However plausible these topics, they made small impression on the house of commons. By some illegal, and several suspicious measures of the crown, and by the courageous opposition which particular persons, amidst dangers and hardships, had made to them, the minds of men, throughout the nation, had taken such a turn, as to ascribe every honor to the refractory opposers of the king and the ministers. These were the only patriots, the only lovers of their country, the only heroes, and perhaps, too, the only true Christians. A reasonable compliance with the court was slavish dependence; a regard to the king, servile flattery; a confidence in his promises, shameful prostitution. This general cast of thought, which has more or less prevailed in England during near a century and a half, and which has been the cause of much good and much ill in public affairs, never predominated more than during the reign of Charles. The present house of commons, being entirely composed of country gentlemen, who came into parliament with all their native prejudices about them, and whom the crown had no means of influencing, could not fail to contain a majority of these stubborn patriots. Affairs likewise, by means of the Scottish insurrection and the general discontents in England, were drawing so near to a crisis, that the leaders of the house, sagacious and penetrating, began to foresee the consequences, and to hope that the time so long wished for was now come, when royal authority must fall into a total subordination under popular assemblies, and when public liberty must acquire a full ascendant. By reducing the crown to necessities, they had hitherto found that the king had been pushed into violent counsels, which had served extremely the purposes of his adversaries: and by multiplying these necessities, it was foreseen that his prerogative, undermined on all sides, must at last be overthrown, and be no longer dangerous to the privileges of the people. Whatever, therefore, tended to compose the differences between king and parliament, and to preserve the government uniformly in its present channel, was zealously opposed by these popular leaders; and their past conduct and sufferings gave them credit sufficient to effect all their purposes.