The Lords refused to assume the unconstitutional office with
which he attempted to invest them. And what was then his conduct?
He went, attended by hundreds of armed men, to seize the objects
of his hatred in the House itself. The party opposed to him more
than insinuated that his purpose was of the most atrocious kind.
We will not condemn him merely on their suspicions. We will not
hold him answerable for the sanguinary expressions of the loose
brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his act by
itself alone. And we say, without hesitation, that it is
impossible to acquit him of having meditated violence, and
violence which might probably end in blood. He knew that the
legality of his proceedings was denied. He must have known that
some of the accused members were men not likely to submit
peaceably to an illegal arrest. There was every reason to
expect that he would find them in their places, that they would
refuse to obey his summons, and that the House would support them
in their refusal. What course would then have been left to him?
Unless we suppose that he went on this expedition for the sole
purpose of making himself ridiculous, we must believe that he
would have had recourse to force. There would have been a
scuffle; and it might not, under such circumstances, have been in
his power, even if it had been in his inclination, to prevent a
scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately for his fame,
unfortunately perhaps for what he prized far more, the interests
of his hatred and his ambition, the affair ended differently. The
birds, as he said, were flown, and his plan was disconcerted.
Posterity is not extreme to mark abortive crimes; and thus the
King's advocates have found it easy to represent a step, which,
but for a trivial accident, might have filled England with
mourning and dismay, as a mere error of judgment, wild and