to make
any concession; and the Bill of Rights was suffered to drop, [407]

But the most exciting question of this long and stormy session was, what
punishment should be inflicted on those men who had, during the interval
between the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the Revolution,
been the advisers or the tools of Charles and James. It was happy for
England that, at this crisis, a prince who belonged to neither of
her factions, who loved neither, who hated neither, and who, for the
accomplishment of a great design, wished to make use of both, was the
moderator between them.

The two parties were now in a position closely resembling that in which
they had been twenty-eight years before. The party indeed which had then
been undermost was now uppermost: but the analogy between the situations
is one of the most perfect that can be found in history. Both the
Restoration and the Revolution was accomplished by coalitions. At the
Restoration, those politicians who were peculiarly zealous for liberty
assisted to reestablish monarchy: at the Revolution those politicians
who were peculiarly zealous for monarchy assisted to vindicate liberty.
The Cavalier would, at the former conjuncture, have been able to effect
nothing without the help of Puritans who had fought for the Covenant;
nor would the Whig, at the latter conjuncture, have offered a successful
resistance to arbitrary power, had he not been backed by men who had
a very short time before condemned resistance to arbitrary power as a
deadly sin. Conspicuous among those by whom, in 1660, the royal family
was brought back, were Hopis, who had in the days of the tyranny of
Charles the First held down the Speaker in the chair by main force,
while Black Rod knocked for admission in vain; Ingoldsby, whose name was
subscribed to the memorable death warrant; and Prynne, whose ears Laud
had cut off, and who, in return, had borne the chief part in cutting
off Laud's head. Among the seven who, in 1688, signed the invitation to
William, were Compton, who had long enforced the duty of obeying Nero;
Danby, who had been impeached for endeavouring to establish military
despotism; and Lumley, whose bloodhounds had tracked Monmouth to that
sad last hiding place among the fern. Both in 1660 and in 1688, while
the fate of the nation still hung in the balance, forgiveness
was exchanged between the hostile factions. On both occasions the
reconciliation, which had seemed to be cordial in