A reader who now looks back on this singular transaction—and who has therefore the advantage of looking at it by the stern-lights of history,—will be likely to believe that the chief offence of the pamphlet lay (in a certain sense,) in its truth. [Sidenote: CHARACTER AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE ‘PROPOSITION TO BRIDLE PARLIAMENTS.’] It was the much too frank exposition of a policy which clung very close to CHARLES’ heart, though he could ill afford—in 1629—to have it openly avowed. The undeniable fact that this ‘_Proposition for Your Majesty’s Service_’ was indeed fitter for the latitude of Constantinople, than for that of London, sounds but awkwardly on the royal lips, when connected with an assertion (in the same breath,) of the ‘justice and mildness’ of the King’s own government. The indictment which his Parliament brought against CHARLES,—and which History has endorsed,—could hardly be packed into briefer words than those which the King himself used that day at the Council Board. His notions of kingly rule, like his father’s, were in truth much better suited for the government of Turkey than for the government of England. Sir Robert COTTON, however, had no more to do with the authorship of the ‘_Proposition_’ than had CHARLES himself. The author was Sir Robert DUDLEY. The time of its composition was at least fifteen years before the date of the imprisonment of COTTON and his companions in disfavour. The place of its birth was Florence. It cannot even be proved that COTTON had any personal knowledge of the fact that the offensive tract had been found in his own library. He had recently read it, indeed,—in common with BEDFORD, CLARE, and Oliver SAINT-JOHN, and no doubt, like them, had read it with many surging thoughts,—but he had read it in a recent transcript, written by a clerk. Of Robert DUDLEY’S motive in writing his ‘_Proposition_’ we have also no proof. But the presumptive and internal evidence is so strong, as to make proof almost superfluous. The tract bears witness, between the lines, that it was composed to win the favour—or at least to arrest the despoiling hand—of King JAMES. And there is hardly a suggestion in it which might not be backed by some parallel passage in the writings, or the speeches, of JAMES himself, when expatiating on kingly prerogatives in some mood of mind a little more foolish than usual, or when striving—only too successfully—to train up his successor to follow in his own path. It seems like an irony of Fate to find that (in all probability,—for here again the proof is not quite clinching,) the King’s informer, against COTTON and the other offenders, was WENTWORTH, who, not many years after 1629, was to sum up views of policy much akin to Robert DUDLEY’S in the memorable word ‘_Thorough_.’