discovery of his intention to collect a military force, for the purpose of overaweing them."His ready acquiescence can only be ascribed to his own shame, and the Queen's consternation at the discovery of the plot; and thus we trace again the calamities of Charles to their two great sources-his want of judgment, and of good faith towards his people."

The ill-judged attempt to seize the five members of the House of Commons, is considered, and perhaps justly, as a step which rendered his affairs irretrievable by any thing short of civil war. Soon after this, followed the nineteen propositions from the Par

liament, of which every historian gives an account, and which the author does not blame Charles for refusing. Civil war ensued. And although the author does not think its disastrous events exactly within the scope of constitutional history, yet he very properly devotes a portion of the work to a general, and we think an impartial, review of them.

In respect to the great event-the execution of Charles-his remarks are fair and candid, but too long to transcribe. Without denying the right of an injured people, to have recourse in some cases to this last resort, for their own preservation, he considers this as not a case in which that right ought to have been exercised. There had not been so much misconduct as to justify a

measure so severe.

The violence and the follies of the Commonwealth, and the arbitrary rule of Cromwell, are delineated with no sparing hand; but we pass over them, to the restoration of monarchy, in the person of Charles II.

Previously to entering fully on the subject, the author considers, at some length, whether "conditions" ought to have been proposed to Charles on his recall; and we think he has placed in a clear light their inutility in point of law, and their impracticability as a matter of fact. The following observations, on the national sensations at the King's return, are fair and judicious:

"It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. Nor can this be attributed to the usual fickleness of the multitude. For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The king's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard commonwealth which had insulted them with its name; a liberty secure from enormous assessments, which, even when lawfully imposed, the English had always paid with reluctance, and from the insolent despotism of the soldiery. The young and lively looked forward to a release from the rigours of fanaticism, and were too ready to exchange that hypocritical austerity of the late times for a licentiousness and impiety that became characteristic of the present. In this tumult of exulting hope and joy, there was much to excite anxious forebodings in calmer men, and it was by no means safe to pronounce, that a change so generally demanded, and in most respects so expedient, could be effected without very serious sacrifices of public and particular interests."

Of the four leading subjects, which occupied the Convention Parliament, from the King's return till their dissolution, one only seems to have been of a strictly constitutional nature. The general indemnity, the claims for reparation, and the settlement of the Church, were temporary objects. A provision for the King's revenue, consistent with the abolition of military tenures, affected the Constitution. The abolition of those tenures having rendered it necessary to adopt some other means of supply, those which were then substituted, are considered by him as producing an alteration beneficial to the whole community." The spirit

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of the Constitution was changed, by reducing what is emphatically called the prerogative of the Crown,"-in the abolition of purveyance and the grievances of military tenures. The former of these, however, though an odious practice, was but a partial evil; but the extinction of the latter, which extended over the realm, we agree with him, served to reduce the distinct perception and awe of the monarchy," which its revival would have preserved. If there is any thing that should be considered permanent in the British Constitution, it is this abolition of military tenures; which, although not beyond the power of an Act of Parliament, it would be scarcely possible to restore.

Neither Charles II., nor his less gifted and more imprudent brother, are favourites with Mr. Hallam. The declaration of the former, at the opening of the session of 1664, in relation to triennial Parliaments, he considers to be "audacious, and equivalent to an avowed design, in certain circumstances, of preventing the execution of the laws by force of arms, which, in any other times, would have awakened a storm of indignation from the Commons." The obnoxious parts of the former statute were repealed, but the triennial duration continued. The King assured them, that he would not be a day more without a Parliament, on account of the repeal of the power it had given to the peers, the sheriffs, and the electors themselves, to direct or hold elections, if the Crown omitted for three consecutive years to issue writs for that purpose. The following observation is certainly just:

"But the necessity of those securities, and the mischiefs of that false and servile loyalty which abrogated them, became manifest at the close of the present reign; nearly four years having elapsed between the dissolution of Charles's last parliament and his death."

The safety of the nation is, in a subsequent page, ingeniously attributed to the vices of the monarch:

"As a voluptuous court will always appear prodigal, because all expense in vice is needless, they had the mortification of believing that the public revenues were wasted on the vilest associates of the king's debauchery. We are, however, much indebted to the memory of Barbara, dutchess of Cleveland, Louisa, dutchess of Portsmouth, and Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn. We owe a tribute of gratitude to the Mays, the Killigrews, the Chiffinches, and the Grammonts. They played a serviceable part in ridding the kingdom of its besotted loyalty. They saved our forefathers from the star-chamber, and the high commission court; they laboured in their vocation against standing armies and corruption; they pressed forward the great ultimate security of English freedom, the expulsion of the house of Stuart."

Upon the same principles, the inordinate efforts of James II., in favour of a despotic authority, and the Roman Catholic religion, ought to be acknowledged by the whole nation with gratitude. They certainly brought on a new line of succession, and with a high-spirited and manly prince, were introduced some strong constitutional principles in favour of the people. Among

these, the attention of the author is principally fixed on the article which asserts the illegality of a standing army in time of peace, without the consent of Parliament; and he indulges in some strange reasoning on the subject. It seems to him difficult to conceive, in what respect this infringed on any man's private rights, or by what clear reason the King was debarred from enlisting soldiers by voluntary contract for the defence of his dominions. But, laying down an odd kind of distinction, he admits it was at least unconstitutional to keep up such an army, by which term, he says, as distinguished from illegal, he means "a novelty of much importance, tending to endanger the established laws." If the Constitution of England would be found in any other place than its laws, we might be led to examine the truth of this proposition; but so long as we know that Acts of Parliament alone form the Constitution, it appears to us to be absolutely unintelligible. A measure may indeed be illegal, without being unconstitutional; if it assails no general principle, interferes with no broad, political right, it may be ranked among the classes of breaches of the laws; but if it trenches on the great combination of public power with private right, it must, in that country, be unconstitutional, because it is in that sense illegal.

On the particular subject of a standing army, we did not expect to find so much toleration in this work. Its general strain is so favourable to popular rights, that we cannot acquit Mr. Hallam of inconsistency, in using even the very moderate terms he has employed, in vindicating the right of the Crown to maintain a body of armed men in the midst of their fellow-subjects, but with habits and opinions separate and distinct from theirs. The allsubduing effects of a military force in the time of the Commonwealth, which he has very fairly related, practically refute the whole of his theory. Lord Clarendon's advice to Charles, to disband, for his own sake, the men who then were in arms, was founded on their peculiar character. The dangerous spirit by which they were actuated, their enthusiastic genius, and their habits of mutiny and rebellion, convinced the King, says Hume, that, till they were disbanded, he never could esteem himself securely established on his throne,

William III. is painted, with colours somewhat extravagant, as one of the greatest men that ever lived; and it is certainly no small part of his glory, that the Constitution received, with his full concurrence, the firmest texture of which, from the nature of its construction, it was capable. From that period it has undergone little alteration:

"The act of settlement was the scal of our constitutional laws, the complement of the revolution itself and the bill of rights, the last great statute which restrains the power of the crown, and manifests, in any conspicuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its own and the subjects' privileges. The hatile had been fought and gained; the statute-book, as it becomes more volu

minous, is less interesting in the history of our constitution; the voice of petition, complaint, or remonstrance is seldom to be traced in the journals; the crown in return desists altogether, not merely from the threatening or objurgatory tone of the Stuarts, but from that dissatisfaction sometimes apparent in the language of William; and the vessel seems riding in smooth water, moved by other impulses, and liable perhaps to other dangers than those of the ocean-wave and the tempest."

An important part of this statute, was that which secured the independence of the judges, by directing that their commissions should be granted during good behaviour; a measure to which William had some time before refused his assent. The author is perhaps incorrect in saying, that ignorance and adulation have ascribed this merit to George III. The credit claimed for the latter, is that of recommending to his first Parliament, that the judges' commissions should no longer expire with the demise of the King, but that their offices and salaries should continue during their good behaviour; a wise and liberal provision, from the want of which the scheme of the Act of settlement in this respect was incomplete.

The violence of parties during the reign of Queen Anne, furnishes more matter for the general historian, than for him who professes to give only the constitutional history of the times. Mr. Hallam justly considers her as a very weak woman, and makes a remark, which, as it tends, (with many other circumstances,) to show the dangers of hereditary monarchy, it may be proper to insert:

"Anne, however, entertained a desire very natural to an English sovereign, yet in which none but a weak one will expect to succeed, of excluding chiefs of parties from her councils. Disgusted with the tories, she was loth to admit the whigs; and thus Godolphin's administration, from 1704 to 1708, was rather sullenly supported, sometimes indeed thwarted, by that party. Cowper was made chancellor against the queen's wishes; but the junto, as it was called, of five eminent whig peers, Somers, Halifax, Wharton, Orford, and Sunderland, were kept out through the queen's dislike, and in some measure, no question, through Godolphin's jealousy. They forced themselves into the cabinet about 1708, and effected the dismissal of Harley and St. John, who, though not of the regular tory school in connexion or principle, had already gone along with that faction in the late reign, and were now reduced by their dismissal to unite with it. The whig ministry of queen Anne, so often talked of, cannot in fact be said to have existed more than two years, from 1708 to 1710; her previous administration having been at first tory, and afterwards of a motley complexion, though depending for existence on the great whig interest, which it in some degree proscribed. Every one knows that this ministry was precipitated from power through the favourite's abuse of her ascendancy, become at length intolerable to the most forbearing of queens and mistresses, conspiring with another intrigue of the bed-chamber, and the popular clamour against Sacheverell's impeachment. It seems rather an humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed by nothing more noble than the insolence of one waiting-woman and the cunning of another, It is true that this was effected by throwing the weight of the crown into the scale of a powerful faction; yet the house of Bourbon would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees, but for Sarah and Abigail at queen Anne's toilet.”

On the bill for septennial Parliaments, which forms the bold