the great excitement which might have been produced by the free admission of popish bulls and controversial tracts. Now, as to the first part of the apology, we are ready to allow that all such threatenings and exhibition of penalties are meant to frighten men into their duty, and to deter from the commission of the particular crime against which they are pointed. At Algiers, even, and Constantinople the most savage tyrant that ever trampled on the necks of slaves, never meant to take off every head that his edicts might reach. Terror is the object with all tyrannical rulers, in the most unwarrant able stretches of their power; and this equally, whether they actually take away life, or only shew that they have the power to do it. And would Mr. Brodie call that a free constitution, where the sovereign, at her mere caprice or apprehension of personal danger, could suspend all the laws which protect the lives and property of her subjects, subject them to martial law, and even prohibit all questioning of her lieutenants and their deputies for their arbitrary punishment of offenders!

We have another act of hers, continues Hume, still more extraordinary. "The streets of London were much infested with idle vagabonds and riotous persons. The lord mayor had endeavoured to repress the disorder; the Starchamber had exerted its authority, and inflicted punishment on the rioters. But the queen finding these remedies ineffectual revived martial law, and gave Sir Thomas Wilford a commission of provost-martial, granting him authority and commanding him, upon signification given by the justices of the peace in London or the neighbouring counties, of such offenders worthy to be speedily executed by martial law, to attack and take the same persons, and in the presence of the said justices, according to the justice of martial law, to execute them upon the gallows or gibbet openly, or near to such place where the said rebellious and incorrigible offenders shall be found to have committed the said great offences.""I suppose," the historian remarks, "it would be difficult to produce an instance of such an act of authority nearer than Muscovy."

In reply to this representation, the reasoning which Mr. Brodie employs is somewhat singular. After observing that the only authority quoted by Hume for the above statement, is the "commission itself," he repeats his remark, that proclamations were sometimes issued in terrorem, and adds, that it would have been murder in the commissioners to have acted upon them!" What! would Sir Thomas Wilford have been chargeable with murder, had he hung up a score of rioters in the presence of the justices, and with the queen's

commission in his pocket, " granting him authority and commanding him to attack and take the same persons, and to execute them upon the gallows or gibbet openly?"

Every one must remember Elizabeth's famous proclamation, prohibiting all her subjects from cultivating woad, because she disliked the smell of that useful plant. She was also pleased to take offence at the long swords and high ruffs then in fashion; and accordingly sent about her officers to break every man's sword, and clip every man's ruff which was beyond a certain dimension."This practice," says Mr. Hume," resembles the method employed by the great Czar Peter to make his subjects change their garb." These facts, which cannot of course be denied by our author, do not however, in his estimation, afford any proof either of an arbitrary rule, or of an extended prerogative. Elizabeth, he reminds us afterwards, yielded the matter of the woad to her parliament, who were informed of its value in certain manufac tures: and, as to the other, he shrewdly remarks, that "it would not be any great proof of slavishness in the people that they were above contesting a trifle of this kind with a beloved monarch!"

How differently do the same things strike different people! To us it has always appeared that the very essence of arbitrary power consists in interfering with domestic concerns, and with the trivial arrangements of personal comfort or decoration: and, viewed in this light, we maintain that the queen's proclamations, forbidding the growth of a useful vegetable merely because it offended her nostrils, and prohibiting elevated ruffs and long swords merely because they were displeasing to her royal eyes, are more expressive of an arbitrary disposition, and present a stronger proof of her despotical authority, than even the revival of martial law against the pope's bull and the importation of catholic tracts.

There is an ingenuity sometimes in Mr. Brodie's reasoning which goes far to make up for his questionable logic. Hume, in proof of the absence of all regular notions of liberty at that period in England, quotes from Strype a speech of Lord Burleigh, in which that statesman proposes that the queen should erect a court for the correction of all abuses, and should confer on the commissioners a general inquisitorial power over the whole kingdom. He sets before her the example of her wise grandfather Henry the Seventh, who by such methods extremely augmented his revenue; and he recommends that this new court, should proceed" as well by the direction and ordinary course of the laws, as by virtue of her majesty's supreme regiment, and absolute power, whence

all law proceeded." In a word, he expects from this institution greater accession to the royal treasure than Henry the Eighth derived from the abolition of the abbeys and all the forfeitures of ecclesiastical revenues. "This project of Lord Burleigh," adds Mr. Hume, "needs not, I think, any comment. A form of government must be very arbitrary indeed where a wise and good minister could make such a proposal to the sovereign.'

In relation to this extraordinary piece of ministerial counsel, Mr. Brodie first reprobates the application of the words "good and wise" to a statesman who could make such a proposal, and then proceeds to rescue the memory of Burleigh from so odious an imputation as seems to be implied in the above quotation from his speech. We know not, however, whether the great lord keeper would be much gratified to find that his vindication rested on the remark, that his address to her majesty was " a mere harangue without point or immediate object, flattering the queen, yet enigmatical." It cannot be imagined, says our author, that he would advise her to attempt a measure without parliament which she could not accomplish with it; "and therefore we must presume that her absolute power was to be exerted through her grand council." It is perhaps enough to observe, in reply to Mr. Brodie's conjecture, that the concurrence of parliament is no where alluded to by Lord Burleigh; and, moreover, that the idea of exercising absolute power through the two houses of the legislature, is a novelty in government which it is probable did not occur to the ingenious Cecil.

We cannot proceed through the whole catalogue of practices and institutions which Hume has quoted with the view of making out his position, that there was no regular scheme of liberty in England when the Stuarts ascended the throne; nor can we follow Mr. Brodie at greater length in this early stage of his work, where he shews so much zeal and talent in the attempt to establish his favourite hypothesis, relative to the freedom of our ancestors under the Tudor kings. Suffice it to observe, that constitutional liberty could not be very secure in a country where the sovereign possessed a power superior to the laws; where a process in a court of justice could be suspended by a warrant from the crown; where a member of parliament could be sent to prison for the free expression of his sentiments; where bills were stopped in their progress through the lower house at the command of the monarch; where private dwellings could be ransacked," and the inhabitants compelled either to confess their guilt, or to purge themselves by oath; where none could travel with

out permission, and where no one of noble birth could marry without the consent of the king; where the productions of the press were regulated by martial law, and the rack applied to extort confessions of religious nonconformity; where monopolies and arbitrary imposts undermined the prosperity of commerce; where the caprice of a queen could restrict her subjects in the use of cambric, or in the pattern of their side arms; and where even words, spoken seditiously, that is, disrespectfully, against the head of the state, incurred the dreadful penalty of death. Taking these things into view, and connecting them with the imperious temper of Elizabeth, the reader will probably share in our surprise when he pe ruses the following sentence:-"We have now," says Mr. Brodie, "travelled over a vast variety of ground; and it must be apparent that, though there were institutions, as the Star-chamber, not consonant to the genius of a free government, and occasional proceedings of a dangerous kind, the grand constitutional principles were clearly defined, as well as recognized by the monarch in the general course of administration."

Before the accession of Charles to the throne great changes had taken place in England, which, by removing the principal supports of kingly power, placed the monarchy on a footing almost entirely new. The military services of the crown vassals having long been commuted for an uncertain pecuniary tax, the monarch could not now, as in former times, devolve the defence of the country and the prosecution of foreign wars on his great barons; and, as the subsidies and benevolences which were substituted for personal attendance, in the ranks of the national army, were scantily and reluctantly measured out by parliament, who had, on all occasions, some invidious condition to attach to their grant; the influence of the crown was much lessened, while its duties and responsibility were incalculably increased. The revenues, too, attached to the royal office were very much impaired. The Tudor princes, rather than encounter the murmurings of parliament, or consent to barter away their prerogative for votes of money, chose to support their state on the spoils of the Church; and in this way, before the end of Elizabeth's reign, the greater part of the ecclesiastical property seized by her father, as well as the lands which belonged to the crown, and constituted the chief source of its income, had been alienated or sold. In the earlier times of the monarchy, the commons yielded with less reluctance to the imposition of taxes, both because very little, comparatively speaking, was drawn from their pockets, and more particu

larly because it was their interest, at that period, to strengthen the throne against the feudal lords, who were wont to oppress and despise them. But in Charles's days circumstances were completely changed. A large share of the wealth of the kingdom was now transferred from the nobles to the next lower orders; commerce had enriched the towns, and spread intelligence over the face of the country; and, as the commons had no longer any thing to fear from the great barons, and were called upon to contribute more extensively than formerly for the support of the government; they were, of course, less willing to give without obtaining from the crown something in return, either in the shape of a concession or a privilege. Nor was this the only source of embarrassment to administration; for whilst the revenue of the sovereign was diminished in the actual amount, the prices of commodities rose to an unprecedented height. Corn was dearer in the reigns of James the first and his son than it is at the present day. Beef was, at the average of a year, about four-pence a pound, and poultry cost more money in London, at the period of which we are now speaking, than it does in our own times. There is no difficulty, therefore, in perceiving whence the necessities of the first two Stuarts arose, and their constant dependence upon parliament. The army, the navy, the courts of justice, and the royal household were all to be supported by the king; and he was obliged to importune the commons for money, or to raise it by means, which, in the temper that they now assumed, were sure to provoke their hostility, and afford them a pretext for shutting their purses.

We shall not attempt to accompany Mr. Brodie over the beaten ground of general history during the first years of Charles's reign, nor record the melancholy bickerings which took place from time to time between the king and his parliament. The topics of dispute, so often canvassed between the ministers of the crown and the popular members, are known to every one in the least conversant with the annals of those unhappy days; whilst, as to the motives of either party, there is so much room for conjecture and so little ground of certainty, that we cannot hope to attain, even from the most industrious writers, fuller information than we already possess. We shall, therefore, confine our attention to the views which are here exhibited of the characters, the merits, and the treatment of Strafford, Laud, and of the king himself.

Strafford, we need scarcely observe, is no favourite with Mr. Brodie, and meets, of course, with rather scanty justice