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was a courageous act of these men, the English regicides, meriting indeed to be called "perhaps the most daring action that any body of men to be met with in history, ever, with clear consciences, set themselves to do." French historians delight to draw flattering parallels between their own revolution and that of England in the seventeenth century; but there is in reality no parallel between the trials of Charles and Louis. Neither the vic tim nor the judges of France bore any resemblance to the high court and royal prisoner of England. In the former case, the sole crime of the imbecile monarch was his being born a king, while the judges were but the mouth-piece of a whole people driven for a time beyond control of justice or reason. Charles and his judges are altogether in contrast to this. A brave and haughty monarch had failed in his efforts, by policy or force, to establish absolute power on the ruins of all popular rights. With longsuffering patience, the popular leaders had striven to restore to his hand the sceptre, under such restrictions as should prevent its ever becoming a despot's rod; and when all faith in his promises or intentions became hopeless, they judged him, and doomed him as a traitor to the laws-well knowing that only a very small minority of that sovereign people in whose name they acted, dared to sympathize in such a deed.

We can scarcely now, by any effort, conceive how courageous, how horrible an act, was this condemnation of the King of England in the seventeenth century. Not many months before, when he was escorted from Newcastle a prisoner, newly delivered up by the Scots to the English commissioners, in proceeding southward eager crowds flocked to meet him, bringing with them persons afflicted with scrofula, or king's evil, that he might touch and cure them as he passed! The King was, in truth, a lesser divinity to the people of that age; it was not a mere extravagant figure of speech, when court divines

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