(which is doubtful) that some advantage may have been gained to the cause
of liberty by the terror of the example operating upon the minds of
princes, such advantage is far outweighed by the zeal which admiration
for virtue, and pity for sufferings, the best passions of the human
heart, have excited in favour of the royal cause. It has been thought
dangerous to the morals of mankind, even in fiction and romance, to make
us sympathise with characters whose general conduct is blameable; but how
much greater must the effect be when in real history our feelings are
interested in favour of a monarch with whom, to say the least, his
subjects were obliged to contend in arms for their liberty? After all,
however, notwithstanding what the more reasonable part of mankind may
think upon this question, it is much to be doubted whether this singular
proceeding has not as much as any other circumstance, served to raise the
character of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in general. He
who has read, and still more, he who has heard in conversation
discussions upon this subject by foreigners, must have perceived that,
even in the minds of those who condemn the act, the impression made by it
has been far more that of respect and admiration than that of disgust and
horror. The truth is that the guilt of the action--that is to say, the
taking away of the life of the king, is what most men in the place of
Cromwell and his associates would have incurred; what there is of
splendour and of magnanimity in it, I mean the publicity and solemnity of
the act, is what few would be capable of displaying. It is a degrading
fact to human nature, that even the sending away of the Duke of
Gloucester was an instance of generosity almost unexampled in the history
of transactions of this nature.

From the execution of the king to the death of Cromwell, the government
was, with some variation of forms, in substance monarchical and absolute,
as a government established by a military force will almost invariably
be, especially when the exertions of such a force are continued for any
length of time. If to this general rule our own age, and a people whom
their origin and near relation to us would almost warrant us to call our
own nation, have afforded a splendid and perhaps a solitary exception, we
must reflect not only that a character of virtues so happily tempered by
one another, and so wholly unalloyed with any vices, as that of
Washington, i