y of the tribes of the people." "Most royal
sovereign," said one of the deputations, "the hearts of all are filled
with veneration for you, confidence in you, longings for you. All
degrees, and ages, and sexes, high, low, rich and poor, men, women,
and children, join in sending up to Heaven one prayer, 'Long live King
Charles II.;' so that the English air is not susceptible of any other
sound, bells, bonfires, peals of ordnance, shouts, and acclamations of
the people bear no other moral; nor can his majesty conceive with what
joy, what cheerfulness, what lettings out of the soul, what
expressions of transported minds, a stupendous concourse of people
attended the proclamation of their most potent, most mighty, and most
undoubted king." Such was the adulatory language addressed by the
English people to the son of the king they had murdered, and to a man
noted for every frivolity and vice that could degrade a sovereign.
What are we to think of that public joy, and public sycophancy, after
so many years of hard fighting for civil and religious liberty? For
what were the battles of Naseby and Worcester? For what the Solemn
League and Covenant? For what the trial and execution of Charles I.?
For what the elevation of Cromwell? Alas! for what were all the
experiments and sufferings of twenty years, the breaking up of old and
mighty customs, and twenty years of blood, usurpation, and change?
What were the benefits of the Revolution? Or, had it no benefits? How
happened it that a whole nation should simultaneously rise and expel
their monarch from a throne which his ancestors had enjoyed for six
hundred years, and then, in so short a time, have elevated to this old
throne, which was supposed to be subverted forever, the son of their
insulted, humiliated, and murdered king? and this without bloodshed,
with every demonstration of national rejoicings, and with every
external mark of repentance for their past conduct. Charles, too, was
restored without any of those limitations by which the nation sought
to curtail the power of his father. The nation surrendered to him more
absolute power than the most ambitious kings, since the reign of John,
had ever claimed,--more than he ever dared to expect. How shall we
explain these things? And what is the moral which they teach?

[Sidenote: Reaction to Revolutionary Principles.]

One fact is obvious,--that a great reaction had taken place in the
national mind as to revolutionary principles.