apprehend a natural extinction of the Constitution. If, for
example, Charles had played the part of Gustavus Adolphus, if he
had carried on a popular war for the defence of the Protestant
cause in Germany, if he had gratified the national pride by a
series of victories, if he had formed an army of forty or fifty
thousand devoted soldiers, we do not see what chance the nation
would have had of escaping from despotism. The judges would have
given as strong a decision in favour of camp-money as they gave
in favour of ship-money. If they had been scrupulous, it would
have made little difference. An individual who resisted would
have been treated as Charles treated Eliot, and as Strafford
wished to treat Hampden. The Parliament might have been summoned
once in twenty years, to congratulate a King on his accession, or
to give solemnity to some great measure of state. Such had been
the fate of legislative assemblies as powerful, as much
respected, as high-spirited, as the English Lords and Commons.

The two Houses, surrounded by the ruins of so many free
constitutions overthrown or sapped by the new military system,
were required to intrust the command of an army and the conduct
of the Irish war to a King who had proposed to himself the
destruction of liberty as the great end of his policy. We are
decidedly of opinion that it would have been fatal to comply.
Many of those who took the side of the King on this question
would have cursed their own loyalty, if they had seen him return
from war; at the head of twenty thousand troops, accustomed to
carriage and free quarters in Ireland.

We think with Mr. Hallam that many of the Royalist nobility and
gentry were true friends to the Constitution, and that, but for