hazard of being considered an enemy to royalty: and that there was not in this juncture time for deliberation, as there was, happily, at the Revolution.

In answer to all these allegations, the Serjeant shews that the whole affair was absolutely at the sovereign disposal of the army, which was at the sovereign disposal of Monk. He shews that this General had the irresistible controul over the composition, the proceedings, and the duration, of this same unbiassed assembly, which so perfectly and independently represented the collective will of the nation. He shews that the conscious impotence and the despondency of the people, will fully account for their making no active display of opinion on the subject; and that it is utterly absurd to pretend to believe, that he would have incurred their disapprobation by proposing to insist on conditions in favour of their liberties. He shews, moreover, that there were persons, (some of them of high rank,) bold enough to agitate it,-among whom was Mr. (afterwards Sir Matthew) Hale, who made, even in this miserable parliament, a proposition for discussing the desirable limitations, which proposition was instantly quashed by the immediate personal interference of Monk, who had been for some time in a negociation with the exiled monarch to restore him unfettered by stipulations. As to the difference between the Restoration and the Revolution, with regard to the time allowed for deliberation and adjustment, we will quote Mr. Heywood's statement:

At the Revolution, James fled on the 11th of December, and William and Mary, accepted the crown on the 13th of February following, so that thirty three days only could be employed in settling the constitution, and consulting the wishes of those to whom the regal power was to be committed. At the Restoration, a much longer time elapsed, from the period when Monk is supposed, by some, to have entertained sentiments favourable to monarchy and the time when the King was in fact restored; but at all events, twenty eight days elapsed between the open declaration of his sentiments, made on the 1st of May, 1660, and the King's return to the seat of government.'

Extreme credulity, and several blunders in the statement of particular facts, are exposed, in the remarks on Mr. Rose's argument from the number of families possessed of the ecclesiastical and crown lands. It is proved, that, according to that very authority on which alone Mr. Rose can rest his assertion, (an anonymous party pamphlet,) he ought to have made the number much greater, even so great as must prove that authority to be utterly worthless. And Mr. H. quotes the precise words of a letter of Lord Clarendon, as follows:

"I am not so much frighted with the fear of those persons who being possessed of church, crown, and delinquents' lands, will be hereby withheld from returning to their duty, except they might sured to

retain the same. First, I do not think the number so considerable of all those who are entangled in that guilt, that their interest can continue or support the war, when the nation shall discern that there is nothing else keeps off peace." Afterwards he again says expressly, “the number of those is not great."

And in a letter to his lordship, from Mr. Barwick, it is as serted, by computation, less than a year's tax would now 'redeem all the land that hath been sold of all sorts, which, upon the refreshment the kingdom will be sensible of at first upon his majesty's return, may possibly be granted.'

The Vindicator has taken, by the way, a dexterous advantage of the Right Hon. Observer's indiscretion, in defending Charles's assumption of the throne without restrictions on his power, on the ground that he was thus placed on it by the will of the people, as declared by a representative convention, 'elected,' as he asserts, by the unbiassed voice.' It is hinted to him, somewhat irrisively, that a strenuous anti-republican should here have taken very particular care what he was about.

Among the proofs of the baseness of Monk's character, it was asserted by Mr. Fox that he acquiesced in the insults so meanly put upon the illustrious corpse of Blake, under whose auspices and command he had performed the most creditable services of his life.' Nothing will be easier to the Historian's assailant than to dispose of this accusation. The story rests,' says he, on the authority of Neal's History of the Puritans; and is refuted by Grey in his impartial examination of that history, and by clear evidence adduced by Bishop Kennet.' He will have it that the corpse of Blake was with great decency reinterred in St. Margaret's church-yard,' though those of Crom. well, Ireton, and some others, were ignominiously treated. Mr. Heywood has shewn, first, that Mr. Rose appears to be entirely ignorant of the fact, that the body of Blake was not dug up till many months after those of Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and Pride: and, next, that the story,' as believed by Mr. Fox, does not rest on the authority of Neal alone; for that Anthony Wood, an evidence beyond all exception in this case, thus relates the fact, in his Fasti Oxonienses: His body (that of Blake), I say, was then (September 12th) taken up, ' and, with others, buried in a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard adjoining, near to the back door of one of the prebendaries of Westminster, in which place it now remaineth, enjoying no other monument but what it reared by his valour, which time itself can hardly efface.' Wood naturally chose the smoothest terms he could, in relating such an act done under the authority of the restored monarchy; but his words convey, in effect, just the very same fact described by Neal in

the terms thrown, along with others, into one pit.' Besides, as Mr. Heywood justly observes, the circumstance of the body being dug up was, in itself, a gross and mean insult, and enough to justify Mr. Fox's expressions.

But whatever be the fortunes of Historian or Judge, it is sure always to be bad times with Mr. Rose: and the worse, the more he enters into details and records, in rash confidence of the accuracy so boastfully pretended to have been acquired in official employments. He could not well have been safer, than in legal and parliamentary history. While working about there, he was as secure against any ordinary power of sight, and search, and seizure, as those active molesters of our granaries which have their retreats and walks within the walls and under the floors,-where nothing less keen and adroit than a ferret can find them, fight them, and bring them' out. But even there this cruel and relentness investigator reaches him. For instance, if Mr. Rose is resolved to claim the merit of having detected two errors in Lord Coke, the Serjeant is very quickly upon him with an admonition to thank Mr. Prynne for the detection of one of these errors, if it was an error, 150 years ago, in a book which Mr. Rose had before him. As to the other instance of detection, in which a proposition of Lord Coke was to be proved by Mr. Rose to be erroneous by means of the language of a statute of Edward VI., Mr. Heywood shews him that he does not at all understand, in this case at least, the legal parliamentary language, that Coke was perfectly accurate, and that, as the Serjeant tells him, "a little learning is a dangerous thing." Again,

Mr. Rose observes of the writ de Heretico Comburendo, that it "had been a dead letter for more than a century, and there was not the remotest chance of its ever being revived." The first of these observations is not accurate, for it had been put in execution in 1612, the ninth of James the First, when two Arians, Bartholomew Legate, and one Whiteman, were burnt, the former in Smithfield, the latter at Litchfield. The se cond is a matter of speculation : Mr. Rose, more than a century after this writ was taken away, in the spirit of a tranquil philosopher, may think its removal of no consequence; but probably the prospect of a popish successor, and the violence of those times, might have induced the Protestants in the reign of Charles the Second, to form a different opinion of the prospect of this writ being brought again into use.'

Yet again. The abolition of the Court of Wards, an institution erected in the reign of Henry VIII., by virtue of which, according to Mr. Rose's statement, the king had the wardship of all infant heirs male, with the benefit of their estates, till they arrived at the age of 21 years; and of female heirs till they were 16 years of age, if they so long remained unmarried; and the power of marrying both the one

and the other to whom he pleased, or of granting the same to any favourite, together with a year's or half-a-year's rent, on their coming of age, for their relief-the abolition of this court being mentioned by Mr. Fox among the things contributing to make the reign of Charles II. the era of good laws, Mr. Rose, allowing it was a great relief to the upper classes, says it was obtained, however, at no small price; the commutation being a grant to the king of a perpetual excise, which was so far from being generally approved of, that the question in favour of it was carried by the friends of government by a majority of only two.' Now it was appointed for Mr. Rose and his readers to learn, from the Serjeant, that it was the "moiety only of a perpetual excise, on certain aritcles' that was granted, and that this was granted without a division.' 'An attempt was made to settle the other moiety on the king for life, and negatived by the opponents of government by a majority of two, 151 to 149, which must be the division to which Mr. Rose has alluded.' Well may the Serjeant ask, "With the Journal before him, how can such a mistake be accounted for? He takes the proper pains to inform himself; the entry is a short one, yet in the attempt to transfer its substance to another piece of paper, something totally dissimilar to the original is produced.'

Sometimes the Serjeant amuses himself for it is no more than pleasantry-with making out plausible appearances that Mr. Rose is more republican in his notions than the historian, notwithstanding all his pains taken to make invidious imputations of this nature to that writer. He is brought into ludicrous contrast with himself on this point, by Mr. Heywood's remarks on his strong dissent from Mr. Fox's and Judge Blackstone's opinion, in numbering among the things conducing to the perfection of the constitution at the period alluded to, the bill which repealed an enactment of the long parliament for empowering parliaments to convoke themselves independently of the will of the king; an enactment which Mr. Fox thought an injurious infringement of the royal prerogative.

The Observer has contested the Historian's assertion, when speaking of Charles II.'s ministry, notorious by the denomination of the Cabal, that the king kept from them the real state of his connexion with France; and from some of them, at least, the secret of what he was pleased to call his reli gion.' The Vindicator soon confirms this assertion by good evidence: But, seldom content merely to defend Mr. Fox, he is apt to find some means of taking a signal revenge. In the present instance he is immoderately barbarous. For Mr. Rose having cited, somewhat in the tone of triumph, a letter of

Barillon to Louis, in proof that this Cabal ministry were fully apprized of Charles's money transactions with the French king, the Serjeant comes in, much like a Cherokee with his tomahawk, with this effective segment of chronology-that Barillon did not come to England, to write his letters, till seven years after 1676, the period of which Mr. Fox was speaking, and that they were written, concerning the contemporary ministers, a number of years, as their dates shew, after that Cabal ministry had ceased to exist.

The imputed agency of Clarendon in the base money transactions between Charles and Louis, was alluded to in terms of reserve and uncertainty by Mr. Fox. The charge was made in the most full and positive form by the Observer. What evidence there is on the subject has been carefully examined and is clearly stated by Mr. Heywood;-and the effect of it is, not, perhaps, wholly to exculpate the minister, but materially to modify the charge, though it leaves still in doubt what was the full extent of his participation.

The next controverted question, which occupied so considerable a portion of Mr. Rose's book, and occupies a much larger space in Mr. Heywood's, is, whether or not James in. tended the substitution of popery to protestantism, as the established national religion. The author has pursued the argument round the widest extent of evidence, from documents and from circumstances; and does appear to have come to the conclusion with a very preponderating probability that James was not, in the earlier part of his reign, projecting any thing more, in favour of the Catholic religion, than its complete toleration. The letters of Barillon, which have been considered and cited by Mr. Rose, as affording decisive proof that this monarch designed the establishment of popery, become, under the more accurate examination of Mr. Heywood, very strong evidence of the exact contrary; since it is the free exercise only, the established toleration, of that religion, that they preciselyland repeatedly mention as James's object--and, so far as religion was concerned, the king of France's object in affording him pecuniary aids-This long argument, and the topic connected with it, the invariable and predominant design of Charles II. and James to establish themselves in a complete despotic power, lead Mr. Heywood into a series of extremely curious investigations and disclosures of the base characters and intrigues of these two sovereign personages. It is a most melancholy reflection, and it haunts a thoughtful reader throughout the exhibition, that great nations, the assemblage of millions of beings with minds, may be prostrate under, and even worship, the authority of the meanest vilest refuse of their own nature,