THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JAMES I. 269 



to give his misdeeds a modified form, than to mark them with an 

 honest and undaunted reprobation. 



Now some writers, regarding the reign of James as one of the 

 most disgraceful epochs in the English annals, have, with the best 

 intentions, though certainly not with the best judgment, rapidly 

 glanced over it, thinking that its transactions might be wisely sent 

 to oblivion. But it has been well observed by Von Raumer that 

 " the attractive period of the Rebellion is as little to be understood 

 without an accurate knowledge of the history of James, as the 

 French Revolution without a knowledge of the history of Louis 

 XV."* Unquestionably the British king, with all his affected po- 

 litical sagacity, was not a " discerner of the signs of the times." 

 He knew not that each age developes principles, the conception of 

 which has been the work of a preceding age ; and therefore he ima- 

 gined not that by saying, and acting upon the conviction, that the 

 prerogatives of the crown were an indefinite trust, and not held for 

 the benefit of the governed, he was laying a mine whose explosion 

 would rend into pieces the throne of his successor. What composed 

 investigator of that forcible shock or movement the Great Rebellion, 

 does not perceive that the fiery excesses of popular passions thereby 

 called forth, are as much derivable from James's want of inferring, 

 from an expansion of intellect among the ascendent classes of the 

 community, a proportionate advancement in the love of civil and re- 

 lit'ious freedom, as from his actual faithlessness and misrule. A 

 reign, therefore, so especially remarkable, by leading to those great 

 strugi^les and changes which ended in the abolition of the regal 

 name and power, and the prostration of the episcopate, inglorious as 

 it may be in itself, must ever hold a prominent place in the philoso- 

 phy of history. 



We assert, then, without any qualification or restriction, that 

 the national troubles of the seventeenth century are clearly trace, 

 able to certain speculative notions of James, upon unlimited 

 regal power and upon the doctrine of passive obedience, which, 

 however they might exist in books,t could never be brought into 

 practical working without the fatal assumption of " the right divine 

 to govern wrong." Surely his open and distinct declaration to 



• See Hhtory of the SlxUenlh and Serenleenth Centuries, illustrated by 

 original documents, vol. ii. p. 191. 



f In Cowell's singular work, entitled the Interpreter of Words and Forms 

 in Common and Statute Laws, Lond. 1701. fol. we find descriptions of an 

 English king which faithluUy represent the feelings and doctrines of James 

 uu this particular point. 



