protestation against all that should be done in the House of Lords during their compelled absence through fear of the populace; a protest not perhaps entirely well expressed, but abundantly justifiable in its argument by the plainest principles of law.[239] These great abuses of power, becoming daily more frequent, as they became less excusable, would make a sober man hesitate to support them in a civil war, wherein their success must not only consummate the destruction of the Crown, the church, and the peerage, but expose all who had dissented from their proceedings, as it ultimately happened, to an oppression less severe perhaps, but far more sweeping, than that which had rendered the star-chamber odious. But it may reasonably also be doubted whether, in staking their own cause on the perilous contingencies of war, the House of Commons did not expose the liberties for which they professedly were contending, to a far greater risk than they could have incurred even from peace with an insidious court. For let any one ask himself what would have been the condition of the parliament, if by the extension of that panic which in fact seized upon several regiments, or by any of those countless accidents which determine the fate of battles, the king had wholly defeated their army at Edgehill? Is it not probable, nay, in such a supposition, almost demonstrable, that in those first days of the civil war, before the parliament had time to discover the extent of its own resources, he would have found no obstacle to his triumphal entry into London? And, in such circumstances, amidst the defection of the timid and lukewarm, the consternation of the brawling multitude, and the exultation of his victorious troops, would the triennial act itself, or those other statutes which he had very reluctantly conceded, have stood secure? Or, if we believe that the constitutional supporters of his throne, the Hertfords, the Falklands, the Southamptons, the Spencers, would still have had sufficient influence to shield from violent hands that palladium which they had assisted to place in the building, can there be a stronger argument against the necessity of taking up arms for the defence of liberties, which, even in the contingency of defeat, could not have been subverted?