Throughout the speech there is a compactness and an impetuosity truly remarkable. No one at all familiar with the history and condition of the time, will fail to see that it was a masterly presentation of the issues at stake. It is pervaded with a tone of loyalty—even of affection—toward the King. The argument was founded on the theory that even under the best of kings, with an irresponsible form of administration, there can be no security against selfish and ambitious ministers, and that under any government whatever there can be no adequate guarantees against such abuses except in the provisions of law. The orator introduces no grievance personal to himself, though he had already twice suffered imprisonment for words spoken in debate. His entire object seems to have been to expose abuses that had oppressed the people during the ten years under Buckingham’s rule, and to show how, by means of his duplicity and incompetency, the honor of the country had been sacrificed, its allies betrayed, and those necessities of the King created which gave rise to the abuses complained of in the Petition of Right. Aside from the striking oratorical merits of the speech and the light it throws on the all-important struggles of the time, there are two circumstances that tend to give it peculiar interest. It is the earliest parliamentary speech of real importance that has been preserved to us. The age in which it was delivered is enough to account for the antique air of the orator’s style—a style, however, which will be especially relished by all those who have learned to enjoy the quaint literary flavor of our early masters of English prose. The other circumstance of especial interest is the fact that soon after the delivery of the speech, and in consequent of it, Eliot was thrown into prison, where, after an ignominious confinement and a brutal treatment of two and a half years, he died a martyr’s death. His earnest plea not only cost him his life, but it cost him a long period of ignominy that was far worse than death. But he kept the faith, and calmly underwent his slow martyrdom. The last word that he sent out from his prison was an expression of belief that upon the maintenance or the abandonment of the privileges of Parliament would depend the future glory or misery of England. By the ability of his advocacy, by the constancy of his purpose, and by the manner of his death, he fully deserved that the author of the “Constitutional History of England” should call him, as he does, “the most illustrious confessor in the cause of liberty whom that time produced.” SIR JOHN ELIOT. ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND UNDER THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 3, 1628. MR. SPEAKER: