parliaments Sidney was a candidate; but being opposed by the courtparty, who did not scruple to add violence to fraud, he was in both cases declared defeated, though in one, if not both, it was evident that he had received a majority of the legal votes. The great measure of the opposition-party, the exclusion of the Duke of York, received only a qualified support from our sterling commonwealthman. He hated monarchy, no matter who might be king; but he especially dreaded it in the person of a perfidious papist of the house of Stuart, and therefore consented to favour the change in the succession as a lesser evil.

After the dissolution of the last parliament, in March, 1681, the king, by a proclamation, appealed to the nation in justification of his course towards the refractory parliaments. The gauntlet thus thrown down by the royal controversialist was promptly taken up by Sidney, who amply justified the liberal party in the parliament and nation against the aspersions of the king. This vindication is pronounced by Bishop Burnet to have been "the best-written paper of the times." But the nation had become weary of the contest, and the recollection of the past made the timid fearful of asserting the right, while the prevailing licentiousness of the times had, to a great extent, extinguished that spirit of freedom which forty years before had overturned the throne, and brought the king to a popular tribunal, and to the scaffold. A reaction ensued; which, when the king observed, he did not fail to push his advantages with a strong and unscrupulous hand. Hitherto Charles had seemed to be only a man of pleasure, averse to cruelty, and disinclined to all vindictiveBut impelled by circumstances, he consented to sacrifice a brawling politician, who had been convicted of conspiring against the king's life; and having once tasted blood, all the tiger was awakened in his spirit, and the work of slaughter was pressed with savage ferocity.

ness.

The first noted object of the royal vengeance was the gifted and versatile, the ambitious and unscrupulous Sir Anthony Astley Cooper, Earl of Shaftsbury. The history of this nobleman is such as only the times in which he lived could produce. A royalist at the beginning of the Long Parliament, when the cause of the king began to decline he suddenly became a patriot and a Presbyterian; and when the rising star of the future Protector indicated the way the supreme power was tending, he adhered to the cause of the Lord-general. He afterwards sat in Barebones' parliament, and was foremost in investing the Protector with absolute power. He also sat with Baxter and Owen, and others, on the commission for ejecting "scandalous and ignorant ministers;" and in all these

movements was a zealous and thorough-going reformer. After the death of Cromwell he quickly perceived the tendency of affairs, and accordingly was among the foremost in bringing in the king. And to crown all his heartless perfidy, he consented to act as one of the judges of the regicides, and in that capacity condemned to death his old associates of the republic. For these services Charles had created him Earl of Shaftsbury, and subsequently made him lord chancellor, and by the royal favour he held a prominent place in the infamous Cabal. After the Restoration his fidelity to the royal cause had seemed to be so steady that his former tergiversations were forgotten, when, in the parliament of 1679, the bill for the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession, having been brought up to the house of lords from the commons, to the astonishment of all he arose, and in the presence of both the king and the duke, earnestly advocated its passage. With his usual sagacity he had foreseen the coming change, and, as he had done before, he now sought to ride into power upon the first waves of the approaching revolution. But the recent recess of the rising tide had not been anticipated, and for once the rancour of passion had hurried him beyond his usual cautious prudence.

Shaftsbury was a man of unquestionable parts, an able debater, of winning manners and commanding address; fond of the excitement of public commotions rather than alarmed at their dangers, he had long lived and revelled a ruling spirit in the political storms that for half a century had swept over the kingdom in every direction. In all his changes he had been constant to his ruling passions, selfishness and revenge; and never until now had the latter betrayed the former. The Duke of York had become the object of his most deadly hatred, which first vented itself on the occasion just mentioned; nor did a year's confinement in the tower soften his animosity against his noble adversary. Arrested a second time, he was still confident that he should triumph by the favour of the citizens of London, among whom he must be tried; nor did he miscalculate. The grand jury ignored the indictment brought against him, and he was released amid the acclamations of the people. He then united with the Duke of Monmouth in his intrigues for dethroning the king; but the other great popular leaders refused to co-operate with him, and finding himself again exposed to the vengeance of his powerful enemies he passed over to Holland, where he soon after died, unhonoured and unwept, a sad example of the results of unprincipled ambition, though aided by the most consummate abilities.

As usual in such cases, the severe measures of the government

served to silence all open opposition, but left the cause of the disorder to fester in secret and inflame the whole social and political body. The malcontents were of two principal classes,—one consisting of the reckless partisans of Shaftsbury, who, having but little to lose, were for bringing about a violent revolution; of whose mode of action the Rye-house plot is an example. The other was of a better kind, consisting of those who had refused to enter with Shaftsbury into the designs of Monmouth, and now rather meditated action than engaged in any overt revolutionary measures. With these Sidney was associated, though he evidently viewed both the means and the end proposed with comparative indifference. A change of the succession he viewed as only a temporary mitigation of the radical disorder of the body politic-a more thorough change he felt to be necessary for the real emancipation of the nation. He, however, consented to consult with some of the more eminent of the leaders of the advocates of the proposed changes, among whom, besides Monmouth, were the Lords Howard, Russell, and Essex, and Mr. Hampden, grandson of the great patriot of that name. With these Sidney met twice to consult on the state of public affairs, but nothing was done or agreed upon. Indeed, the parties themselves were not agreed: Russell and Hampden were favourable to the existing constitution of the realm, and desired only a better administration; Essex and Sidney longed for their favourite commonwealth; Howard was simply selfish, and opposed to the ruling powers; and Monmouth wanted to be king of England. Where such discordant views were entertained by the consulting parties, it could not be expected that plans of action would be matured, much less treasonable actions performed. In the meantime the promulgation of the Rye-house plot produced a panic in the kingdom, by which many innocent persons were exposed to unjust and dangerous suspicions. Sidney especially suffered by it. The government had long awaited an opportunity to wreak its vengeance upon him, and now the occasion was afforded. He, however, suspected nothing of the kind, as he knew that he had carefully abstained from whatever might be construed into an evil design towards the government; and in the consciousness of innocence he dreaded no danger. But in such times malevolence may utter accusations without evidence and be credited, for innocence ceases to be a protection. It was determined at once to arrest the six so-called conspirators; and accordingly, in a few days, all, except Monmouth, who saved himself by a timely flight, were cast into prison. Of these, Lord Howard purchased a worthless life by pretending to turn king's evidence, and swearing to order against his former associates; Russell and Sidney died by

judicial murders; Lord Essex was found dead in prison, but whether he fell by his own hands or by those of an assassin was never fully determined; and Hampden, against whom not even perjury itself could prove treason, was mulcted of a ruinous fine.

Our space will not permit us to enter upon a full review of the trial of Sidney, though such an examination would be pertinent to our subject, and highly illustrative of the manners of the times. It took place in the Court of King's Bench, before the infamous Lord Jeffries,—who, for his judicial iniquities, has attained an execrable immortality, then recently appointed chief justice, aided by three assistant judges, of characters suited to their associations. The jury consisted for the most part of the dregs of the people, and even these were examined beforehand, that there should not be, by any possibility, a failure as to the desired verdict. The indictment specified nothing; nor was the prisoner informed, before the trial, on what statute he was to be tried. He was not permitted to challenge the jurors for favour, nor was he allowed the aid of counsel. He was charged with compassing the king's death, and the time designated was shown to be subsequent to his arrest, and while he was a close prisoner in the tower. Much irrelevant matter was permitted to be introduced as evidence by the prosecution, which, while it proved nothing as to the charges for which the prisoner was on his trial, yet had a direct tendency to embarrass his case. The only witness that pretended to testify to the matter charged, was the perfidious Lord Howard, who, besides the fact of his being a purchased witness, was proved to have declared just the opposite of what he had testified in court, and had also alleged that his own pardon depended on his doing the "drudgery of swearing." To make out a second witness the prosecution produced a paper, (an abridgment of the Discourses on Government,) found in Sidney's trunk on the day of his arrest, which it was declared contained certain treasonable expressions. It was in vain that the prisoner objected to making a piece of paper a witness in the sense of the statute,—the chief justice pronounced it a good-enough witness; or that he refused to acknowledge it to be his own; or that he contended that though it were shown to be his, yet as he had never published abroad what was there written, nor yet avowed it as his sentiments, the writing could not be justly construed to be an overt act of treason. But a still greater difficulty was to be overcome by the prosecution. Though the competency of both witnesses were granted, and the sufficiency of their testimony to describe real acts of treason, still the two witnesses spoke of entirely-different things, whereas the statute declared that they should testify to the same overt action. FOURTH SERIES, VOL. III.-36.

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This objection, however, was overruled by the chief justice, and the jury were charged that if they believed the witnesses on their oaths they must find the prisoner guilty; which they accordingly did after a very brief consultation, aided, it is affirmed, even in that sacred duty by the presence and authority of the brutal and blood-thirsty judge.

The conduct of the prisoner in these trying circumstances, was firm but gentle and conciliatory, bespeaking at once a consciousness of innocence, and an earnest desire to escape the doom prepared for him; but restrained by self-respect and love of right from denying that truth for which he had already suffered everything but death, or from meanly cringing to the power so basely prostituted to effect his ruin. He needed not to reassert his noble sentiments of universal liberty; they were already known, and he neither retracted them nor mitigated their force; and probably he fondly hoped that silence on that subject might be advantageous to him. Vane, in the same circumstances, boldly justified his actions, and reasserted the sentiments for which he was about to suffer; but Sidney, intent on saving his life, though he could not do violence to his own convictions of right, nor basely cringe before the tyrant-power by which his life was hunted, yet forbore to use any means that might tend needlessly to produce irritation. The former course may, indeed, seem the more heroic; it can hardly be esteemed the more manly, or better befitting a dying Christian.

This mock trial has never yet found any to defend it, or even successfully to mitigate its atrocities. Bishop Burnet states, that even in that corrupt age, when legal iniquities were far from being unusual, “this trial was universally cried out on, as a piece of most enormous injustice." Hume, the ready apologist for the crimes of kings, admits the insufficiency of the evidence on which Sidney was condemned, and styles the whole transaction the greatest blemish of this reign; but most unjustly throws the blame upon the jury, as though that herd of vagabonds whom the royal officers had thrust into the jury-box could serve as scape-goats to bear away the sins of the sheriffs, solicitors, court, and king, all of whom were actors in the bloody tragedy. Macaulay remarks briefly: "Sidney, of whose guilt no legal evidence could be produced, was beheaded in defiance of law and justice." But the statement of Mr. Charles James Fox most amply and justly characterizes this nefarious affair: "The production of papers containing speculative opinions on government and liberty, written long before, and perhaps never intended to be published, together with the use made of those papers, in considering them as a substitute for the second witness to the overt act, exhibited