338 CHARLES AND HIS SUBJECTS. 



insulting- doctrines should have called forth "a war of words," a con- 

 troversy long to be remembered, and led the way to the fierce and 

 angry assertion of opposite opinions, was but in the nature of 

 things: and if violent or inconsistent notions were persisted in, in the 

 ominous course of a " battle " that could not be expected to be im- 

 partial and temperate, the onus should certainly rest on those who 

 first threw down the gauntlet and courted this appeal to theory and 

 first principles, which is often as hazardous in politics as it is bene- 

 ficial in abstract sciences. The truth is, in fact, that, to a certain 

 extent, this had become"unavoidable ; not only because the age had 

 become more " speculative and intelligent," but because the in- 

 creasing numbers and wealth in the body of the nation, namely, 

 the MIDDLE CLASSES, together with the decay of the Tory nobility 

 the toe-kissers of the Pope, and secret enemies of the church mili- 

 tant on earth the place hunters the eaters up of the national re- 

 sources, by illegitimate pensions, for animal and other compliances 

 the adulterers the fornicators the gaming-house dog-stars the 

 Tory dictators and the dilapidation of the royal demesnes, had ma- 

 terially deranged the old balance of the constitution, and produced 

 a " CRISIS" which could not possibly be managed without a thorough 

 examination of those reasons upon which the pretensions of the con- 

 flicting parties were virtually rested. But though the grand final 

 struggle and provoked combat itself was perhaps unavoidable, it 

 is impossible to forget that the deplorable effects by which it was 

 unhappily characterized and stained for the most part originated 

 with that " shameless party " by whom it had been begun by the 

 most insulting, the most inglorious provocations. 



The commencement of the contest between the unfortunate 

 Charles and the representatives of the nation was when the monarch 

 dissolved his parliament, for refusing to grant a " supply'' till they 

 obtained a redress of grievances ; and that war, which produced so 

 much of human blood boiling British blood, weltering in our 

 streets the cruel imprisonments, pilloryings brandings and cuttings 

 of ears by which the authors of " offensive disquisitions'' were 

 punished at this period of contention, not (we are constrained to 

 remark) only began with the government, but were never practised 

 to anything like the same extent ; even after their exasperated adver- 

 saries had succeeded to the possession of power, may be said to have 

 been positively proclaimed, when he announced, on calling his second, 

 that if they were not more liberal than their predecessors, he would 

 have recourse to other counsels, raise a revenue by his own authority, 

 and govern for the future in the total absence of their individual or 

 collateral assistance ! These injudicious, if not outrageous, threats 

 were, with undiminished irony, afterwards carried into execution ! 

 Members were ordered into arrest for their speeches in parliament 

 the parliament itself was again dissolved money extorted by 

 forced loans, monopolies, and ship-money and finally, to un-crown 

 the whole of this melancholy procedure, commissions were issued 

 to fine and imprison all persons who opposed these violent and 

 unconstitutional exactions ! 



The history of Charles, indeed, presents, from beginning to end, 



