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.

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different light.  The deed was done.  It could not be undone.  The evil was incurred; and the object was to render it as small as possible.  We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion.  The very feeling which would have restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition.  For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it.  But, for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it when it was done....

We wish to add a few words relative to another subject on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell,—­his conduct during the administration of the Protector.  That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary.  But all the circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary.  The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind.  He never seems to have coveted despotic power.  He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it till it had deserted its duty.  If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy.  But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power.  He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world.  He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon.  For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president.