ESSAYS HISTORICAL AND LITERARY. a:

to jufiify or palliate the arbitrary conduit of
Charles I. by appealing to precedents drawn
from the reign of Henry VIII. as it would be to
vindicate any illegal or unconltitutional practices
of the prefent reign by an appeal to the direful
precedents of the latter days of Charles II. In
the beginning of the feventeenth century the
maxims of the reign of Henry VIII. were become
obliolete. Men were accufiomed to another
mode of government. Their minds were occu-
pied by the recolleEiion of the glorious and
profperous times of Elizabeth, when uninter-
rupted affeflion and harmony fubfilted between
the fovereign and the people: and if the prero-
gative was occafionally exerted in an irregular
and arbitrary manner, thofe very exertions were
feen or were thought at lealt to be neceflary, and
no appreheniions were entertained that they were
the refult of a fixed and preconcerted plan to
enllave the nation. Charles I. was a tyrant as
well as Henry VIII. but he attempted the part
at a period far more unfavorable to the fuccefs
of his defigns. Mr. Hume pretends that the cir-
cumflances in which he was placed were in the
higheft degree critical; and plaufibly apologizes
for him by faying, that his capacity was not equal
to fituations of fuch extreme delicacy. But his
fituation at the commencement of his reign was
not to be compared, in point of difliculty, with
‘ C 3 . that