Hume, vol. vi., p. 179. “This was indeed,” Lord Campbell remarks, “the great crisis of the English Constitution. Had our distinguished patriots then quailed, Parliaments would thenceforth have been merely the subject of antiquarian research, or perhaps occasionally summoned to register the edicts of the Crown”[322] “The state,” as Sir Edward Coke declared in Parliament, “was in a consumption, yet not incurable.” It was his courage and honesty that helped to effect a cure. Footnote 322: Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i., p. 325. Charles, considering that he was himself aimed at in the allegations against the Duke, commanded the House expressly not to interfere with his servant Buckingham, and ordered it to conclude the bill for the subsidies which they had begun, intimating that if that were not done it should sit no longer. Instead of referring the case to the Lords, and insisting on the affair being brought to a trial before that body, he went himself to the House of Lords, and declared his intention of clearing the Duke by his own testimony. The Commons had, on that very day, moved that the Duke should be committed to the Tower until the issue of his trial should be known. That motion was rejected; in vain did Buckingham attempt to explain and soften down this conduct in a speech to the Lords. Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot were thrown into prison, and although they were soon liberated, the Commons immediately declared that they would not proceed with any business whatsoever until satisfaction should be given for this breach of privilege. Unhappily, all these discords were aggravated nearly to frenzy by the bitterest of all passions--religious intolerance. Whilst we must applaud, with all gratitude, the lofty and honest spirit which opposed acts of despotism--a spirit to which we owe our present pre-eminence as a free and powerful nation--we must deprecate the remorseless oppressions which the friends of liberty scrupled not to inflict on those who thought on religious matters differently from themselves.