crown. As there was to be a King, and as no new King could be
found, it was necessary to leave the regal title to Charles. Only one
course, therefore, was left: and that was to disjoin the regal title
from the regal prerogatives.

The change which the Houses proposed to make in our institutions,
though it seems exorbitant, when distinctly set forth and digested into
articles of capitulation, really amounts to little more than the change
which, in the next generation, was effected by the Revolution. It is
true that, at the Revolution, the sovereign was not deprived by law of
the power of naming his ministers: but it is equally true that, since
the Revolution, no minister has been able to retain office six months
in opposition to the sense of the House of Commons. It is true that
the sovereign still possesses the power of creating peers, and the
more important power of the sword: but it is equally true that in the
exercise of these powers the sovereign has, ever since the
Revolution, been guided by advisers who possess the confidence of the
representatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders of the Roundhead
party in 1642, and the statesmen who, about half a century later,
effected the Revolution, had exactly the same object in view.
That object was to terminate the contest between the Crown and the
Parliament, by giving to the Parliament a supreme control over the
executive administration. The statesmen of the Revolution effected this
indirectly by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being unable
to change the dynasty, were compelled to take a direct course towards
their end.

We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the opposition, importing
as they did a complete and formal transfer to the Parliament of powers
which had always belonged to the Crown, should have shocked that great
party of which the characteristics are respect for constitutional
authority and dread of violent innovation. That party had recently been
in hopes of obtaining by peaceable means the ascendency in the House of
Commons; but every such hope had been blighted. The duplicity of Charles
had made his old enemies irreconcileable, had driven back into the ranks
of the disaffected a crowd of moderate men who were in the very act of
coming over to his side, and had so cruelly mortified his best friends
that they had for a time stood aloof in silent shame and resentment.
Now, however, the constitutional Royalists were forced to make thei