Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion.  We need not say how much we admire his public conduct.  But we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable.  The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is less understood, than any event in English history.  The friends of liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so bitterly.  Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters.  As a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin literature; and literature was even with them, as, in the long-run, it always is with its enemies.  The best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson.  May’s History of the Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle.  The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill.  On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume.  The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable.  Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge.

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal.  We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most important question.  We shall not argue it on general grounds.  We shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced.  We are entitled to that vantage ground; but we will relinquish it.  We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind.  We will take the naked constitutional question.  We confidently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Rebellion.