without alarm; and though he might derive more hope from those better spirits who had withstood the prerogative in its exorbitance, as they now sustained it in its decline, yet it could not be easy to foretell that they would preserve sufficient influence to keep steady the balance of power, in the contingency of any decisive success of the royal arms. But, on the other hand, the House of Commons presented still less favourable prospects. We should not indeed judge over severely some acts of a virtuous indignation in the first moments of victory,[231] or those heats of debate, without some excesses of which a popular assembly is in danger of falling into the opposite extreme of phlegmatic security. But, after every allowance has been made, he must bring very heated passions to the records of those times, who does not perceive in the conduct of that body a series of glaring violations, not only of positive and constitutional, but of those higher principles which are paramount to all immediate policy. Witness the ordinance for disarming recusants passed by both houses in August 1641, and that in November, authorising the Earl of Leicester to raise men for the defence of Ireland without warrant under the great seal; both manifest encroachments on the executive power;[232] and the enormous extension of privilege, under which every person accused on the slightest testimony of disparaging their proceedings, or even of introducing new-fangled ceremonies in the church, a matter wholly out of their cognisance, was dragged before them as a delinquent, and lodged in their prison.[233] Witness the outrageous attempts to intimidate the minority of their own body in the commitment of Mr. Palmer, and afterwards of Sir Ralph Hopton, to the Tower, for such language used in debate as would not have excited any observation in ordinary times;--their continual encroachments on the rights and privileges of the Lords, as in their intimation that, if bills thought by them necessary for the public good should fall in the upper house, they must join with the minority of the Lords in representing the same to the king;[234] or in the impeachment of the Duke of Richmond for words, and those of the most trifling nature, spoken in the upper house;[235]--their despotic violation of the rights of the people, in imprisoning those who presented or prepared respectful petitions in behalf of the established constitution,[236] while they encouraged those of a tumultuous multitude at their bar in favour of innovation;[237]--their usurpation at once of the judicial and legislative powers in all that related to the church, particularly by their committee for scandalous ministers, under which denomination, adding reproach to injury, they subjected all who did not reach the standard of puritan perfection to contumely and vexation, and ultimately to expulsion from their lawful property.[238] Witness the impeachment of the twelve bishops for treason, on account of their