UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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governable violence as soon as tlie check was withdrawn.Men flew to frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures'with the greediness which long and enforced abstinence na-turally produces. Little restraint was imposed by publicopinion. For the nation, nauseated with cant, suspicious ofall pretensions to sanctity, and still smarting from the recenttyranny of rulers austere in life and powerful in prayer, lookedfor a time with complacency on the softer and gayer vices.Still less restraint was imposed by the government. Indeedthere was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostenta-tious profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers.A few counsellors of Charles the First, who were now nolonger young, retained the decorous gravity which had beenthirty years before in fashion at Whitehall. Such wereClarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas Wriothesley,Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler,Duke of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudesstruggled gallantly for the royal cause in Ireland, now go-verned that kingdom as Lord Lieutenant. But neither thememory of the services of these men, nor their great power inthe state, could protect them from the sarcasms which modishvice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of politenessand vivacity could now scarcely be obtained except by someviolation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted tospread the contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently takena form well suited to please a generation equally devoted tomonarchy and to vice. Thomas Hobbes had, in languagemore precise and luminous than has ever been employed byany other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of theprince was the standard of right and wrong, and that everysubject ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism,or Paganism at the royal command. Thousands who wereincompetent to appreciate what was really valuable in hisspeculations, eagerly welcomed a theory which, while it. Macaulay, History. 1. 12

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