concerning which Mr. Hallam tells us a great deal, but not one word
of the political circumstances which led to it or to the release,
keeping his sympathies and his paper for the sorrows of refractory
Alderman Reed, who, refusing (alone of all the citizens) to
contribute to the support of troops on the Scotch Border or
elsewhere, was sent down, by a sort of rough justice, to serve on the
Scotch Border himself, and judge of the 'perils of the nation' with
his own eyes; and being--one is pleased to hear--taken prisoner by
the Scots, had to pay a great deal more as ransom than he would have
paid as benevolence.

But to return. What proof is there, in all this, of that servility
which most historians, and Mr. Hallam among the rest, are wont to
attribute to Henry's Parliaments? What feeling appears on the face
of this document, which we have given and quoted, but one honourable
to the nation? Through the falsehood of a foreign nation the King is
unable to perform his engagements to the people. Is not the just and
generous course in such a case to release him from those engagements?
Does this preamble, does a single fact of the case, justify
historians in talking of these 'king's debts' in just the same tone
as that in which they would have spoken if the King had squandered
the money on private pleasures? Perhaps most people who write small
histories believe that this really was the case. They certainly
would gather no other impression from the pages of Mr. Hallam. No
doubt the act must have been burdensome on some people. Many, we are
told, had bequeathed their promissory notes to their children, used
their reversionary interest in the loan in many ways; and these, of
course, felt the change very heavily. No doubt: but why have we not
a right to suppose that the Parliament were aware of that fact; but
chose it as the less of the two evils? The King had spent the money;