Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ..." " - bl h I- irnrie was again set tip in its nised. _Tlie theory of the English eonstitutioit was the same on the day when the hand of Charles ll. was kissed by the kneeling Houses at Whitehall as on the day when his father set up the royal standard at Nottingham. There was a short period of doting fondness, an hysterira pnssiu of loyal repentance and love. But emotions of this sort are transitory; and the interests on which depends the progress of great societies are permanent. The transport of reconciliation was soon over, and the Old struggle recommenced. The old struggle reeommenced;---biit not precisely after the old fashion. The sovereign was not. indeed, a man whom any common warning would have restrained from the grossest violations of law. But it was no conimoit warning that he had received. All round him were the recent signs of the vengeance of an oppressed nation, --the fields on which ll" noblest blood of the island had been poured forth, --the castles shattered by the tiitfltwll Of the parliamentary armies, -the hall where sat the stern tribunal to whose bar had been letlt through lowering ranks of pikemen.'-he ca? tive heir ofa hundred kings.--lh@_$l3lEll'P l 5 ters before which the great execution had been so fearlessly dune in the face of heaven and earth. The restored prince, 8 lm"l5hed by the fate of his father, never ventured to attack his Parliaments with open and arbitrary V10 lence. It was at one time lJy l1'lt:3l1S of thi Parliament itself, at another llml: by means o. the courts of law, that he attempted to regain for the crown its old predominance. lle began with great advantages. The...