of a numerous and bigoted party of the nation, and who, which was most material of all, had enabled himself to govern without a parliament.  Civil resistance in this country, even to the most illegal attacks of royal tyranny, has never, I believe, been successful, unless when supported by parliament, or at least by a great party in one or other of the two houses.  The court having wrested from the livery of London, partly by corruption, and partly by violence, the free election of their mayor and sheriffs, did not wait the accomplishment of their plan for the destruction of the whole corporation, which, from their first success, they justly deemed certain, but immediately proceeded to put in execution their system of oppression.  Pilkington, Colt, and Oates, were fined a hundred thousand pounds each for having spoken disrespectfully of the Duke of York; Barnardiston, ten thousand, for having in a private letter expressed sentiments deemed improper; and Sidney, Russell, and Armstrong, found that the just and mild principles which characterise the criminal law of England could no longer protect their lives, when the sacrifice was called for by the policy or vengeance of the king.  To give an account of all the oppression of this period would be to enumerate every arrest, every trial, every sentence, that took place in questions between the crown and the subjects.

Of the Rye House plot it may be said, much more truly than of the popish, that there was in it some truth, mixed with much falsehood; and though many of the circumstances in Kealing’s account are nearly as absurd and ridiculous as those in Oates’s, it seems probable that there was among some of those accused a notion of assassinating the king; but whether this notion was over ripened into what may be called a design, and, much more, whether it were ever evinced by such an overt act as the law requires for conviction, is very doubtful.  In regard to the conspirators of higher ranks, from whom all suspicion of participation in the intended assassination has been long since done away, there is unquestionably reason to believe that they had often met and consulted, as well for the purpose of ascertaining the means they actually possessed as for that of devising others for delivering their country from the dreadful servitude into which it had fallen; and thus far their conduct appears clearly to have been laudable.  If they went further, and did anything which could be fairly construed into an actual conspiracy to levy war against the king, they acted, considering the disposition of the nation at that period, very indiscreetly.  But whether their proceedings had ever gone this length, is far from certain.  Monmouth’s communications with the king, when we reflect upon all the circumstances of those communications, deserve not the smallest attention; nor indeed, if they did, does the letter which he afterwards withdrew prove anything upon this point.  And it is an outrage to common-sense