■WILLIAM AND SIAKY.

71

indemnity for those very delinquents whom he had, a few chap.months before, described in his Declaration as deserving of -exemplary punishment. In November he had told the worldthat the crimes in which these men had borne a part had madeit the duty of subjects to violate their oath of allegiance, ofsoldiers to desert their standards, of children to make war ontheir parents. With what consistency then could he recommendthat such crimes should be covered by a general oblivion ? Andwas there not too much reason to fear that he wished to save theagents of tyranny from the fate which they merited, in the hopethat, at some future time, they might serve him as unscrupulouslyas they had served his father in law?*

Of the members of the House of Commons who were inion-

, perauce

animated by these feelings, the fiercest and most audacious was of iiowe.Howe. He went so far on one occasion as to move that an in-quiry should be instituted into the proceedings of the Parlia-ment of 1685, and that some note of infamy should be put onall who, in that Parliament, had voted with the Court. Thisabsurd and mischievous motion was discountenanced by all themost respectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch andMaynard.** Howe was forced to givew'ay: but he w r as a manwhom no check could abash; and he was encouraged by the ap-plause of many hotheaded members of his party, who W'ere farfrom foreseeing that he w r ould, after having been the mostrancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distanttime, the most rancorous and unprincipled of Tories.

* Among the numerous pieces in which the malecontent Whigs ventedtheir anger, none is more curious than the poem entitled the Ghost ofCharles the Second. Charles addresses William thus:

“Hail, my blest nephew, whom the fates ordainTo fill the measure of the Stuart’s reign,

That all the ills by our whole race designedIn thee their full accomplishment might find:

’Tis thou that art decreed this point to clear,

Which wo have laboured for these fourscore year.”

** Grey's Debates, June 12. 1(589.