But it is said, why not adopt milder measures?  Why, after the King had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war?  The ship-money had been given up.  The Star-Chamber had been abolished.  Provision had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation of parliaments.  Why not pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means?  We recur again to the analogy of the Revolution.  Why was James driven from the throne?  Why was he not retained upon conditions?  He too had offered to call a free parliament and to submit to its decision all the matters in dispute.  Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant.  The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the same praise.  They could not trust the King.  He had no doubt passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that he would not break them?  He had renounced oppressive prerogatives but where was the security that he would not resume them?  The nation had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688.  No action of James can be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right.  The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out.  He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies.  The bill receives his solemn assent; the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act which he had been paid to pass.

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them.  At length circumstances compelled Charles to summon another parliament:  another chance was given to our fathers:  were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former?  Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le veut?  Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again?  Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury?  They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him.  We think that they chose wisely and nobly.