of one class consists of bigoted
dotards: the extreme section of the other consists of shallow and
reckless empirics.

There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments might have been
discerned a body of members anxious to preserve, and a body eager to
reform. But, while the sessions of the legislature were short, these
bodies did not take definite and permanent forms, array themselves under
recognised leaders, or assume distinguishing names, badges, and war
cries. During the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignation
excited by many years of lawless oppression was so strong and
general that the House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse after
abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of the
representative body wished to retain the Star Chamber and the High
Commission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and by the
numerical superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretly
regretting institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be
openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it convenient to
antedate the separation between themselves and their opponents, and
to attribute the Act which restrained the King from dissolving or
proroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act, the impeachment of
the ministers, and the attainder of Strafford, to the faction which
afterwards made war on the King. But no artifice could be more
disingenuous. Every one of those strong measures was actively promoted
by the men who were afterward foremost among the Cavaliers. No
republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more severely than
Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial Bill
was made by Digby. The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by
Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept close
prisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law
attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunion
become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but extreme
necessity could justify, only about sixty members of the House of
Commons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in the minority, and that
Falkland not only voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the
bill. Even the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by
a retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the utmost
abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.

But under this apparent con