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and justice applicable to crowned heads and another to the rest of mankind, the only considerations which could have saved him from his merited fate were simply those of a prudential nature.
It might well have been made a question by those who had no doubt in their own minds of Charles's guilt in a moral point of view, whether, in the then state of parties and of popular prejudices in behalf of royalty, the interests of the nation would not be seriously endangered by pushing matters to this extremity.
On the other hand, it is not easy to see what alternative was left after what had passed, consistently with a proper regard to the general security of the people at large, and still more so of those who had been actively engaged on the popular side; knowing as they did from repeated experience, that no reliance was to be placed on the king's professions, or even on his most solemn engagements; which his whole conduct shewed that he was determined to observe only so long, and in such cases, as it appeared to be necessary or suitable to his own convenience.
But, whatever may be the merit or demerit of the proceedings which finally brought Charles to the block, Mr. Towgoodshews plainly enough, that the Presbyterians are not more entitled to claim the one than they are liable to the other.
A large majority of both houses of parliament were in the first instance friendly to the established church; and, afterwards, the extreme measures which ended in the death of the king were urged forward by the independent party and the army, notwithstanding the most strenuous opposition of the Presbyterians both in and out of parliament.
In
