feelings are interested in favour of a monarch with whom, to say the
least, his subjects were obliged to contend in arms for their
liberty? After all, however, notwithstanding what the more
reasonable part of mankind may think upon this question, it is much
to be doubted whether this singular proceeding has not as much as
any other circumstance, served to raise the character of the English
nation in the opinion of Europe in general. He who has read, and
still more, he who has heard in conversation discussions upon this
subject by foreigners, must have perceived that, even in the minds
of those who condemn the act, the impression made by it has been far
more that of respect and admiration than that of disgust and horror.
The truth is that the guilt of the action--that is to say, the
taking away of the life of the king, is what most men in the place
of Cromwell and his associates would have incurred; what there is of
splendour and of magnanimity in it, I mean the publicity and
solemnity of the act, is what few would be capable of displaying.
It is a degrading fact to human nature, that even the sending away
of the Duke of Gloucester was an instance of generosity almost
unexampled in the history of transactions of this nature.

From the execution of the king to the death of Cromwell, the
government was, with some variation of forms, in substance
monarchical and absolute, as a government established by a military
force will almost invariably be, especially when the exertions of
such a force are continued for any length of time. If to this
general rule our own age, and a people whom their origin and near
relation to us would almost warrant us to call our own nation, have
afforded a splendid and perhaps a solitary exception, we must
reflect not only that a character of virtues so happily tempered by
one another, and so wholly unalloyed with any vices, as that of