_Difficulty of framing conditions._--If, however, we were to be convinced that the restoration was effected without a sufficient safeguard against the future abuses of royal power, we must still allow, on looking attentively at the circumstances, that there were very great difficulties in the way of any stipulations for that purpose. It must be evident that any formal treaty between Charles and the English government, as it stood in April 1660, was inconsistent with their common principle. That government was, by its own declarations, only _de facto_, only temporary; the return of the secluded members to their seats, and the votes they subsequently passed, held forth to the people that everything done since the force put on the house in December 1648 was by an usurpation; the restoration of the ancient monarchy was implied in all recent measures, and was considered as out of all doubt by the whole kingdom. But between a king of England and his subjects no treaty, as such, could be binding; there was no possibility of entering into stipulations with Charles, though in exile, to which a court of justice would pay the slightest attention, except by means of acts of parliament. It was doubtless possible that the council of state might have entered into a secret agreement with him on certain terms, to be incorporated afterwards into bills, as at the treaty of Newport. But at that treaty his father, though in prison, was the acknowledged sovereign of England; and it is manifest that the king's recognition must precede the enactment of any law. It is equally obvious that the contracting parties would no longer be the same, and that the conditions that seemed indispensable to the council of state, might not meet with the approbation of parliament. It might occur to an impatient people, that the former were not invested with such legal or permanent authority as could give them any pretext for bargaining with the king, even in behalf of public liberty.