capable to administer justice, but themselves: yet how well this
suits with monarchy, when they monopolise all to be governed by
their year-books, you in England have a costly example." We are
really curious to know by what arguments it is to be proved, that
the power of interfering in the law-suits of individuals is part
of the just authority of the executive government.

It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil
rights, which even despots have generally respected, should treat
with scorn the limitations which the constitution imposes on the
royal prerogative. We might quote pages: but we will content
ourselves with a single specimen: "The debts of the Crown being
taken off, you may govern as you please: and most resolute I am
that may be done without borrowing any help forth of the King's
lodgings."

Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which
Strafford meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he
sold himself to the court, was in strict conformity to his
theory. For his accomplices various excuses may be urged;
ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry. But Wentworth had no
such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early prepossessions
were on the side of popular rights. He knew the whole beauty and
value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the
first of the Rats, the first of those statesmen whose patriotism
has been only the coquetry of political prostitution, and whose
profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the
slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import
defenders from an Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry. He
was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was a sacrament of