tered, had begun to act with the reckless energy of despair.* Misled by misinformation, terrified by threatened violence, or blinded by sectarian resentment, a majority in Parliament finally manifested a determination to accept terms of peace with Charles, which they had repeatedly declared to be incompatible with the safety of the nation. It was when affairs in the city and in the Parliament were in this state of anarchical confusion, so dangerous, to the liberties of England, that the army returned to remonstrate against the betrayal of the cause for which so much blood had been shed, and to interpose, if necessary, in defence of their own and the nation's rights. A large number of the members of the Commons, who had participated in these traitorous measures, were expelled, and the house enabled truly to represent the friends of freedom.t

The fifth act in the great drama of England's first grand demonstration against regal tyranny and treachery, was about to open to the view of Christendom and the world, with a sublime and startling exhibition of the impartiality of justice, and a terribly distinct annunciation to kings and hierarchs, of the superior Majesty of the People. Whilst experiencing lenity unparalleled and undeserved, and while professing a strong desire for peace, Charles had been repeatedly detected in gross acts of dissimulation and in machinations against the friends of freedom, fraught with purposes of revenge and outrage, and already productive of a second civil war in which thousands had been slain. Instead of feeling surprised that the deep-toned voice of righteous indignation, had now begun to come up, as the sound of many waters, not only from the army, but from the east and west, and north and south, demanding justice on the great delinquent as the sole author of so many calamities, we may well exclaim in view of the past for

*"The Royalists," says Guizot, "losing all hope, now only thought of getting rid of, or aven ging themselves on their enemies, no matter by what means; several republican members of Parliament were in sulted and att icked in the streets; hints reached Fairfax even from France, that two cavaliers had resolved to assassinate him at St. Albins; at Doncaster a party of twen ty men carried off Rainsborough, wao com ninded there, and three of them poniarded him at the moment he was endeavoring to escape from them (Oct. 29); there was even a report tha a plot was forming to murder eighty of the most influential members, as they left the house."

"Though the King," says Milton, "did not agree to any thing that night conduce to the firm peace and sett ement of th ng3, more than he hid before, they go and vote themselves satisfied. Then the sounder part of the house, finding themselves and the com.nonwealth betrayed, implore the aid of that valiant and always faithful army to the commonwealth. Upon which occasion, I can observe only this, which I am yet loth to utter, to wit, that our saldiers understood themselves better than our senators; that they saved the commonwealth by their arms, when the others by their votes had almost ruined it." (Answer to Salm13 us.)

That the Republ.can or patriotic party were not influenced by sectarian zeal, in these and subsequent proceedings, is evident from the very acrusations of their enemies. Says Milton to Salmasius "Whereas you tax us with giving a 'toleration of all sects and heresies,' you ought not to find fault with us for that." The prominent man who went to Scotland to urge Cromwell's return to save the betrayed cause of liberty, was the accomplished, witty and patriotic Henry Marten, so little suspected of piety, that though one of the King's judges, he was treated w.th comparative lenity in the terrible days which followed the Restoration. Macaulay remarks that beside the Puritans who espoused the cause of liberty, mainly because it was the cause of religion, "there w13 another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which co-operated with them on very different principles"-"those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were in the phraseology of that time doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples." Hume (in his 10th Essay) says that there were Deists associated with the Independents.

Milton sparks of "calling to mind, with how unexpected an importunity and fervency of mind, and with hɔw unanimɔus a consent, the whole army, and a great part of the people from

bearance of the people, "Herein is the patience of the saints!" The Commons passed an ordinance instituting a High Court to try "Charles Stuart, King of England," as "a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy." This Court was to be composed of one hundred and fifty commissioners, including six peers, three high judges, eleven baronets, ten knights, six aldermen of London, select officers of the army, and members of the House of Commons, and thus representing the various classes and interests of the nation.* By the sentence of this Court, after a public trial, Charles was beheaded in front of the palace of Whitehall, and in the view of a great crowd of spectators, on the 30th of January, 1649.†

A grave question here solicits our attention. Was this infliction of the penalty of death, justifiable? That it was-that Charles deserved thus to die, and that the principle of self-preservation demanded at the hands of the friends of English liberty, this act of justice, is, I think, manifest from what he had done, and from what he was still seeking to do.‡

almost every county in the kingdom, cried out with one voice for justice against the King as being the sole author of their calamities." Guizot says that "numerous petitions were sent from" Yorkshire to the Commons, "demanding prompt justice upon the delinquents, whatever their rank or name," and that "at the same time, the same demand was expressed by other coun ties." For some time, however, previous to the sxecution of Charles, certain peculiar causes had operated in London to mislead the populace there, and induce many to side for a while with the dethroned King, who had formerly been most violent in their opposition to him.

The fact that some who were appointed to sit as members of this court, either neglected or refused to do so, only goes to support the idea, that the Commons intended to make it cons.st not merely of men who would be considered as enemies of Charles-but of men of various shades and diversities of sentiment.

† He had been brought to London on the 23d of Dec. The trial commenced on the 20th of January, and terminated on the 27th.

The principle that capital punishment should sometimes be inflicted, is assumed in this dis cussion, as it may well be in view of Gen. 9: 6. Num. 35: 30-34. Acts 25: 10, 11. Rom. 13 4. &c. &c.

That tyrants may rightfully be resisted, dethroned, and even put to death, is a doctrine which had been extensively promulgated by some of the most distinguished of the Protestant reformers for more than a century prior to the execution of Charles I. Luther held in contempt the doctrine of passive obedience. Zwingle said "I know not how it comes to pass that kings reign by succession, unless it be with consent of the whole people." "When by sufrage and con sent of the whole people, or the better part of them, a tyrant is deposed and put to death, God is the chief leader in that action." He attributed the fact that some nations suffered tyrants to reign over them without calling them to account for their crimes-not to the clemency or humanity of these nations-but to their lukewarmness in upholding public justice." "Earthly princes," Bays Calvin," depose themselves while they rise against God; yea, they are unworthy to be numbered among men. Rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads than to obey them." John Knox in a public discussion (1564,) maintained that "subjects might and ought to execute God's judgments upon their King-that Kings, if they offend, have no privilege to be exempted from the punishments of law more than any other subjects. So that if the King be a murderer, adulterer, or idolator, he should suffer not as a King, but as an offender." Other famous Scotch divines taught the same doctrine, and Milton convicts those in the land of Knox of palpable inconsistency, who denounced the execution of Charles as a violation of the divine law. The above quotations, and many others quite as apposite, may be found in Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Aluding to those Scottish leaders in church and state, who condemned the execution of the King, Milton says, (in his Second Defence,)-" On several occasions, in which the subject had been discussed in Parliament, they had unanimously agreed that the King might be deprived of his crown, for three principal reasons." &c. same persons, in the r answer to Gen. Cromwell, 1659, confess that he was justly punished, but that there was an informality in the proceedings, because they had no share in the commission which condemned him. This transaction, therefore, which was so atrocious without their participation, would have been highly patriotic with it; as if the distinctions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, depend on their arbitrary disposition or their capricious inclinations."

"The

Undeniable facts showed him to be as his sentence described hima tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy. He had not aimed merely to retain unimpaired the prerogatives transmitted to him by his predecessors. From the commencement of his reign to the close of his life-from the time when he mutilated the coronation oath that he might exclude from it the idea of deference to the popular will, to the hour of his exit on the scaffold, when he asserted that the people ought to have no share in the government, and insisted that upon this condition alone would the country regain peace and "liberty," he had evinced a settled purpose to govern, unfettered by the needful restraints of law, and unchecked by the known wishes of the nation. This despotic purpose, had, you will observe, been formed and persisted in at a time when a new and a brighter era was dawning upon England; when all the great interests of the nation required a curtailment of his prerogatives, already dangerous, and an adaptation of the government and laws to a higner standard of popular intelligence, morals, preparation for religious and political freedom, and advancement in the sentiments and in the arts of a Christian civilization. Besides, in attempting to effect his nefarious purpose of changing the government into a despotism, and treading upon the necks of men deserving and needing a larger measure of liberty, he had been singularly perfidious and cruel. When for valuable consideration he had, in express terms, surrendered certain doubtful and dangerous prerogatives, he immediately proceeded, with shameless audacity, not only to exercise them, but to assume others still more doubtful and dangerous. He had sought out and brought to his aid the furious bigotry of Laud, and the terrible genius of Strafford, and collecting together as precedents for his wrong-doing examples of oppression and outrage, which had been scattered along several of the preceding reigns, he had practised iniquities and cruelties by which the nation, shocked and alarmed, was driven to take up arms in self-defence. He had exercised all his regal powers, and the cthers despotically assumed, unmercifully and most unrighteously. He had violated the rights of conscience, robbed his subjects of their property, and in defiance of wholesome laws, and in contempt of his own repeated promises, procured the deaths of many innocent persons whose blood was crying out against the murderer. And then, rather than forego his atrocious designs against the rights of the people, he had taken up arms against them, and while putting all the great interests of the nation in peril, caused thousands to be slain.

*He caused the phrase "quas vulgus elegerit "-which (laws or legal customs,) the common people shall choose to be erased from the coronation oath before he was crowned. Milton's Answer to Salmasius and English State Trials-vol. 1, p. 998. Just before he was beheaded, he said, "I must tell you that their [the people's,] liberty and freedom consists in their having government, those laws by which their lives and their goods may be most their own. [Such laws," for instance, as those by which he had piloried, ear-cropped, imprisoned, and put to death hundreds of innocent persons, and levied ship-money, and wrung" forced loans," &c. &c., from the people ] "It is not," he said, "the r having a share in the government-that is nothing appertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things; and therefore, until you do that, I mean, that you put the people in that liberty, as I say, [i. e. in the "jiberty" of being governed without "having any share in the government," or of being under the unlimited control of an absolute monarch,] certainly they never will enjoy themvelves." How kind to the dear people! He may have been sincere in this, but it was the sincerity of a mind darkened by a despot's intense selfishness The above quotation is made directly from State Trials, vol. 1 p. 1043 See also Guizot's Eng. Rev., p. 454.

He was a convicted traitor and enemy to the State. Having "wil fully broken the principal conditions made between him and the commonwealth," and thus forfeited all right to govern, he had sought to subjugate the nation by exciting insurrections at home, and calling in invaders from abroad. He was an implacable public enemy. He had refused to make peace on any terms consistent with the safety of the nation; and when professing the strongest desire for reconciliation, he had been detected in writing confidential letters about fitting the friends of liberty with hempen halters instead of the silken garters which he was promising them, and about alliances and coalitions to subdue his rebellious subjects. He was, therefore, a traitor to his country—if not in the technical sense, yet in a sense which unperverted reason instantly recognises and approves. After having ceased to be either actually or rightfully King, he had committed crimes against the State involving all that constitutes the essence and enormity of treasonhis peculiar circumstances and pretensions serving now only to render him the more dangerous as a traitor and public enemy. Had any other person been guilty of like misdeeds-bringing upon the nation so many and so great calamities, what friend of justice would for a moment hesitate to say, he deserved to die? When a King, dethroned because by his tyranny and insincerity, he has made it the duty of the people to depose him, abuses their clemency, and proceeds with smooth words of peace on his lips, and with dark purposes of revenge and despotism in his heart, to show himself an implacable and perfidious

*Milton after citing numerous legal maxims and examples, from which the great principle of regal responsibility gleams with a considerable degree of brightness, declares in the very spirit of our Declaration of Independence, that such a principle needs no proof, and says" The thing itself is ridiculous and absurd to imagine, that high treason may be committed against the King and not against the People, for whose good, nay, and by whose leave, as I may say, the King is what he is."

That Kings derive their authority from the People, and are responsible to them, was, as we have seen, the doctrine of eminent reformers and divines in Great Britain and on the continent. The words of Gilby, "that Kings have their authority of the people, who may upon occasion reassume it to themselves," expressed the prevailing sentiment of evangelical Protestants. Christopher Goodman, pastor of those English "saints and confessors at Geneva," who fled from the persecution of Queen Mary, said "If princes do right and keep promise with you, then do you owe to them all humble obedience; if not. ye are discharged, and your study ought to be in this how ye may depose and punish according to law such rebels against God and oppressors of their country." The phrase according to law," refers of course to the law of God, or the great principles of justice, and not to any prescribed legal formalities. The nature of the case ordinarily forbids the existence of these. My object in referring to the opinions of distinguished writers who flourished in the century closing with the age of Cromwell and Milton, is to expose the insolent recklessness with which certain authors, who ought to be ashamed of such things, speak of the views and motives of the men who brought Charles Stuart to justice. Guizot tells us that the Commons in voting as "a principle that he had been guilty of treason in making war against the Parliament,[when the Parliament was a true exponent of the people's wil,]-howed one of those strangebut invincible scruples in which iniquity betrays itself while seeking adisguise." And Hallam ascribes to a low and sanguinary fanaticism, the sentiment that justice called for the punishment of Charles. It should be observed that according to the statements of both these authors, especially Guizot, he was unquestionably a tyrant, a murderer and an implacable public enemy. To say nothing of Inther, Zwingle, and others, at whose feet Hallam and Guizot might afford to sit for awhile to gain light on some very important topics relating to human rights-let me ask: Was Milton a fanatic? By reading his articles already referred to,together with Cromwell's letters relating to the punishment of Charles, and the remarks of Bradshaw. the Lord President, and of John Cook, Solicitor Genera in the trial of the King, (see State 'Trials.) any intelligent republican will perceive that the "Regicides" were men who knew what they were about, and that they were familiar with certain great truths pertaining to the first principles of government, which are not dreamt of in the shallow philosophy of certain distinguished monarchi ts of the present day. Some of the greatest and best men of that age, and the preceding taught that tyrants ought to be deposed, and if incorrigible and still dangerous, put to deathnot, indeed, in the spirit of private revenge, but in obedience to the comprehensive and benevolent principles of public justice. The question is not as to the propriety of capital punishment in general, but of capital punishment when inflicted on a tyrant, murderer, &c. &c.

disturber of the peace and the shedder of the blood of thousands amid the renewed horrors of fierce civil strife, what republican will affirm that the tarnished crown which has fallen from his guilty head, ought now to be his defence against the unwakened sword of justice?* Not only did justice demand the punishment of Charles Stuart, but the safety of the cause of English liberty required it.

All history-having any relation to the subject-demonstrates the hazard and peril of confiding in the promises of a tyrant after forcibly resisting him. Milton gives in illustration of this truth, an example of cruel faithlessness exhibited in the preceding century by Christian II, the infamous tyrant of Denmark, whom a portion of his subjects, after opposing, trusted, at the cost of their own blood, soon pitilessly shed and thenceforth crying to heaven for vengeance on the head of the murderer who had now earned the surname of the Nero of the North. But proof of the utter madness of trusting Charles, it was needless to seek from foreign lands or from other times. His conduct had been so thoroughly characterised by insincerity and treachery, that not his enemies only, but his most devoted followers, had been constrained at times to express their distrust. The Earl of Glamorgan, says Keightley, was "a Catholic, his personal friend and romantically and devotedly loyal." Him Charles selected to "carry on a mysterious treaty with the insurgents" of Ireland-to induce them though they were stained with the blood of so many thousands of his Protestant subjects, treacherously and barbarously slain in the Great Massacre, to join hands with him in subduing the freemen of England. This dark game played in Ireland at the very moment when he was making fair promises to the different parties in England and Scotland, being not a little hazardous, he sealed the various instructions and commissions with the private signet, and left blanks for the names of the Pope and other princes, to be filled out by the Earl, "to the end," said Glamorgan, "the King might have a starting hole to deny having given me such commissions if excepted against by his own subjects, leaving me as it were at stake who for his majesty's sake was willing to undergo it, trusting to his word alone?t Hear also the doomed

*Charles was not (as Hallam more than intimates,) a prisoner of war, in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase. An intelligent child can perceive a very impor tant difference between the relation sustained by this dethroned King, to the English State or the exisiting authorities of the State, and that which would have been sustained, for example, by a French or Spanish prisoner of war. The situation of Charles was obviously such as to render him, in a different sense, responsible, and in a far more appalling degree dangerous to the English nation than any captured subject of France or Spain could have been. His case was evidently, in some very important respects, sui generis, and to be dealt with according to its own peculiar charac teristics and exigencies, and on the great self-evident principles of retributive justice and self-preservation. There was truth in his exclamation at his trial-"Sir, I am not an ordinary prisoner." By his guilt, and by his capability of doing harm, as well as by the high station from which he had fallen, he was a very extraordinary prisoner.

+The bad apology sometimes made for the insincerity of Charles, is that it was exercised towards his rebellious subjects who had overpowered him. But facts show that his duplicity was exercised towards his friends also-friends who were risking everything to aid him. Feeling some compunction for having permitted (in a preceding note,) the claim set up for Charles of "many private and domestic virtues "—