ut
placidly expected them to conform to his own petty desires, and whose
dignified death failed to atone for a life devoted to ignoble personal
ends, by crooked ways and treacherous means; a king peculiarly incapable
of taking a broad statesman-like view of any question, who manifested no
thought for the interests of the people of whom he regarded himself as
ruler by right divine, whose futile domestic policy was inspired solely
by considerations for the advancement of his own personal power, whose
feeble and shifty foreign policy was determined only by considerations
for his own family interests, who intrigued with France against Spain,
with Spain against France, with both against Holland, and with Holland
against both, and with France, Spain, Holland, and Rome against his own
subjects, with English Presbyterians against English Independents, with
English Independents against English Presbyterians, and with Irish
Catholics and Scotch Presbyterians against both English Presbyterians
and Independents, and who yet succeeded in deceiving nobody but himself,
and in satisfying nobody, not even himself; a king whose love was far
more dangerous than his hate, a worthy patron of a Buckingham, a Goring,
or of a Laud, but unworthy the genius of a Shaftesbury or the loyal
services of a Verney, a Montrose, or a Worcester; a king, in short,
treacherous to his friends, faithless to his word, who went to his
wedding and came to his throne with a lie on his lips,[24:1] whom, again
to use the words of Macaulay,[24:2] "no law could bind, and whose whole
government was one system of wrong," of whom even the conservative and
partial Hallam is forced to admit[24:3] that "it would be difficult to
name any violation of law he had not committed." Even the famous
Petition of Right, to which some nine years previously, in 1628, he had
given a solemn, though reluctant, consent, had been ruthlessly violated.
Taxes had been levied by the Royal authority; patents of monopoly had
been granted; the course of justice had been tampered with, and judges
arbitrarily deposed; troops had been billeted upon the people; old
feudal usages had been revived for the express purpose of harassing and
defrauding the citizens; and, as if to exhaust every means to sap the
loyalty and wear out the patience of the people, Puritans of every shade
of opinion had not only been silenced but relentlessly persecuted, while
High Church bishops preached passive obedience, declari