had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally
sympathise with the calamities of individuals; but they are
inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with
pity. Thus misfortune turned the greatest of Parliaments into the
despised Rump, and the worst of Kings into the Blessed Martyr.

Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in
all that he says on that subject we heartily agree. We fully
concur with him in thinking that a great social schism, such as
the civil war, is not to be confounded with an ordinary treason,
and that the vanquished ought to be treated according to the
rules, not of municipal, but of international law. In this case
the distinction is of the less importance, because both
international and municipal law were in favour of Charles. He was
a prisoner of war by the former, a King by the latter. By neither
was he a traitor. If he had been successful, and had put his
leading opponents to death, he would have deserved severe
censure; and this without reference to the justice or injustice
of his cause. Yet the opponents of Charles, it must be admitted,
were technically guilty of treason. He might have sent them to
the scaffold without violating any established principle of
jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to overturn the
whole constitution in order to reach them. Here his own case
differed widely from theirs. Not only was his condemnation in
itself a measure which only the strongest necessity could
vindicate; but it could not be procured without taking several
previous steps, every one of which would have required the
strongest necessity to vindicate it. It could not be procured
without dissolving the Government by military force, without
establishing precedents of the most dangerous description,