consideration. We have already said that the ardour which the
Parliament had displayed at the time of its first meeting had
considerably abated, that the leading opponents of the court were
desponding, and that their followers were in general inclined to
milder and more temperate measures than those which had hitherto
been pursued. In every country, and in none more than in England,
there is a disposition to take the part of those who are
unmercifully run down, and who seem destitute of all means of
defence. Every man who has observed the ebb and flow of public
feeling in our own time will easily recall examples to illustrate
this remark. An English statesman ought to pay assiduous worship
to Nemesis, to be most apprehensive of ruin when he is at the
height of power and popularity, and to dread his enemy most when
most completely prostrated. The fate of the Coalition Ministry in
1784 is perhaps the strongest instance in our history of the
operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and
most extended Ministry that ever existed into a feeble
Opposition, and raised a King who was talking of retiring to
Hanover to a height of power which none of his predecessors had
enjoyed since the Revolution. A crisis of this description was
evidently approaching in 1642. At such a crisis, a Prince of a
really honest and generous nature, who had erred, who had seen
his error, who had regretted the lost affections of his people,
who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be
peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of
offence, even to the unreasonable. On the other hand, a tyrant,
whose whole life was a lie, who hated the Constitution the more
because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, and to
whom his own honour and the love of his people were as nothing,
would select such a crisis for some appalling violation of the