UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

259

And, if so, would the nation compel him to do what he thoughtcriminal and disgraceful? To apply, even by strictly consti-tutional means, a violent pressure to his conscience, seemed tozealous Royalists ungenerous and undutiful. But strictly con-stitutional means were not the only means which the Whigswere disposed to employ. Signs were already discerniblewhich portended the approach of great troubles. Men, who inthe time of the civil war and of the Commonwealth had ac-quired an odious notoriety, had emerged from the obscurity inwhich, after the Restoration, they had hidden themselves fromthe general hatred, showed their confident and busy faceseverywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign of theSaints. Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice,another usurper on the throne, the Lords again ejected fromtheir hall by violence, the Universities again purged, theChurch again robbed and persecuted, the Puritans again do-minant, to such results did the desperate policy of the oppo-sition seem to tend.

Animated by such feelings, the majority of the upper andmiddle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The situa-tion of the King bore, at this time, a great resemblance tothat in which his father stood just after the Remonstrance hadbeen voted. But the reaction of 1G41 had not been sufferedto run its course. Charles the First, at the very momentwhen his people, long estranged, were returning to him withhearts disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious viola-tion of the fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited theirconfidence for ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similarcourse, had he arrested the Whig leaders in an irregularmanner, and impeached them of high treason before a tri-bunal which had no legal jurisdiction over them, it is highlyprobable that they would speedily have regained the ascen-dency which they had lost.' Fortunately for himself ho wasinduced, at this crisis, to adopt a policy which, for his ends,

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CHAP.

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