be observed, however, that few cases of State necessity can be imagined so strong as that which could be urged for the condemnation of Strafford. Some of the moderate among the Presbyterian party* were for sparing his life; but they were hurried on by others of a more bloody temperament. The bill of banishment against Clarendon had this strong foundation, that he had withdrawn himself from justice: yet this ground seems to me not to be sufficient for such a proceeding. I am not, however, disposed very greatly to blame the act of attainder against Sir John Fenwick. A person accused of high treason, and about to be tried in the due course of law for that offence, who pretends he is going to reveal his treason, and takes advantage of his fraud to spirit away a witness, seems to me to have removed himself beyond the pale of all law. His crime was one of the most dangerous nature.

There is not so much to be said in favour of the bill of pains and penalties against Atterbury. It is urged in justification, that Walpole could have brought evidence enough against him to have convicted him of high treason in a court of law. Whether he could have done so or not, it remains as a stain upon his memory for ever, that, for the purpose of banishing this busy priest, he should have induced Parliament to condemn him upon the evidence of letters not in his own hand, and after the death of the person supposed to have written them.

The protest signed by Lord Cowper and thirtynine other Peers on this occasion, contains a sound and satisfactory doctrine on the subject of all bills of this nature.

"We are of opinion,' say these Lords, that no law ought to be passed on purpose to enact that anyone be guilty in law, and punished as such, but

* The Earl of Bedford, Mr. Pym, Mr. Selden, &c.

where such an extraordinary proceeding is evidently necessary for the preservation of the State.

'We clearly take it to be a very strong objection to this mode of proceeding, that rules of law made for the security of the subject are of no use to him in it, and that the conclusion from hence is very strong; that, therefore, it ought not to be taken up, but where clearly necessary, as before affirmed; and we do desire to explain ourselves so far, upon the cases of necessity excepted, as to say we do not intend to include a necessity, arising purely from an impossibility of convicting any other way.'

Setting aside bills of pains and penalties as of dangerous example, it may be alleged that the regular power of impeachment is the security for the responsibility of the ministers of the Crown. As the power of refusing supplies enables the House of Commons to insist that no persons should be advisers of the Crown as ministers who do not enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons, so the power of impeachment is a security against high crimes and misdemeanours on the part of persons who possess that confidence. The impeachment of Lord Melville, who possessed fully the confidence of the House of Commons, may be quoted as a case in point. But it must also be truly said that these two powers of the House of Commons, namely, that of refusing supplies and of impeachment, have proved so efficient, that it was quite enough they should be understood to exist, in order to procure all the advantages they were intended to secure. A refusal or even a delay of supplies on the part of the House of Commons would alarm the country, and shake public credit; the impeachment of a minister may be voted in Parliament, but could hardly in practice be prosecuted to conviction. These terrors have had their day, and their disuse is the proof, not of their uselessness, but of their efficacy.

CHAPTER XX.

GEORGE THE FIRST AND GEORGE THE SECOND.

'I shall continue, during the short remainder of my life, most steadily attached to the ancient freedom of my country (as it was practically enjoyed under those honest old gentlemen, George the First and Second), and your grateful servant,

'JOHN HORNE TOOKE.'

Mr. Horne Tooke's Address to the Electors of Westminster, June 26, 1802.

THE tranquil accession of the House of Hanover to the throne of these realms is the greatest miracle of our history. The ministry of Queen Anne, great part of the Church, and almost all the country gentlemen, were against this violation of the rules of legitimacy, merely in order to preserve the civil and religious liberty of the country; it was the triumph of the enlightened few over the bigotry of millions.

The accession of George I. was the era when government by party was fully established in England. During the reign of William, Whigs and Tories had been employed together by the King; and although the distinctions of a Whig ministry and a Tory ministry were more decidedly marked during the reign of Anne, yet Marlborough and Godolphin, who formed great part of the strength of the Whig ministry, were Tories; and Harley and St. John, who put themselves at the head of the Tory administration, had held, a short time before, subordinate offices under the Whigs. But the complete downfal of the Tory administration, who had signed the peace of Utrecht, and the well-founded suspicion which attached to the whole

CH. XX. GEORGE THE FIRST AND GEORGE THE SECOND. 125

party, of favouring the claim of James II.'s son, placed George I. entirely in the hands of the Whigs. At the same period, the financial difficulties which followed the winding-up of the war, and the great practical talents of Walpole as a statesman, contributed to give a greater importance to the House of Commons than ever, and to place within that House, if I may so express myself, the centre of gravity of the State. Besides these causes, much weight and authority, according to the opinion of Speaker Onslow, were added to the House of Commons by the Septennial Act.

We now find, therefore, a party ruling the country through the House of Commons; a species of government which has been assailed with vehemence, with plausibility, eloquence, and wit, by Swift, and Bolingbroke, and the whole Tory party in the reigns of George I. and II.; by Lord Bute and the King's friends in the commencement of the reign of George III., and by a party of Parliamentary reformers at a later period. The sum of their objections to it is this:-That it mixes and confounds the functions of the King with those of the House of Commons; that the King hereby loses his prerogative of choosing his own servants, and becomes a slave to his powerful subjects; whilst, on the other hand, the House of Commons, by interfering in the executive government, open their door to corruption, and, instead of being the vigilant guardians of the public purse, become the accomplices of an ambitious oligarchy. Now this objection, if good, is fatal to our whole constitution; for we have seen, in reviewing the reign of Charles I., that a King whose servants are quite independent of Parliament, and a Parliament which is adverse to all abuses of power, cannot exist together: submission from one of the parties, or civil war, must ensue.

The question, then, for us to consider is, not whether the government of the two first Princes of the House of Brunswick was a corruption of the old English constitution, but whether it was upon the whole a good or an evil form of government.

The first consideration that must strike us is, that the liberty of the subject was maintained. The chief exceptions to this remark are, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on the discovery of Layer's plot, and the attainder of Bishop Atterbury. Of the latter I have already spoken. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on Layer's plot has always seemed to me unnecessary; but it is impossible to form any correct judgment on this point, and it must not be forgotten that all the chief Jacobites of England were at that time intriguing at Rome to bring in the Pretender. These exceptions to the general liberty of the subject are trifling and temporary; few periods in the history of any nation have been so little disturbed by violations of personal freedom as that of the administration of Walpole.

The

Another remark nearly allied to the former is, that the triumph of party was not marked in England as it has been in nearly every republic that ever existed, ancient or modern, by a cruel and unsparing persecution of their adversaries. history of the divisions of the parties of aristocracy and democracy in the minor States of Greece,-of the parties of Marius and Sylla, of Cæsar and Antony and Octavius at Rome,-of the Guelfs and the Ghibelines, the Bianchi and the Neri, in Italy, -of the Catholics and the Huguenots in France,— is a history of proscriptions, confiscations, massacres, and murders; but the reign of the first Prince of the House of Hanover, is a time when little severity, and still less rancour, is to be found. Although many of the Tories were known to be adverse to the Protestant