In the prosecution of Strafford, Falkland showed such ardour that, as Clarendon intimates, those who knew him not ascribed his behaviour to personal resentment. His lips formulated the very doctrine so fatal to the great accused, that a number of acts severally not amounting to high treason might cumulatively support the charge. "How many haires' breadths makes a tall man and how many makes a little man, noe man can well say, yet we know a tall man when we see him from a low man; soe 'tis in this,--how many illegal acts make a treason is not certainly well known, but we well know it when we see." Mr. Arnold says that "alone amongst his party Falkland raised his voice against pressing forward Strafford's impeachment with unfair or vindictive haste." That is to say, when Pym proposed to the House, sitting with closed doors, at once to carry up the impeachment to the Lords and demand the arrest of Strafford without delay, Falkland, moved by his great, and, in all ordinary cases, laudable respect for regularity of proceeding, proposed first to have the charges formally drawn up by a committee. Falkland's proposal was almost fatuous; it proves that the grand difference between him and Pym was that Pym was a great man of action and that he was not. It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted match should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee had formally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited in large quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament was sitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of what he must have well known was a revolution. He would probably have struck at the Commons if they had not struck at him; certainly he would have placed himself beyond their reach; and the promptness of Pym's decision saved the party and the country. No practical injustice was done by wresting the sword out of Strafford's hand and putting him in safe keeping till the charges could be drawn up in form, as they immediately were. Falkland himself in proposing a committee avowed his conviction that the grounds for the impeachment were perfectly sufficient. His name does not appear among the Straffordians; and had he opposed the Bill of Attainder it seems morally certain that Clarendon would have told us so. The strength of this presumption is not impaired by any vague words of Baxter coupling the name of Falkland with that of Digby as a seceder from the party on the occasion of the Bill. Had Falkland voted with Digby, his name would have appeared in the same list. That he felt qualms and wavered at the last is very likely; but it is almost certain that he voted for the Bill. There is some reason for believing that he took the sterner, though probably more constitutional, line, on the question of allowing the accused to be heard by counsel. But the evidence is meagre and doubtful; and the difficulty of reading it aright