by the events, hardly lefs momentous at the time of still their occurrence, have left but a local and partial inspired ftamp upon our annals; while even yet the war. intereft of thefe is national and univerfal. They do not concern particular neighbourhoods only, but addrefs themselves ftill to every family and firefide in the kingdom; for under Heaven we owe it mainly to them that all English homes are now protected and secure. The refult has anfwered to their origin. They began in no fordid encounter of felfifhnefs or faction, they involved no vulgar difputes of family or territory, and personal enmities formed no neceffary part of them. They were a war, as one of their leaders faid, A war without an enemy. In the principles they put to iffue, we continue ourselves to be not lefs interested than were our forefathers; and hardly a queftion of government has arifen. fince, affecting human liberty or the national welfare, which has not included a reference to this great conflict, and fome appeal to the precedents it established. Nothing can be unimportant that relates to it, therefore, nor any service small that may explain the motives of D'Ewes its leaders; and it is well that the record by as to acts D'Ewes, to which we are about to be fo largely motives. indebted, fhould have enabled us firft to difcern clearly the course they took upon the greatest question that arose before the war began. without an enemy. and One word as to Strafford himself may be Strafford. added at this outfet of my narrative. Believing that justice remained with the Parliament, I think not the less that high and noble qualities were engaged on the fide of the King; and Greatest man on fide. the King's beyond all question they found their most confpicuous example, as, but for the event I have been defcribing, they would have found their moft formidable development, in Strafford. His Irish adminiftration is the fignal proof that in fome of the nobleft qualities of statesmanfhip, and eminently in the fupreme art of turning the resources of a country to profitable account, he stood alone in his age. But what his ftatef- fhould have been to fuch a man the highest manship fucceeded, object of ambition, he unhappily miffed alto Where Where it failed. gether; and, tried as it was in moft advantageous circumstances in Ireland, and backed as it was by his own confummate power, his whole fyftem of government broke down. It could not have fuftained itself, indeed, without overthrowing the public liberties, because it was an attempt to establish the royal prerogative above them. Nevertheless it alfo included much that had no unpopular afpect, for it was the defign of a man of courage and genius. He would have cleared the land, by foul means or fair, of the native poffeffors; he would have rooted out the idle, improvident, beggarly proprietor; and he would have planted everywhere English wealth and English enterprife. It is remarkable that a scheme which in its final development brought its author to well-merited ruin, fhould yet have involved fo much that, in other hands, and with other ultimate aims, might His fyftem have faved and regenerated Ireland. Every petty oligarchy would have been reduced by it to fubjection before the monarchy, and it would have ftruck down all the tyrannies but in Ire land. in it. its own. The mere forms of parliament would univerfally have been retained and respected by Strafford, because he knew that defpotifm has no fuch efficient ally as parliaments deprived of parliamentary power. While he The good made the Irish Cuftoms more profitable by implied four times their annual amount, he would fo have employed this enormous increase as again and again to multiply itself, through enlarged refources of commerce and trade. While he established vast monopolies for the Crown, he would have abolished private monopolies that had fimply gorged its fervants. And in the very act of impofing taxes arbitrarily, and levying them by military force, he fell with fo heavy a hand on wrongdoers of high rank, as made the oppreffed commonalty grudge lefs what they, too, had to endure. But here lay the The dandanger that proved fatal to him. He created ger that proved numerous enemies whofe power he defpifed, fatal. and he failed to fecure the fingle friend whofe conftancy and courage might have baffled them. Strafford's Irish adminiftration had no fuch dire foe as the monarch whom it was meant to fave. Charles intrigued against it himself, Bad faith and favoured all the intrigues of others. Even of the the fervices it rendered to him were hateful for their connection with the reftraints it would have impofed upon him. It became thus of the very effence of Strafford's defign, comprehenfive as it was, that the good it might have wrought should perish by the evil it could not but inflict. The fword he had provided for fafety turned and broke in his hand. A too vast ambition, joined with a too King. govern ment. narrow aim, deftroyed him. And his Irish Moral of administration is now chiefly memorable, not Strafford's for the revenues and refources it fo largely developed and his master as miferably waited; not for the linen trade it established, which ftruck root and has faved the land; but because it has shown, by one of the greatest examples on record, of what fmall account is the statesmanship moft fuccefsful in providing for material wants, which yet refuses to recognife the moral neceffities of the people it affumes to govern. Parties altered after v. REACTION AFTER STRAFFORD'S THE altered pofition of parties after Strafford's death was firft publicly fixed and deStrafford's clared by the Grand Remonftrance. The death. ftrance a fresh ftartingpoint. Debates refpecting it are the commencement of the struggle which divided into two hostile camps the very party heretofore impregnable in their unity and ftrength, and which directly Remon- brought on the war. It is natural, therefore, that the author of the History of the Rebellion fhould nowhere affect more particularity of detail than in describing the various incidents and circumftances of the difcuffion relating to it. It was, indeed, to the party of which he then first affumed the lead in the House, as to their opponents, the critical moment of their career. It was, to both, the turning point of all they had done heretofore, or might hope to do hereafter. Falkland told Cromwell his friend Hyde, that, as he and Cromwell left What the house together immediately after the laft faid to divifion, the member for Cambridge faid to Falkland. him, that, if it had gone against them in that vote, he and many other honeft men he knew would have fold all they had the next morning, and never have feen England more; and, without too readily accepting this anecdote, Alleged or thinking "the poor kingdom," as Mr. narrow escape for Hyde phrafes it, to have been half fo near to Charles. its deliverance in that particular as he affects to believe, it would be impoffible to overstate the gravity, to both parties, of the iffue depending on the vote which had just been taken. Immediately after the execution of Strafford, Hyde's which Hyde and his affociates, as we have new policy. thus feen, helped more largely than any other fection of the Houfe to accomplish, they began fteadily and fecretly to employ every artifice, and all the advantages which their position in the Commons gave them, to bring about a reaction favourable to the King. The one formidable obftacle had been removed, by Strafford's death, to their own entry into Charles's counfels; and without further gua- Reaction rantees for the fecurity of any one conceffion for the they had wrested from the Crown, they were prepared to halt where they ftood, or even (as in the cafe of the Epifcopacy Bill) to recede from ground they had taken up.* Nor was King. * Richard Baxter (Reliq. Baxt. 19) has attributed "the Mistake "first breach among themfelves" to the defire on the part of of Richard "Lord Falkland, the Lord Digby, and divers other able Baxter. "men," to gratify the King" by fparing Strafford's life." But Baxter wrote long after the event, and was very imperfectly informed. Neither Falkland nor Hyde had at any time a friendly feeling to Lord Digby, and though a difference |