s of the people, so often duped by names. I have never
detected the active man of faction who first hit on this odious brand
for persons, but the period when the word changed its ordinary meaning
was early; Charles, in 1642, retorts on the parliamentarians the
opprobrious distinction, as "The _true malignant party_ which has
contrived and countenanced those barbarous tumults." And the royalists
pleaded for themselves, that the hateful designation was ill applied to
them: "for by _malignity_ you denote," said they, "activity in doing
evil, whereas we have always been on the suffering side in our persons,
credits, and estates;" but the parliamentarians, "grinning a ghastly
smile," would reply, that "the royalists would have been _malignant_ had
they proved successful." The truth is, that _malignancy_ meant with both
parties any opposition of opinion. At the same period the offensive
distinctions of _roundheads_ and _cavaliers_ supplied the people with
party names, who were already provided with so many religious as well as
civil causes of quarrel; the cropt heads of the sullen sectaries and the
people, were the origin of the derisory nickname; the splendid elegance
and the romantic spirit of the royalists long awed the rabble, who in
their mockery could brand them by no other appellation than one in which
their bearers gloried. In the distracted times of early revolution, any
nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, although neither
those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define
the hateful appellative. When the term of _delinquents_ came into vogue,
it expressed a degree and species of guilt, says Hume, not exactly known
or ascertained. It served, however, the end of those revolutionists who
had coined it, by involving any person in, or colouring any action by,
_delinquency_; and many of the nobility and gentry were, without any
questions being asked, suddenly discovered to have committed the crime
of _delinquency_! Whether honest Fuller be facetious or grave on this
period of nicknaming parties I will not decide; but, when he tells us
that there was another word which was introduced into our nation at this
time, I think at least that the whole passage is an admirable commentary
on this party vocabulary. "Contemporary with _malignants_ is the word
_plunder_, which some make of Latin original, from _planum dare_, to
_level_, to _plane_ all to nothing! Others of Dutch extraction, as if it