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would demand satisfaction, giving way to the pushes of impudence, conceding and indulgent to the prejudices, the wrong-headedness, the intractability of those with whom it has to deal. The former of these characters is and ever hath been the favourite of the world. It is the character of great men. There is a dignity in it which universally commands respect. The latter is poor-spirited, tame and abject. Yet so it hath happened, that with the Founder of Christianity this latter is the subject of his commendation, his precepts, his example; and that the former is so, in no part of its composition. Now the author to whom I refer, has not only marked this difference more strongly than any preceding writer, but has proved, in contradiction to first impressions, to popular opinion, to the encomiums of orators and poets and even to the suffrages of historians and moralists, that the latter character possesses the most of true worth, both as being most difficult either to be acquired or sustained and as contributing most to the happiness and tranquillity of social life.

W. PALEY

268. WILLIAM THE THIRD, COLDNESS OF HIS MANNERS. He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities: but the strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity, which made him pass for the most cold-blooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with stern tranquillity: but those who knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself. But when he was really enraged the first outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained his self-command, he made such ample reparation to those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. To

a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in festive conversation. LORD MACAULAY

269. PAPERS PRODUCED IN EVIDENCE AGAINST ALGERNON SYDNEY ON HIS TRIAL, A.D. 1683. These papers were asserted to be equivalent to a second witness, and even to many witnesses. The prisoner replied, that there was no other reason for ascribing these papers to him as the author, besides a similitude of hand; a proof which was never admitted in criminal prosecutions: That allowing him to be the author, he had composed them solely for his private amusement, and had never published them to the world, or even communicated them to any single person: That, when examined, they appeared, by the colour of the ink, to have been written many years before, and were in vain produced as evidence of a present conspiracy against the government: And that where the law positively requires two witnesses, one witness, attended with the most convincing circumstances, could never suffice; much less, when supported by a cicumstance so weak and precarious. All these arguments, though urged by the prisoner with great courage and pregnancy of reason, had no influence.

D. HUME

TY.

270.

MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF UNSEASONABLE LIBER

Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest Deliverers and had the People wholly at their devotion, by so discharging their Trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what Liberty they pretended, but also unfitted the People, now grown worse and more disordinate, to receive or to digest any Liberty at all. For stories teach us, that Liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate Age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for Liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous Men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a People, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are want

ing; and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad which they need. But to do this, and to know the exquisite proportions, the heroic Wisdom which is required, surmounted far the principles of these narrow Politicians: what wonder then if they sunk as these unfortunate Britains before them, entangled and oppressed with things too hard and generous above their strain and temper?

271. THE REDUCTION OF VEII BY M. FURIUS CAMILLUS.

The incredible amount of the spoil even surpast the expectations of the conquerors. The whole was given to the army, except the captives who had been spared in the massacre, before the unarmed had their lives granted to them, and who were sold on the account of the state. All objects of human property had already been removed from the empty walls: the ornaments and statues of the gods alone were yet untoucht. While Camillus was looking down from the temple of Juno on the magnificence of the captured city, the immense wealth of which the spoilers were amassing, he called to mind the threats of the Veientines, and that the gods were wont to regard excessive prosperity with displeasure; and he prayed to the mighty queen of heaven to let the calamity that was to expiate it be such as the republic and he himself could support. When after ending his prayer he turned round to the right, with his head veiled according to custom, his foot stumbled, and he fell. It seemed as if the goddess had graciously appeased destiny with this mishap and Camillus, forgetting the foreboding which had warned him, provoked the angry powers by the unexampled pomp and pride of his triumph. Jupiter and Sol saw him drive up with their own team of white horses to the Capitol. For this arrogance he atoned by a sentence of condemnation, Rome by her destruction.

272.

B. G. NIEBUHR

CHARACTER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION. The proceedings of the tribunal, as I have stated them, were plainly characterised throughout by the most flagrant injustice and inhumanity to the accused. Instead of presuming his innocence until his guilt had been established, it acted on exactly the opposite principle. Instead of affording him the protection accorded by every other judicature, and especially demanded in his forlorn situation, it used the

most insidious arts to circumvent and to crush him. He had no remedy against malice or misapprehension on the part of his accusers, or the witnesses against him, who might be his bitterest enemies; since they were never revealed to nor confronted with the prisoner, nor subjected to a crossexamination which can best expose error or wilful collusion in the evidence. Even the poor forms of justice recognised in this court might be readily dispensed with, as its proceedings were impenetrably shrouded from the public eye by the appalling oath of secresy imposed on all, whether functionaries witnesses or prisoners, who entered within its precincts. The last and not the least odious feature of the whole, was the connexion established between the condemnation of the accused and the interests of his judges; since the confiscations, which were the uniform penalties of heresy, were not permitted to flow into the royal exchequer, until they had first discharged the expenses, whether in the shape of salaries or otherwise, incident to the Holy Office.

W. H. PRESCOTT

273. PRINCES. A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes. All his government is groping. In sovereignty it is a most happy thing not to be compelled; but so it is the most miserable not to be counselled. And how can he be counselled that cannot see to read the best counsellors (which are books), for they neither flatter us, nor hide from us? He may hear, you will say; but how shall he always be sure to hear truth? or be counselled the best things, not the sweetest? They say princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom. Which is an argument, that the good counsellors to princes are the best instruments of a good age. For though the prince himself be of a most prompt inclination to all virtue; yet the best pilots have need of mariners beside sails anchor and other tackle. BEN JONSON

PARAMOUNT VALUE OF GOOD COUNSELLORS TO

274. CHARACTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. In discussing each particular transaction in the life of Charles, as of any other Sovereign, it is required by the truth of history to spare no just animadversion upon his faults; especially where so much art has been employed by the writers most in repute to carry the stream of public

prejudice in an opposite direction. But when we come to a general estimate of his character, we should act unfairly not to give their full weight to those peculiar circumstances of his condition in this worldly scene, which tend to account for and extenuate his failings. The station of kings is, in a moral sense, so unfavourable, that those who are least prone to servile admiration should be on their guard against the opposite error of an uncandid severity. There seems to be no fairer method of estimating the intrinsic worth of a sovereign than to treat him as a subject, and to judge so far as the history of his life enables us, what he would have been in that more private and happier condition, from which the chance of birth has excluded him. Tried by this test we cannot doubt that Charles the First would have been not altogether an amiable man, but one deserving of general esteem; his firm and conscientious virtues the same, his deviations from right far less frequent, than upon the throne. It is to be pleaded for this prince that his youth had breathed but the contaminate air of a profligate and servile court, that he had imbibed the lessons of arbitrary power from all who surrounded him, that he had been betrayed by a father's culpable blindness into the dangerous society of an ambitious, unprincipled favourite. To have maintained so much correctness of morality as his enemies confess, was a proof of Charles's virtuous dispositions: but his advocates are compelled also to own that he did not escape as little injured by the poisonous adulation to which he had listened. Of a temper by nature and by want of restraint too passionate, though not vindictive; and though not cruel certainly deficient in gentleness and humanity, he was entirely unfit for the very difficult station of royalty, and especially for that of a constitutional king. His other great fault was want of sincerity; a fault that appeared in all parts of his life, and from which no one who has paid the subject any attention will pretend to exculpate him. But so far as this insincerity was shown in the course of his troubles, it was a failing which untoward circumstances are apt to produce, and which the extreme hypocrisy of many among his adversaries might sometimes palliate. Few personages in history, we should recollect, have had so much of their actions revealed and commented upon as Charles; it is perhaps a mortifying truth that those who have stood highest with posterity, have seldom been those who have been most accurately known.

H. HALLAM

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