sent as the current service necessarily required, it
would be requisite to assemble them again next winter, when they should
have full leisure to conclude whatever business had this session been
left imperfect and unfinished: that the parliament of Ireland had twice
put such trust in his good intentions as to grant him, in the beginning
of the session, a large supply, and had ever experienced good effects
from the confidence reposed in him: and that; in every circumstance, his
people should find his conduct suitable to a just, pious, and gracious
king; and such as was calculated to promote an entire harmony between
prince and parliament.[*]

* Rush. vol. iii. p. 1114.

However plausible these topics, they made small impression on the house
of commons. By some illegal, and several suspicious measures of the
crown, and by the courageous opposition which particular persons, amidst
dangers and hardships, had made to them, the minds of men, throughout
the nation, had taken such a turn, as to ascribe every honor to the
refractory opposers of the king and the ministers. These were the
only patriots, the only lovers of their country, the only heroes, and
perhaps, too, the only true Christians. A reasonable compliance with the
court was slavish dependence; a regard to the king, servile flattery; a
confidence in his promises, shameful prostitution. This general cast
of thought, which has more or less prevailed in England during near a
century and a half, and which has been the cause of much good and much
ill in public affairs, never predominated more than during the reign
of Charles. The present house of commons, being entirely composed
of country gentlemen, who came into parliament with all their native
prejudices about them, and whom the crown had no means of influencing,
could not fail to contain a majority of these stubborn patriots.

Affairs likewise, by means of the Scottish insurrection and the general
discontents in England, were drawing so near to a crisis, that the
leaders of the house, sagacious and penetrating, began to foresee the
consequences, and to hope that the time so long wished for was now come,
when royal authority must fall into a total subordination under popular
assemblies, and when public liberty must acquire a full ascendant. By
reducing the crown to necessities, they had hitherto found that the king
had been pushed into violent counsels, which had served extremely the
purposes of his adversaries: