When the Parliament and Addison’s ‘Freeholder’ came to an end together, the Essay writer boasted of having given the ‘complexion of the times.’ He was sorry that there were men still left who thought they could never be wrong as long as they opposed a Minister of State; and that the Government was blamed for severity towards the rebels, when the friends of the administration rather murmured at too great leniency being practised towards them. He thought it was a pity, since oak garlands used to be the reward of those who saved cities, that oak apples and oaken clubs were the signs and weapons, on one day in the year at least, of those who would bring destruction on the kingdom. He deplored the ruffianism of both Whig and Tory mobs, of the women as well as of the men. It was not so in Charles II.’s time, when men, instead of declaring their opinions by knocking out one another’s brains, ‘hung out their principles in different coloured ribbons.’ He traced the brutal violence of the times to the general conceit which visited all hostile argument with a blow. Children were taught politics, and to hate each other, before they understood the meaning of words. Squires came up from the country like dictators from the plough, and got drunk in praise of the aristocracy. Oyster women concerned themselves with the abolition of Episcopacy, and cinder wenches were sticklers for indefeasible right. Addison is alarmed at the novel establishment of country newspapers. They would make provincial towns as turbulent and uncomfortable as London. It was some consolation to him that the very sight of the royal family, particularly of the pretty princesses, was sufficient to soften many a Jacobite; and, though Jacobite ladies _would_ distinguish themselves by wearing white roses――less white, of course, than the bosoms against which they lay――how much more beautiful were the loyaler ladies who proclaimed their principles, and excited the most tender sympathies, by fastening in their hair the simple but significant Sweet William!――a compliment to William of Nassau. [Illustration: Lily of the valley] [Illustration: Decorative banner] CHAPTER XIII. (1716.) [Illustration: Drop-B]ut while the great Essayist revelled in this social and political banter, earnest tragedy was being enacted elsewhere. On July 8th the death warrant for the execution of two dozen Jacobites seems to have been stayed at Court before it went on its dreadful way. There was such effectual discussion upon it, that the good souls there snatched twenty-two lives from the hangman. ‘All to be reprieved,’ says Lady Cowper, ‘but Justice Hall and Parson Paul.’ The Duchess of Shrewsbury pleaded hard for the lives of the whole four-and-twenty; but the hangman got his allotment of one in the dozen. [Sidenote: _THE REV. MR. PAUL._]