In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had satisfaction made to the wronged, immediately.]

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DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE DECRIERS OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Let us detect, among the modern decriers of the character of James I., those contradictory opinions, which start out in the same page; for the conviction of truth flashed on the eyes of those who systematically vilified him, and must often have pained them; while it embarrassed and confused those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted the popular notions.  Even Hume is at variance with himself; for he censures James for his indolence, “which prevented him making any progress in the practice of foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the neighbouring nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor,” p. 29.  Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince Henry, at p. 63, that “had he lived, he had probably promoted the glory; perhaps not the felicity, of his people.  The unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits as destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind.”  This is true philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may command the state.  Had Hume, with all the sweetness of his temper, been a philosopher on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure he passed on James I. Another important contradiction in Hume deserves detection.  The king, it seems, “boasted of his management of Ireland as his masterpiece.”  According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose political works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James I. “in the space of nine years made greater advances towards the reformation of that kingdom than had been effected in more than four centuries;” on this Hume adds that the king’s “vanity in this particular was not without foundation.”  Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet—­and yet he, who had indulged a sarcasm on the vanity of James, in closing his general view of his wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler feelings.  —­“Such were the arts,” exclaims the historian, “by which James introduced humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most profound barbarism.  Noble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal glory of conquests.”  Let us add, that had the genius of James the First been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their pages with bloody trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts which put it into practice—­these are the still virtues which give no motion to the spectacle of the historian, and are even forgotten in his pages.