hat man can have a property in his fellow-creatures. By far the
best argument in favour of the restrictions, is the practical one that
they could be obtained, and that the exclusion could not; but the value
of this argument is chiefly proved by the event. The exclusionists had a
fair prospect of success, and their plan being clearly the best, they
were justified in pursuing it.

The spirit of resistance which the king showed in the instance of the
militia and the exclusion bills, seems to have been systematically
confined to those cases where he supposed his power to be more
immediately concerned. In the prosecution of the aged and innocent Lord
Stafford, he was so far from interfering in behalf of that nobleman, that
many of those most in his confidence, and, as it is affirmed, the Duchess
of Portsmouth herself, openly favoured the prosecution. Even after the
dissolution of him last parliament, when he had so far subdued his
enemies as to be no longer under any apprehensions from them, he did not
think it worth while to save the life of Plunket, the popish Archbishop
of Armagh, of whose innocence no doubt could be entertained. But this is
not to be wondered at, since, in all transactions relative to the popish
plot, minds of a very different cast from Charles's became, as by some
fatality, divested of all their wonted sentiments of justice and
humanity. Who can read without horror, the account of that savage murmur
of applause, which broke out upon one of the villains at the bar,
swearing positively to Stafford's having proposed the murder of the king?
And how is this horror deepened, when we reflect, that in that odious cry
were probably mingled the voices of men to whose memory every lover of
the English constitution is bound to pay the tribute of gratitude and
respect! Even after condemnation, Lord Russell himself, whose character
is wholly (this instance excepted) free from the stain of rancour or
cruelty, stickled for the severer mode of executing the sentence, in a
manner which his fear of the king's establishing a precedent of pardoning
in cases of impeachment (for this, no doubt, was his motive) cannot
satisfactorily excuse.

In an early period of the king's difficulties, Sir William Temple, whose
life and character is a refutation of the vulgar notion that philosophy
and practical good sense in business are incompatible attainments,
recommended to him the plan of governing by a council, which was to
co