drowning of women, by the frightful torture of the boot. And they
found him among the chiefs of the rebellion and the subscribers
of the Covenant. The opposition looked for a chief to head them
in the most desperate attacks ever made, under the forms of the
Constitution, on any English administration; and they selected
the minister who had the deepest share in the worst acts of the
Court, the soul of the Cabal, the counsellor who had shut up the
Exchequer and urged on the Dutch war. The whole political drama
was of the same cast. No unity of plan, no decent propriety of
character and costume, could be found in that wild and monstrous
harlequinade. The whole was made up of extravagant
transformations and burlesque contrasts; Atheists turned
Puritans; Puritans turned Atheists; republicans defending the
divine right of kings; prostitute courtiers clamouring for the
liberties of the people; judges inflaming the rage of mobs;
patriots pocketing bribes from foreign powers; a Popish prince
torturing Presbyterians into Episcopacy in one part of the
island; Presbyterians cutting off the heads of Popish noblemen
and gentlemen in the other. Public opinion has its natural flux
and reflux. After a violent burst, there is commonly a reaction.
But vicissitudes so extraordinary as those which marked the reign
of Charles the Second can only be explained by supposing an utter
want of principle in the political world. On neither side was
there fidelity enough to face a reverse. Those honourable
retreats from power which, in later days, parties have often
made, with loss, but still in good order, in firm union, with
unbroken spirit and formidable means of annoyance, were utterly
unknown. As soon as a check took place a total rout followed:
arms and colours were thrown away. The vanquished troops, like
the Italian mercenaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth