omnem eventum.

And on the other side the loving and frank proceeding with you by your Parliament of England will daunt the ill affected part of the Parliament of Ireland.

If your M. had heard and seen the thunder of the bells and the lightning of the bonfires for your grandchild, you would say there is little cause to doubt the affections of the people of England in puris naturalibus. God preserve your Majesty. I rest

Your M.'s most bounden servant,

FR. BACON.

What particular communications passed between the King and the "Undertakers," I have not been able to discover. But there is some reason to believe that he put to them the question which Bacon suggested; that they in reply submitted to him their proposition; and that he referred it to his Learned Counsel for their report. It is certain that some proposition relative to the coming Parliament, and involving a variety of questions, was referred to them by the King some time before the 17th of February; and it is not likely to have come from the Council of State, because it was not till the 16th that the Lords of the Council made up their minds to recommend the calling of a Parliament at all. The Learned Counsel asked leave to deliver their report by word of mouth; which I presume they did; though no record remains of what passed at the interview.

But in the Council of State in the mean time the dissentient party had at last given way. A resolution had been passed that it was expedient to call a Parliament with as little delay as possible. With that view the petition of grievances had been perused, and a selection made of those which might without prejudice be redressed. And in a list which has been preserved of the titles of several bills to be drawn or to be further consulted upon,

we may trace the resultant of the various forces that were acting upon the government.

The first eight of these being described as bills to be drawn "upon certain of the propositions exhibited unto his Majesty," I take them to be the practical result of the King's communications, first with the "Undertakers," and afterwards with his Learned Counsel; the "propositions exhibited unto his Majesty" being those which they had submitted in answer to the question which by Bacon's advice he had put to them: the "bills to be drawn" upon them being the "following and pursuing" by the government of such of them as were reported by the Learned Counsel to be "fit;" while the remainder of the list, consisting of bills to be drawn " upon other heads besides those that were propounded," of "secret bills," and of "other bills to be propounded, not yet consulted upon," represents probably the policy of the regular advisers of the government, and the measures which they thought it expedient to urge, or to offer, or to acquiesce in.

In this list will be found most of the measures suggested by the petition of grievances, or forming part of the "retribution" offered in the Great Contract, or brought forward independently by Bacon himself in Parliament or otherwise, in the interest of the Commonwealth; measures for the removal or mitigation of the various inconveniences and vexations arising out of the old feudal tenures; measures for the suppression of practices injurious to society, such as piracy and dueling; measures for the protection and encouragement of trade and commerce, according to the political economy of that day; measures for the better and cheaper administration of justice, for the furtherance of colonization, for the suppression of abuses in various kinds, and for enforcing by statute-law injunctions or prohibitions, believed to be salutary, but for which admonitions by Royal Proclamation were not

only ineffectual, for want of penalties that could be legally enforced in case of disobedience, but mischievous, because of the jealousy which they excited and the pretensions which they seemed to imply. And if we may take the titles (being all we have) as indicating the policy and intentions of the government, it is impossible, I think, to look through the list without feeling that, however the want of money may have been the immediate occasion of calling this Parliament, it was not the less called for the dispatch of divers weighty affairs affecting the great interests of the kingdom; and that if the Parliament could have met the government in a corresponding spirit, the result might have been a session memorable to after times for the number of good laws enacted in it.

however, which it reOn the subject of Im

There were rocks in the way, quired discreet steering to avoid. positions, the King, in his answer to the petition of the Commons on the 10th of July, 1610, though he had conceded a great deal, had not conceded enough to satisfy them. The scantiness of the supply which they then consented to vote was ascribed essentially to their resentment of his resolution to maintain the existing impositions as last arranged by Salisbury, even though accompanied with a promise to impose no more; a resolution which he had since reiterated. Now I do not find that anything had occurred since 1610 to make that controversy easier of settlement. For I cannot think that a proposition which seems to have been urged by Sir Henry Neville would have answered the purpose; namely, that a grant should be made to the King for his life by Parliament of the existing impositions: since it was recommended on the very ground that it would make no substantial difference in either of the points which were most stood upon; either the constitutional question of

1 See ante, vol. i., p. 616.

the right to impose, which was a matter of immense importance for the future, or in the actual pressure of the tax, which was the immediate grievance. So that if they were not satisfied with the King's offer in 1610 to " assent to an act by which his power should be suspended from imposing any more upon merchandises without consent of Parliament,1 it is difficult to conceive why they should have been better satisfied now with the arrangement proposed by Neville. With regard again to the Ecclesiastical Grievances, which were left very much as they were, I do not find that anything had happened either to make the people forget them or to reconcile the King to their removal. Nor does it appear that the "Undertakers" had any measure on this head to recommend. For though Mr. Gardiner has "little doubt that if Neville had been called on to speak plainly, he would have pointed to the ecclesiastical grievances as those which it was most necessary to redress," yet as he was not restricted to the answering of questions asked, but delivering himself of a piece of free and voluntary advice, and professing to offer as complete a collection as he could of the "things which had been by several men desired to be obtained of his Majesty for the good of his people," and as he made no mention whatever of ecclesiastical grievances either in the memorial or the collection which accompanied it, if we may not infer that they were not the grievances which seemed to him to stand most in need of redress, we must at least conclude that he had no practical measure of redress to suggest.

With combustibles of this kind lying so near the surface, and so ready to take fire, a safe passage could only be secured by more discreet behavior on both sides than in their present temper could well be expected from either. But the experiment was to be made.

The writs were out before the end of February; and

1 See ante, vol. i., p. 615...

during March all England was busy with the election of knights and burgesses for a parliamentary campaign in which questions were to be dealt with that were interesting to everybody. Bacon, we have seen, though far from thinking that such a business ought to be left to chance, without any care taken to promote the election of the better sort of candidates or hinder that of the worse, had nevertheless warned the King against "brigues and canvasses," which, he said, "would but increase animosities and oppositions," and would also destroy the moral value of success 66 making whatever should be done to be in evil conceit with the people in general afterwards." But when such eager passions and such strong personal interests were enlisted on both sides, it was impossible to prevent zeal from overflowing. There was a great deal of canvassing, and the effect of it upon popular opinion was exactly what Bacon anticipated, and showed itself immediately. As early as the 3d of March we find Chamberlain reporting to Carleton, "Here is much justling for places in Parliament, and letters fly from great persons extraordinarily: wherein methinks they do the King no great service, seeing the world is apt to censure it as a kind of packing." It is true that the interference was not generally successful. "Letters and countenance," he writes again on the 17th, "prove not so powerful as was imagined, even in the meaner boroughs." But that did not mend the case. If they were ineffectual, it was because the adverse party was too strong. Where they failed to overcome opposition, they would exasperate and strengthen it. And the result of the election was the return of a House of Commons in which two thirds of the members had never been in Parliament before, heavy odds against order and regularity, and that conformity to ancient usage by which alone any numerous popular assembly can be preserved from mere distraction and confusion.