might, with the greater certainty, effect its total overthrow. But as "the remedy," according to your account, "is cathartic," it ought, certainly, neither to be discontinued nor decompounded, till the diseases to which it is applied be removed, and liberty be restored to her natural strength and healthfulness. If we affirm one thing more decidedly than another, it is, that Charles was guilty. You, in just so many words, as if chaunting your liturgical responses, accuse the parliament of like crimes; admitting every charge against Charles, only that you may be at liberty, in your ill-boding cant, to alledge the same against the parliament. But is this to purge or exculpate Charles, and thence to prove that he suffered innocently? Again," before the commencement of this parliament not a word, (you say) not even the minutest spark of Charles's crimes, was visible." And do not the murmurs, the sighs and groans of the people, partly on aecount of exactions of unexampled oppressiveness, partly on account of persecutions from the bishops, so terrible that multitudes have been driven from their native country---do not the councils, the edicts, the actions of the king from the very beginning of his reign, with his lawless and scandalous dissolution of every parliament he ever called-do not all these things cry aloud, that the fact is widely different? And the more especially, when it is for these very reasons that the people, from a distrust of the king's prudence, or of his good intentions, have openly declared, that their only hope and fortress, their only refuge and safety, are in the parliament? Upon which declaration, the king, with anger pale and livid, the true symptom of a tyrant's malice, that he might stifle by force the groans of the people, sanctioned the cruel decree, by which no man was suffered even to mention the calling of a parliament; till, at length, alarmed by appearances of commotion among the people, by reason of these arbitrary proceedings, he thought proper, with however ill a grace, to assemble the parliament. "It is not to be believed (you say) but that you are guilty of numberless fabrications, in order to throw the blame of your crime upon the king. Is there any thing of this sort discoverable in his book, so divinely penned?" I would rather you should be an admirer of that book than I: for what is there in it but tinsel ornaments and empty boasts? an opinion in which yourself would concur, if you had perused with a sound and unbiassed judgment, those letters of his which were intercepted at the battle of Naseby, written and signed with his own hand, and in which he does not conceal. his tyrannical arts. "The Independents, (you say) are like the Jesuits, who, cashiered the king, changed the form of the government, and yet maintained, that it was never their intention to do these things." What are the Jesuits to us? As if it were not a matter of prudence, rather than of Jesuitism, frequently to prefer second counsels, if, in process of time, it should be discovered that they are really the best! In the first place, it appeared to us to be some advance, nay a great one, towards the restitution of the church and of the commonwealth, whenwe further perceived that it was in the appointment of God-however we may have slighted or have been backward to follow his presence and his providence, going before us to deeds of such high renown-that no enemy, envious of our fame, and under pretence of our. levity and inconstancy, should interrupt a progress so auspicious, and so evidently unexpected! You often object, that we take the parliament as a body only," without a head. If you would consent to drop the metaphor, you would soon become wiser, and would find that the parliament is a body of that description to which the addition of a head is unnecessary: for it is neither a head nor a tail, but the common and free counsel of a nation, which constitutes and is called a parliament. You proceed" In respect of foreign nations, I would at any rate remove from us who are in exile, this infamy and calumny" namely, that there is not one among them, who knows how to defend the royal cause in Latin. "This is my answer to this noisy fellow." And a most precious answerer you are to be sure! And are you, you scoundrel skulker from the light! chosen out from among the rest, to attack us from your ambush, and alone to answer for you all? Unquestionably, that must be a learned tribe, and those must be choice spirits, of whom you are the leader---ass as you are, of an unusual size, though neither from Arcadia nor Reaté*, but from the region of Soli! You! answer in Latin, whose every page, as well of the former chapters, as of this last, is stuffed with barbarisms and solecisms !--"Tam castus ut exemplum præbuit. Tu hæc refricas ut regi convitiare. A famulis rimari. Nisi fulcientur. Tanta caligine, ut justitiam causæ metiuntur. Ne millesima pars petitionum ad eam deferrerentur. Toties purgatum ut nil præter nomen manere potest. Tanto acumine ut maxima pars mundi mirantur ac stupent. • Places famous for their asses, Tanto strepitu ut cætera theatra pro tempore silent. Non quin indies precamur. Non mitius eorum consilium interpretarer. Carolum filium reum causatis*." The royal cause is truly worthy of a champion so stupid as yourself, who, though you have undertaken to defend that most iniquitous cause, and with a parade of learning too, are yet so ignorant of letters, that even your own clients will be ashamed of you, and with hisses and stripes, will send you back to that hut of obscurity, from which you have had the folly to come forth: unless, indeed, you should be handed over to the hangman for chastisement, and as you can comprehend nothing else, should be made to learn of what materials a gallows is composed! You observe" Whatever mistakes I may have made in this apology, should be ascribed to my slender capacity." I am entirely of your opinion. I cannot help thinking, however, that your slender capacity has consulted very ill for you, in thus urging you to the presumptuous attempt to stand under the burthen of one, to whom you are unequal in strength; and under which burthen, however proud of the weight, you must, of necessity, be the more easily crushed and crumbled to atoms. For my part, I scarcely know whether to call your capacity slender or thick, as to me, it is clearly * These detached Latin sentences have no immediate connection with what preceded, with what follows, or with one another. They are exhibited solely for the inspection of the Latin scholar, as examples of the corrupt Latinity of our author's antagonist. There can be no utility in attempting a translation; and the less, as in their present unconnected form, it is not easy, in every instance, to see to what they refer, without having recourse to the original. The offences, however, against the rules of Latin gram mar are sufficiently palpable. without all dimensions and form--a rude and confused mass-rudis indigestaque moles). If the courtiers, who "fatten upon the king's gold," have neglected you heretofore, and have suffered you to go perishing with hunger, of which you contemptibly complain, how will they now, after this your wretched and ridiculous defence of their cause, hate and laugh you to scorn! unless they should haply determine to employ that royal garter, on which you plume yourself so much, to stop those jaws of yours, which have deserved so ill of the king, rather than to stuff them with the courtly collops, after which you hanker. And the more especially, at this time, when you pass all of a sudden from praising the king, to a heavy censure, both of the king, and of the royalists; and instead of being an enemy to us, are converted into a most convenient ally. In fact, you are a new evidence, that the king was either unequal to his trust, or almost wholly neglectful of it: for, he seldom read "the petitions," namely, of his subjects: for, no one dared complain to him of traitors, through fear of the traitors to whom he principally listened: for, he trusted every thing to chamberlains and waiting men; himself the while dissolved in ease, free from care. Whence I may truly ex claim with the old man in the fable: "Ita me dii amabunt ut hunc ego ausculto lubens;: Nimis lepidè facit verba” de regiis suis. "Neque compellare volo illum, ne desinat Memorare mores" regis et regiorum. Now, by the gods! this man so praises kings, I lend a willing ear; nor interrupt, Lest he cease to paint their manners thus córrupt: |