as your favourite concealed from you, that part of
our history when the unhappy Charles (and he, too, had private virtues)
fled from the open, avowed indignation of his English subjects, and
surrendered himself at discretion to the good faith of his own
countrymen? Without looking for support in their affections as
subjects, he applied only to their honour as gentlemen for protection.
They received him, as they would your Majesty, with bows and smiles and
falsehood, and kept him until they had settled their bargain with the
English parliament, then basely sold their native king to the vengeance
of his enemies. This, Sir, was not the act of a few traitors, but the
deliberate treachery of a Scotch parliament representing the nation. A
wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself.
On one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a
generous people who dare openly assert their rights, and who in a just
cause are ready to meet their sovereign in the field. On the other side
he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidable: a
fawning treachery against which no prudence can guard, no courage can
defend. The insidious smile upon the cheek would warn him of the canker
in the heart.

From the uses to which one part of the army has been too frequently
applied, you have some reason to expect that there are no services they
would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiality of your understanding.
You take the sense of the army from the conduct of the guards, with the
same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the
representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, Sir, will not
make the guards their example either as soldiers or subjects. They feel
and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable, undistinguishing
favour with which the guards are treated, while those gallant troops,
by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left
to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected
and forgotten. If they had no sense of the great original duty they owe
their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and
leave your cause to be defended by those on whom you have lavished the
rewards and honours of their profession. The Praetorian bands, enervated
and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman
populace, but when the distant legions took the alarm they marched to
Rome and gave a