g to
know that a person who had been far more cruelly wronged than he, but
whose nature differed widely from his, the nobleminded Lady Russell,
remonstrated against the injustice with which the extreme Whigs treated
Halifax, [548]

The malice of John Hampden, however, was unwearied and unabashed. A few
days later, in a committee of the whole House of Commons on the state
of the nation, he made a bitter speech, in which he ascribed all the
disasters of the year to the influence of the men who had, in the days
of the Exclusion Bill, been censured by Parliaments, of the men who had
attempted to mediate between James and William. The King, he said, ought
to dismiss from his counsels and presence all the three noblemen who had
been sent to negotiate with him at Hungerford. He went on to speak
of the danger of employing men of republican principles. He doubtless
alluded to the chief object of his implacable malignity. For Halifax,
though from temper averse to violent changes, was well known to be in
speculation a republican, and often talked, with much ingenuity and
pleasantry, against hereditary monarchy. The only effect, however, of
the reflection now thrown on him was to call forth a roar of derision.
That a Hampden, that the grandson of the great leader of the Long
Parliament, that a man who boasted of having conspired with Algernon
Sidney against the royal House, should use the word republican as a term
of reproach! When the storm of laughter had subsided, several members
stood up to vindicate the accused statesmen. Seymour declared that, much
as he disapproved of the manner in which the administration had lately
been conducted, he could not concur in the vote which John Hampden had
proposed. "Look where you will," he said, "to Ireland, to Scotland, to
the navy, to the army, you will find abundant proofs of mismanagement.
If the war is still to be conducted by the same hands, we can expect
nothing but a recurrence of the same disasters. But I am not prepared to
proscribe men for the best thing that they ever did in their lives, to
proscribe men for attempting to avert a revolution by timely mediation."
It was justly said by another speaker that Halifax and Nottingham had
been sent to the Dutch camp because they possessed the confidence of
the nation, because they were universally known to be hostile to the
dispensing power, to the Popish religion, and to the French ascendency.
It was at length resolved that the King shou