lish commoners sought repose. Forsaken by their leaders and impoverished by their mutual dissensions they abandoned all hopes of fighting out the battle of liberty against the encroachments of the crown. But internal peace soon infused new blood into their languid frames; and the greater accumulation of property among them brought forward the necessity of procuring greater securities. The house of commons in England was not an ill-combined coalition of peasants and citizens as in the Continent. It consisted of the most numerous classes of aristocracy persons of property and honourable parentage who recalled to their memories the glory of their ancestors. The sale of the crown lands begun by Henry VIII. and continued by Elizabeth, added greatly to the extension of their property and riches, and they soon endeavoured to put effectual restraints on the rapacity of their monarchs. The reformation a part of which belonged to the people, and was undertaken in the name and ardour of faith, soon inspired them with spirit and hopes to carry on their glorious measures. In the reign of Elizabeth, this movement made itself felt in some degree but under the feeble government of James, and Charles its strong efficacy became apparent and even glaring.

Answer 2nd.-Among the chief proceedings of the second Parliament of Charles, the impeachment of Buckingham was the principal. That insolent minister had by his pretensions and weakness rendered himself extremely unpopular, and the absolute dominion he excercised upon Charles led the Commons to impeach him on the authority of “public rumour." They also forwarded some protests against the arbitrary measures adopted by Charles, for raising money under the name of loans and imprisoning those who refused to pay them.

Answer 3rd.-The leading members of the House of Commons in the third Parliament of Charles were Pym, Sir John Elliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards the grand apostate to the cause of public liberty, Sir Robert Pillips, Mr. Glenville, and Sir Edward Coke. These were the glorious champions of liberty, who first began the task of attacking, storming and dismantling the fortresses of despotism, and of imposing upon Charles more efficacious and powerful restraints that the laws had hitherto devised. The Pettition of Rights was a bill prepared by the House of Commons. After recapitulating the ancient rights and priviledges of the people and the violations committed up to the present time, it complained of the four principal points of national grievance; (1) Illegal taxation; (2) Arbitrary commitment of free citizens and the denial of the rights of the Haveous Corpus act. (3) Billetting of soldiers without their free consent. And (4) Trial by martial law, which although necessary in some measure for the preservation of discipline in the army, was yet unwarranted by the constitution of the country. All arbitrary imposts without the free consent of the Commons, whether in the shape of forced loans, tonnage and poundage, were declared illegal, and the pettition was forwarded to the king for sanction.

Answer 4th.-Among the advisers of Charles after the dissolution of his third Parliament, the most conspicuous were Laud, Strafford, Noy and Finch. The first who was the chief primate of the kingdom, proved himself preminently the "evil genus" of this reign. Far opposed to the healing counsels of Burleigh and Bacon, he irritated every difference on the bosom of the church; and subjected those who failed to subscribe to his doctrine of the divine origin of kings and Bishops, to the most cruel and unwarrantable persecutions ever done to humanity. The odious courts

of Star Chamber and High Commission furnished him with the means of wreaking his vengeance on those who differed from his opinions in the least possible degree. Sometimes approximating to Popery sometimes receeding from it, persecuting the puritans and non conformists, upholding with the most odious and culpable measures the power of the church and next to it that of the king, he applied every nerve to establish the sole dominion of Episcopacy, a church he eventually led to ruin. Under the pretended mask of Arminianism he endeavoured to restablish church authority and priestcraft, to cement its alliance with prerogative and thus to render the king absolute. Even his prudent and warrantable measures, for checking all abuses in the management of the king's affairs and for removing all unnecessary restraints from commerce, excited the hatred of every one he came in contact with. But Wentwarth was a man of greater capacity and judgement and therefore more formidable to the cause of liberty.

After exercising for sometime the most arbitrary iufluence as the President of the Council of North, he left that sphere of action for a more extensive one as lord lieutenant of Ireland. "The Richelieu of that Island" he made it happy under oppression and tyranny. He checked all subordinate tyranny, but made his strong hand uniformly felt every where. The plan of government which he in concert with Laud wished to establish in England was called by the name of "Thorough." He adopted the most enerjectic measures; his words were often violent; spared no evil and error in the management of the king's affairs; tried to destroy the authority of the lawyers and to render the “finger of the king" as he himself said, "heavier than the loins" of the state. He disagreed with Charles in considering that parliament were to be entirely dispensed with, but considered them merely as the instruments of royal authority. Now we come to Noy, a man of venal diligence and prostituted learning" who shaking off the dust from the musty records in the town, advised the king to supply the wants of his impoverished exchequer by issuing writs for ship money, the greatest crime of Charles' reign. Finch who succeeded him made an improvement upon the writs and directed them to be sent to inland counties, as well as to the sea port towns and corporations. Thus they all contributed to bring forward a tyranny, the most frivolous and at the same time the most unjust which England has ever suffered.

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Answer 5th.-These tyrannical measures at once excited general alarm. The aristocracy was seized with the utmost consternation at the progress of the church. They saw that a poor bishop but yesterday taken from the many was about to superscede them in pomp and power. They found the rights and priviledges of their own class at complete jeopardy from the encroachments of the Anglican bishops and the appointment of bishop Juxon to the staff of the lord treasurer, at once filled them with terror and consternation. Further from court, men of learning and of the world, met together in taverns and assemblies, discussed freely on matters of state and religion, sought after truth and justice and sent forth their invectives against the tyranny which attempted to bow down "Christian conciences under a fallacious unity." "Selden poured out the treasures of his erudition; Chillingworth discoursed upon his doubts in matters of faith" and Falkland then but an unrough stripling threw open his house and gardens to all the literary men of England. In the towns and in the country, the gentry complained more of political rather

than of ecclesiastical tyranny. No years within the memory of any one living had witnessed so many violations of property as now. They complained of the violations offered to their persons and property and loudly imprecated the proceedings which brought upon them so much mischief. Farther from these towns the lesser gentry complained bitterly of the tyranny of the bishops. The sturdy puritan, austere in manners and severe in principles took complete alarm at the downward progress of the English church to Catholicism, and the encouragement avowedly given to pastimes and morricedanees, even on the day of his sabath-pastimes which to his cynical temper were scarcely tolerable on any other day less sacred in the week. In fact so general was the dissaffection that people began to fly from their country and began their settlement in New England. So great was the number of these cmigrations that almost tweleve millions of money were carried away from the mother country. It is a remarkable fact that some of the most illustrious and most vigorous champions of public liberty were flying from a tyranny from which they found no protection at home. "The wise and cautious lord Lay, the sagacious Brook, Sir Arthur Haselreg, Hampden ashamed of a country for whose rights he had fought alone, Cromwell panting with energies which he could neither check nor explain, and whose unconquerable fire was wrapt in smoke to every eye but that of his kinsman Hampden" were already embarked for emigration when Laud for " his own and his masters curse" procured a royal order against their departure.

Answer 6th.-Charles had written to Strafford to leave Ireland and come to England where he wished to take from him certain instructions with regard to the government of his kingdom. On his arrival and on his first entrance into the House of Lords he found himself impeached for high treason by the House of Commons. Pym and Hampden the sagacious leaders of the popular party drew up an accusation against him, for attempting to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom, for billetting soldiers in Ireland without their consent, for exacting money from the Irish people without the consent of their representatives, for advising the king to adopt the most unjustifiable measures against public liberty, for abusing his authority as President of the North, and for other charges of minor importance. But finding the dibatory proceedings of the lords in the prosecution of this great delinquent, Haselreg a coarse minded man" proposed the famous bill of Attainder which in later ages has excited so much discussion. At length the prosecution went on with greater vigour. The great minister defended himself with the most extraordinary ability against thirteen lawyers by profession. He at first complained of the maliciousness of his enemies; the commoners took fire and he was obliged to beg pardon. The hall was filled with spectators of the very highest rank; the dark but commanding features of the culprit struck every one with awe. The king accompanied by his wife sat in a closed gallery to behold patiently a spectacle of so great importance. The judges proceeded with vigour and the earl of Staffard was at length convicted although St. John and Manyard, with all their erudition and eloquence could not bring the charges brought against him within the legal definition of high treason. Now the consent of the king was required. Charles strongly objected; he made use of every means to save the life of his ablest minister, he told the commons that he would not sacrifice him to their distrust and malice, but the entreaties of his wife and the perseverance of the Commons at length procured from him

an order which all Europe unanimously condemned. Thus fell Strafford one of the most conspicuous characters of these times. "To rise, to act and to govern was the necessity of his nature." Possessed from nature of qualities, at once energectic and vigorous, he in the begining of his public career entered the banners of liberty; but when he once forsook them he became the most unconquerable advocate of absolute power. His political capacity has received the highest complement in the fact that such men as Pym, Hampden and St. John considered his existence incompatible with the liberty of his country. "When he once ceased" says the illustrious continuator of Sir James Machintosh's history of England, "to be a demagogue he became a satrap." But it is evident that in forsaking the cause of liberty he was not obliged to sacrifice his principles. All his fame as a patriot rests upou two facts first his refusal to pay the tax imposed upon him by Charles in one of the earlier years of his reign and second his exertions to procure the acknowledgement of the Bill of Rights. But when we consider, that in one of his letters to Laud he lamented the lenity shewn to Mr. Hampden on his refusal to pay the impost of ship money, the most flagitious violation of that famous bill, that in his government of Ireland he adopted the most unwarrantable measures of tyranny, that the treatment he gave to Lord Loftus and Mountnoris were acts of the most flagrant iniquity, and that measures he advised Charles to adopt were the most arbitrary than any in the whole range of English history, we cannot satisfy our minds that his opposition against royalty in the first part of his life proceeded from true principles of patriotism; nor can we condemn the bill of attainder as a "crime." The leaders of the public cause thought the fabric of liberty as insecure and jeopardized whilst he breathed whether in exile or in chains, and hence proceeded that “ capital ostracism which saved the republic" without interfering with the regular course of jurisprudence. Great he certainly was, for we cannot deny the epithet to "so much comprehension of mind, such vigour of intellect" and such profoundness of understanding. Eloquent, brave, and daring he was one of those men designed by nature to carry forth revolutions. But in taking leave of this great man we must not omit to mention that he was by no means deficient in natural affection. His able and eloquent defence, his tender allusion to the " departed saint" of his wife, are extremely pathetic and affecting, and it can be fairly said that the extreme severity of his condemnation and the magnanimity it enabled him to display at the moment of his departure from this world, have contributed greatly to redeem his forfeit fame. DWARKANA UTH MITTER, Hooghly College,

Afternoon Paper.

First Class.

Answer 1st.-I will follow Hallam's arrangement in this question. He begins with the triennial bill which he calls the most important measure of the long parliament. This bill provided that in no case the space between the dissolution of one parliament and the recalling of another, should exceed three years. That if the king did not order writs to be issued, the keeper of the great seal must issue them of his own accord on penalty of high treason. It also provided that if the lord keeper did not issue writs, twelve peers might assemble in Westminster and issue the

writs. Should they fail to do so, the sheriffs might go on with the work of election of themselves and in default of their doing so, the electors might themselves proceed to elect their representatives. Of the other beneficial measures the most wholesome was the abolition of the courts of starchamber, high commission, court of the president of the North, and the minor courts whose existence was not sanctioned by the legislation. They declared shipmoney illegal and reversed the judgment of the exchequer chamber against Mr. Hampden. They declared that tonnage and poundage could never be levied without the consent of parliament. They moreover declared that the king can not except in cases of foreign invasion, impress men for the army. They however enacted that the present parliament should not dissolved but by its own consent. This bill they presented at the same time with the attainder of Strafford for the sanction of the king. These last viz. the attainder of Strafford and the bill for their own dissolution are strongly censured by Mr. Smythe. They had formerly enacted that no parliament could be dissolved before it had sat fifty days, and now they provided for their sitting as long as they themselves pleased.

Symptoms of dissention first manifested themselves strongly enough to be noticed, on the first day that parliament opened after the recess during the King's absence in Scotland, and according to Mr. Macaulay, it was on this occasion that parties in parliament first appeared in the form in which they at present exist. This was the occasion, on which the celebrated remonstrance was discussed of. On one side was Pym, Holles, Hampden, Cromwell, Haselrigg, Strode, and all those who were of the violent party and wished to reduce the prerogative to a nonentity. On the other side was Hyde, Falkland, Palmer, Colepepper, &c. who are henceforward to be denominated the constitutional party.

Answer 2nd.-The remonstrance was an enumeration of all the grievances which had existed since the accession of Charles to the throne and most or all of which had already been redressed, so that the remonstrance can now serve no other purpose than to rouse the passions of the people against the government of Charles and keep up that distrust which was visibly subsiding. Nor was it expected to serve any other. Such being the case, those only favoured the remonstrance, who were interested in perpetuating the animosity between the throne and the people. The character of Laud has been drawn in colours extremely dark. Even the excuse of bigotry to palliate his cruelties was denied to him. I will begin with deleneating his merits. He was a generous patron of letters and it can be recorded to his honor that with all the bigotry attributed to him, he had patronized Hale, after being acquainted with his religious principles in a conferance which he had with him. He was never charged even by his bitterest enemies with a thirst for lucre and in all money matters, his integrety was never doubted. If he was an implacable enemy, he was also a faithful and jealous friend. In every case in which the interests of the church or the king were not involved, he always acted for the good of the country. This I am aware would be deemed by many as a negative virtue. His vices or defects were manifold, he was a willing slave and agent of tyranny. He was either a deep bigot or a villanous hypocrite. He had the vanity to make his own opinions or caprices, the religions cannons of his country. He was extremely cruel or had no natural sensibility. He drove Workman mad by his intolerable persecution. To him and to Strafford, the abominable