gn,
though ignoble to himself, was happy to his people, who were enriched by
commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they made considerable
progress in their liberties." So that, on the whole, the nation appears
not to have had all the reason they have so fully exercised in deriding
and vilifying a sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of
making himself contemptible! I shall notice another writer, of an amiable
character, as an evidence of the influence of popular prejudice, and the
effect of truth.

When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he passed part of his time
among the learned; but such was his habitual attention in studying the
duties of the sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of
justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious "Observations on the
Statutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish code three
statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is
the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could not but shrewdly
observe, that James "spent more time in those courts than in attending
upon his destined consort." Yet this is not true: the king was jovial
there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. Osborne even
censures James for once giving marks of his uxoriousness![A] But while
Daines Barrington degrades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable
employment of the "British Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the
truth that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect admiration
of James the First, whose statutes he declares "deserve much to be
enforced; nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to extend
the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and rights of his subjects." He
who came to scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws
of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth: the step
was a bold one! He says, "_It is at present a sort of fashion_ to suppose
that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or
merit." Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of
James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more
convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First,
being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being instructed in the
English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the
most eminent lawyers,--as Sir Edward Coke, and others!" Such was the
mo