which was common to them with all their fellow citizens. Those who
drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his
friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him
out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages,
who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to
another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted
his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters. When we
reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the
same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully
conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall
before him until he became our king and governor, can, on the thirtieth
of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr
may be visited on themselves and their children.
We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not because the
constitution exempts the king from responsibility, for we know that
all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because
we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his
sentence describes him with perfect justice as "a tyrant, a traitor, a
murderer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the
measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed
was a captive and a hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance of every
Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians
could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father: they had no
such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also,
contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable,
no government could safely venture to outrage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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