session to abolish, or
circumscribe, or define, some prerogative of the crown, and innovate
in the usual tenor of government, what could be expected, but that the
prince would exert himself in defending, against such inveterate enemies
an authority which, during the most regular course of the former English
government, had been exercised without dispute or controversy? And
though Charles II., in 1672, may with reason be deemed the aggressor,
nor is it possible to justify his conduct, yet were there some motives,
surely, which could engage a prince so soft and indolent, and at the
same time so judicious, to attempt such hazardous enterprises. He felt
that public affairs had reached a situation at which they could not
possibly remain without some further innovation. Frequent parliaments
were become almost absolutely necessary to the conducting of public
business; yet these assemblies were still, in the judgment of the
royalists, much inferior in dignity to the sovereign, whom they seemed
better calculated to counsel than control. The crown still possessed
considerable power of opposing parliaments; and had not as yet acquired
the means of influencing them. Hence a continual jealousy between
these parts of the legislature: hence the inclination mutually to take
advantage of each other's necessities: hence the impossibility,
under which the king lay, of finding ministers who could at once be
serviceable and faithful to him. If he followed his own choice in
appointing his servants, without regard to their parliamentary interest,
a refractory session was instantly to be expected: if he chose them
from among the leaders of popular assemblies, they either lost their
influence with the people by adhering to the crown, or they betrayed
the crown in order to preserve their influence. Neither Hambden, whom
Charles I. was willing to gain at any price; nor Shaftesbury, whom
Charles II., after the Popish plot, attempted to engage in his counsels,
would renounce their popularity for the precarious, and, as they
esteemed it, deceitful favor of the prince. The root of their authority
they still thought to lie in the parliament; and as the power of that
assembly was not yet uncontrollable, they still resolved to augment it,
though at the expense of the royal prerogatives.

It is no wonder that these events have long, by the representations of
faction, been extremely clouded and obscured. No man has yet arisen, who
has paid an entire regar