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progressing in the essentials of freedom, unless we keep in view that from the beginning of the century there had been an incessant struggle of the national mind against every form of despotic power? The desire for liberty, civil and spiritual, had become almost an instinct. The great leaders in this battle had passed away. The men who by fits aspired to be tribunes of the people were treacherous or inconstant. But the spirit of the nation was not dead. It made itself heard in parliament, with a voice that grew louder and louder, till the torrent was once again dammed up. A few more years of tyranny without disguise—and then the end.

The first movements of the Cabal ministry were towards a high and liberal policy-toleration for non-conformists, and an alliance with free Protestant states. A greater liberty to dissenters from the church followed the fall of Clarendon. We see transient and accidental motives for this passing toleration, rather than the assertion of a fixed principle. But when the parliament met, the active prelates and prelatists prevailed to prevent any bill of comprehension or indulgence to be brought in.

THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE (1668 A.D.)

At the opening of the session of parliament in 1668, the king announced that he had made a league defensive with the states-general of the United Provinces, to which Sweden had become a party. This was the Triple Alliance. The nation saw with reasonable apprehension the development of the vast schemes of ambition of Louis XIV. He was at war with Spain; but the great empire upon which the sun never set was fast falling to pieces -not perishing like a grand old house, overthrown by a hurricane's fury, but mouldering away with the dry-rot in every timber. France, on the contrary, was rising into the position of the greatest power in Europe. Her able but vainglorious king already looked upon the Spanish Netherlands as his certain prey. The United Provinces were hateful to him as the seat of religious and civil liberty.

The crisis was come when England, by a return to the policy of Cromwell, might have taken her place again at the head of the free Protestant states of Europe. When Charles announced to parliament this league with the United Provinces and Sweden, it was thought to be, says Pepys, "the only good public thing that hath been done since the king came into England." It was a marvel of diplomacy. De Witt and Sir William Temple met at the Hague as two honest men, without any finesse; and they quickly concluded a treaty which they believed to be for the honour and safety of both their countries. This treaty, says Burnet,f" was certainly the masterpiece of King Charles' life; and if he had stuck to it, it would have been both the strength and glory of his reign. This disposed the people to forgive all that was past, and to renew their confidence in him, which was shaken by the whole conduct of the Dutch war."

At the very time when the ambassador of England was negotiating the treaty which promised to be "the strength and glory of his reign," the king was making proposals to Louis for a clandestine treaty, by which England was to be leased out" to France, "Like a tenement or pelting farm."k

MACAULAY'S CONTRAST OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT THAT PERIOD

We have now reached a point at which the history of the great English Revolution begins to be complicated with the history of foreign politics. The

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power of Spain had, during many years, been declining. She still, it is true, held in Europe the Milanese and the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comté. In America her dominions still spread, on both sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. But this great body had been smitten with palsy, and was not only incapable of giving molestation to other states, but could not, without assistance, repel aggression.

France was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest power in Europe. Her resources have, since those days, absolutely increased, but have not increased so fast as the resources of England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty years ago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first class, was as entirely out of the system of European politics as Abyssinia or Siam, that the house of Brandenburg was then hardly more powerful than the house of Saxony, and that the republic of the United States had not then begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still very considerable, has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in the days of Louis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: but it was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for defence, situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a grave, active, and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction of a single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years before, had been, in all but name, independent principalities, had been annexed to the crown. Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of the states-general. The resistance which the Huguenots, the nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the kingly power, had been put down by the two great cardinals who had ruled the nation during forty years. The government was now a despotism, but, at least in its dealings with the upper classes, a mild and generous despotism, tempered by courteous manners and chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of the sovereign were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, it is true, by a severe and unequal taxation which pressed heavily on the cultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate. His army, excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest generals then living, already consisted of more than a hundred and twenty thousand men. Such an array of regular troops had not been seen in Europe since the downfall of the Roman Empire. Of maritime powers France was not the first. But, though she had rivals on the sea, she had not yet a superior. Such was her strength during the last forty years of the seventeenth century, that no enemy could singly withstand her, and that two great coalitions, in which half Christendom was united against her, failed of success.

In England, however, the whole stock of popularity, great as it was, with which the king had commenced his administration, had long been expended. To loyal enthusiasm had succeeded profound disaffection. The public mind had now measured back again the space over which it had passed between 1640 and 1660, and was once more in the state in which it had been when the Long Parliament met.

The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings. One of these was wounded national pride. That generation had seen England, during a few years, allied on equal terms with France, victorious over Holland and Spain, the mistress of the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of the Protestant interest. Her resources had not diminished; and it might have been expected that she would have been at least as highly considered in Europe under a legitimate king, strong in the affection and willing obedience of his subjects, as she had been under an usurper whose utmost vigilance and energy were required to keep down a mutinous people. Yet she had, in

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consequence of the imbecility and meanness of her rulers, sunk so low that any German or Italian principality which brought five thousand men into the field was a more important member of the commonwealth of nations.

With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety for civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the more alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to the court a deliberate design against all the constitutional rights of Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design was to be carried into effect by the intervention of foreign arms. The thought of such intervention made the blood, even of the cavaliers, boil in their veins. h

It may seem rather an extraordinary position yet is strictly true, that the fundamental privileges of the subject were less invaded, the prerogative swerved into fewer excesses, during the reign of Charles II than in any former period of equal length. The frequent session of parliament, and its high estimation of its own privileges, furnished a security against illegal taxation. And as the nation happily escaped the attempts that were made after the restoration to revive the StarChamber and high commission courts, there were no means of chastising political delinquencies except through the regular tribunals of justice and through the verdict of a jury. Ill as the one were often constituted and submissive as the other might often be found, they afforded something more of a guarantee, were it only by the publicity of their proceedings, than the dark and silent divan of courtiers and prelates who sat in judgment under the two former kings of the house of Stuart. Though the bench was frequently subservient, the bar contained high-spirited advocates whose firm defence of their clients the judges often reproved, but no longer affected to punish. The press, above all, was in continual service.- HENRY HALLAM.

FEW things in English history are more curious than the origin and growth of the power now possessed by the cabinet. From an early period the kings of England had been assisted by a privy council to which the law assigned many important functions and duties. During several centuries this body deliberated on the gravest and most delicate affairs. But by degrees its character changed. It became too large for despatch and secrecy. The rank of privy councillor was often bestowed as an honorary distinction on persons to whom nothing was confided, and whose opinion was never asked. The sovereign, on the most important occasions, resorted for advice to a small knot of leading ministers. The advantages and disadvantages of this course were early pointed out by Bacon, with his usual judgment and sagacity: but it was not till after the restoration that the interior council began to attract general notice. During many years old fashioned politicians continued to regard the cabinet as an unconstitutional and dangerous board. Nevertheless, it constantly became more and more important. It at length drew to itself the chief executive power, and has now been regarded, during several generations, as an essential part of English polity. Yet, strange to say, it still continues to be altogether unknown to the law. The names of the noblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially announced to

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the public. No record is kept of its meetings and resolutions; nor has its existence ever been recognised by any act of parliament.

During some years the word cabal was popularly used as synonymous with cabinet. But, as we have seen, it happened by a whimsical coincidence that, in 1671, the cabinet consisted of five persons the initial letters of whose names made up the word cabal, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. These ministers1 were therefore emphatically called the Cabal; and they soon made that appellation so infamous that it has never since their time been used except as a term of reproach.c

Buckingham, without any ostensible post, was now in fact the prime minister, and one so profligate in morals has rarely been seen in England. He was living in open adultery with Lady Shrewsbury, which led at this very time (January 16th) to a duel, in which the injured husband was mortally wounded. The abandoned countess, it is said, dressed as a page, held the horse of her paramour while he was fighting with her husband. It served the cause of the non-conformists but little to be advocated, as it was, by a man of such a character; the commons, therefore, negatived by a large majority a bill introduced for their relief. They also voted only one-half of the sum demanded for the navy, and instituted a rigid inquiry into the conduct of various persons in the late war.

As money for the supply of the royal mistresses and the other profligacies of the court was not to be obtained from the parliament, Buckingham began to form other projects. The first was to reduce the royal expenditure below the revenues, but with a prince of Charles' character that was impracticable. It was then resolved to have recourse to the king of France; Buckingham therefore entered into a negotiation with the duchess of Orleans, and Charles himself apologised to the French resident for his share in the Triple Alliance. Louis, as usual, affected indifference, but the communications gradually became more confidential, and by the end of the year Louis had the leading English ministers in his pay.

It was not the mere gratification of his pleasures that Charles now looked to; he wished to be absolute. Not, however, that, like his father, he believed despotic power to be his right, or that he felt any pleasure in the exercise of it: what he wanted was freedom from restraint; he could not endure that his private life should be publicly criticised, or that parliaments should presume to inquire what had been done with the money they had granted. All this might be obviated by a standing army, which he might make it the interest of Louis to furnish him with the means of maintaining. But there was another motive operating on the mind of Charles, which, from the tenor of his life, one would be little apt to suspect.

THE KING AND THE DUKE OF YORK BECOME CATHOLICS (1668 A.D.)

The duke of York was at this time become a Catholic. His own account of his conversion is as follows. When he was in Flanders he read, at the request of a bishop of the Church of England, a treatise by that prelate, written to clear that church from the guilt of schism in separating from the church of Rome. He also, at the bishop's desire, read a reply which had been made to it, and the effect produced on his mind was the contrary of what was intended. After the restoration he read Heylin's History of the Reforma

['Gardiner, & however, insists that it is wrong to speak of the Cabal as a "ministry" in the modern sense, since they formed no council meeting, agreed on nothing but toleration, and were never consulted as a body by the king.]