of Bishop Burnet; and yet no sooner has he said this, than he tells us, Mr. Laing considers the bishop's authority to be confirmed by Cunningham and Baillie, both contemporary writers. Into Cunningham or Baillie, Mr. Rose never looks to see whether or not they do really confirm the authority of the bishop; and so gross is his negligence, that the very misprint from Mr. Laing's work is copied, and page 431. of Baillie is cited, instead of 451. If Mr. Rose had really taken the trouble of referring to these books, all doubt of the meanness and guilt of Monk must have been instantly removed. Monk was moved,' says Baillie,' to send down four or five of Argyle's letters to himself and others, promising his full compliance with them, that the King should not reprieve him.'-(Baillie's Letters, p. 451.) He endeavoured to make his defence,' says Cunningham; but, chiefly by the discoveries of Monk, was condemned of high treason, and lost his head.'-Cunningham's History, i. p. 13.

Would it have been more than common decency required, if Mr. Rose, who had been apprised of the existence of these authorities, had had recourse to them, before he impugned the accuracy of Mr. Fox? Or is it possible to read, without some portion of contempt, this slovenly and indolent corrector of supposed inaccuracies in a man, not only so much greater than himself in his general nature, but a man who, as it turns out, excels Mr. Rose in his own little arts of looking, searching, and comparing; and is as much his superior in the retail qualities which small people arrogate to themselves, as he was in every commanding faculty to the rest of his fellow-creatures?

Mr. Rose searches Thurloe's State Papers; but Serjeant Heywood searches them after Mr. Rose: and, by a series of the plainest references, proves the probability there is that Argyle did receive letters which might materially have affected his life.

To Monk's duplicity of conduct may be principally attributed the destruction of his friends, who were prevented, by their confidence in him, from taking measures to secure themselves. He selected those among them whom he thought fit for trial-sat as a commissioner

upon their trial-and interfered not to save the lives even of those with whom he had lived in habits of the greatest kindness.

'I cannot,' says a witness of the most unquestionable authority, I cannot forget one passage that I saw. Monk and his wife, before they were removed to the Tower, while they were yet prisoners at Lambeth House, came one evening to the garden, and caused them to be brought down, only to stare at them; which was such a barbarism, for that man who had betrayed so many poor men to death and misery, that never hurt him, but had honoured him, and trusted their lives and interests with him, to glut his bloody eyes with beholding them in their bondage, as no story can parallel the inhumanity of.'-(p. 83.) Hutchinson's Memoirs, 378.

This, however, is the man whom Mr. Fox, at the distance of a century and a half, may not mark with infamy, without incurring, from the candour of Mr. Rose, the imputation of republican principles; as if attachment to monarchy could have justified, in Monk, the coldness, cruelty, and treachery of his character, -as if the historian became the advocate, or the enemy of any form of government, by praising the good, or blaming the bad men which it might produce. Serjeant Heywood sums up the whole article as follows:

Having examined and commented upon the evidence produced by Mr. Rose, than which "it is hardly possible," he says, to conceive that stronger could be formed in any case, to establish a negative," we now safely assert, that Mr. Fox had fully informed himself upon the subject before he wrote, and was amply justified in the condemnation of Monk, and the consequent severe censures upon him. It has been already demonstrated, that the character of Monk had been truly given, when of him he said, "the army had fallen into the hands of one, than whom a baser could not be found in its lowest ranks." The transactions between him and Argyle for a certain period of time, were such as must naturally, if not necessarily, have led them into an epistolary correspondence; and it was in exact conformity with Monk's character and conduct to the regicides, that he should betray the letters written to him, in order to destroy a man whom he had, in the latter part of his command in Scotland, both feared and hated. If the fact of the pro

duction of these letters had stood merely on the testimony of Bishop Burnet, we have seen that nothing has been produced by Mr. Rose and Dr. Campbell to impeach it; on the contrary, an inquiry into the authorities and documents they have cited strongly confirm it. But, as before observed, it is a surprising instance of Mr. Rose's indolence, that he should state the question to depend now, as it did in Dr. Campbell's time, on the bishop's authority solely. But that authority is, in itself, no light one. Burnet was almost eighteen years of age at the time of Argyle's trial; he was never an unobserving spectator of public events; he was probably at Edinburgh, and, for some years afterwards, remained in Scotland, with ample means of information respecting events which had taken place so recently. Baillie seems also to have been upon the spot, and expressly confirms the testimony of Burnet. To these must be added Cunningham, who, writing as a person perfectly acquainted with the circumstances of the transaction, says it was owing to the interference of Monk, who had been his great friend in Oliver's time, that he was sent back to Scotland, and brought to trial; and that he was condemned chiefly by his discoveries. We may now ask where is the improbability of this story, when related of such a man? and what ground there is for not giving credit to a fact attested by three witnesses of veracity, each writing at a distance, and separate from each other? In this instance Bishop Burnet is so confirmed, that no reasonable being, who will attend to the subject, can doubt of the fact he relates being true; and we shall hereafter prove, that the general imputation against his accuracy, made by Mr. Rose, is totally without foundation. If facts so proved are not to be credited, historians may lay aside their pens, and every man must content himself with the scanty pittance of knowledge he may be able to collect for himself, in the very limited sphere of his own immediate observation.'-(pp. 86—88.)

This, we think, is conclusive enough: but we are happy to be enabled, out of our own store, to set this part of the question finally to rest, by an authority which Mr. Rose himself will probably admit to be decisive.Sir George Mackenzie, the great Tory lawyer of Scotland in that day, and Lord Advocate to Charles II., through the greater part of his reign, was the leading counsel for Argyle on the trial alluded to.-In 1678, this learned person, who was then Lord Advocate to Charles, published an elaborate treatise on the criminal law of Scot

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land, in which, when treating of Probation, or Evidence, he observes, that missive letters, not written, but only signed by the party, should not be received in evidence; and immediately adds, And yet, the Marquess of Argyle was convict of treason, UPON LETTERS WRITTEN BY HIM TO GENERAL MONK; these letters being only subscribed by him, and not holograph, and the subscription being proved per comparationem literarum; which were very hard in other cases,' &c.-(Mackenzie's Criminals, first edit. p. 524. Part II. tit. 25. § 3.) Now this, we conceive, is nothing more nor less than a solemn professional report of the case,- and leaves just as little room for doubt as to the fact, as if the original record of the trial had been recovered.

Mr. Rose next objects to Mr. Fox's assertion, that 'the King kept from his Cabal Ministry the real state of his connection with France-and from some of them the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion;' and Mr. Fox doubts whether to attribute this conduct to the habitual treachery of Charles, or to an apprehension, that his ministers might demand for themselves some share of the French money; which he was unwilling to give them. In answer to this conjecture, Mr. Rose quotes Barillon's Letters to Lewis XIV. to show that Charles's ministers were fully apprised of his money transactions with France. The letters so quoted were, however, written seven years after the Cabal Ministry were in power- for Barillon did not come to England as ambassador till 1677-and these letters were not written till after that period. Poor Sir Patrick-It was for thee and thy defence this book was written!!!!

Mr. Fox has said, that from some of the ministers of the Cabal the secret of Charles's religion was concealed. It was known to Arlington, admitted by Mr. Rose to be a concealed Catholic; it was known to Clifford, an avowed Catholic: Mr. Rose admits it not to have been known to Buckingham, though he explains the reserve, with respect to him, in a different way. He has not, however, attempted to prove that Lauderdale or Ashley were consulted; -on the contrary, in Colbert's Letter of the

25th August, 1670, cited by Mr. Rose, it is stated that Charles had proposed the traité simulé, which should be a repetition of the former one in all things, except the article relative to the King's declaring himself a Catholic, and that the Protestant Ministers, Buckingham, Ashley Cooper, and Lauderdale, should be brought to be parties to it: Can there be a stronger proof (asks Serjeant Heywood), that they were ignorant of the same treaty made the year before, and remaining then in force?' Historical research is certainly not the peculiar talent of Mr. Rose; and as for the official accuracy of which he is so apt to boast, we would have Mr. Rose to remember, that the term official accuracy has of late days become one of very ambiguous import. Mr. Rose, we can see, would imply by it the highest possible accuracy—as we see office pens advertised in the window of a shop, by way of excellence. The public reports of those, however, who have been appointed to look into the manner in which public offices are conducted, by no means justify this usage of the term ;—and we are not without apprehensions, that Dutch politeness, Carthaginian faith, Bootian genius, and official accuracy, may be terms equally current in the world; and that Mr. Rose may, without intending it, have contributed to make this valuable addition to the mass of our ironical phraseology.

Speaking of the early part of James's reign, Mr. Fox says, it is by no means certain that he had yet thoughts of obtaining for his religion any thing more than a complete toleration; and if Mr. Rose had understood the meaning of the French word établissement, one of his many incorrect corrections of Mr. Fox might have been spared. A system of religion is said to be established when it is enacted and endowed by Parliament; but a toleration (as Serjeant Heywood observes) is established when it is recognised and protected by the supreme power. And in the letters of Barillon, to which Mr. Rose refers for the justification of his attack upon Mr. Fox, it is quite manifest that it is in this latter sense that the word établissement is used; and that the object in view was, not the substitution of the Catholic religion for the Es