rights.  He knew the whole beauty and value of the system which he attempted to deface.  He was the first of the Rats, the first of those statesmen whose patriotism has been only the coquetry of political prostitution, and whose profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from an Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry.  He was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was a sacrament of infamy, a baptism into the communion of corruption.  As he was the earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest; eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of invention, immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys nations pre-eminent, the lost Archangel, the Satan of the apostasy.  The title for which, at the time of his desertion, he exchanged a name honourably distinguished in the cause of the people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of the first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning,

“Satan;—­so call him now—­His former name Is heard no more in heaven.”

The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed mainly to draw on him the hatred of his contemporaries.  It has since made him an object of peculiar interest to those whose lives have been spent, like his, in proving that there is no malice like the malice of a renegade; Nothing can be more natural or becoming than that one turncoat should eulogize another.

Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their private virtues.  But Strafford was the same throughout.  As was the statesman, such was the kinsman and such the lover.  His conduct towards Lord Mountmorris is recorded by Clarendon.  For a word which can scarcely be called rash, which could not have been made the subject of an ordinary civil action, the Lord Lieutenant dragged a man of high rank, married to a relative of that saint about whom he whimpered to the peers, before a tribunal of slaves.  Sentence of death was passed.  Everything but death was inflicted.  Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still more scandalous.  That nobleman was thrown into prison, in order to compel him to settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his daughter-in-law, whom, as there is every reason to believe, Strafford had debauched.  These stories do not rest on vague report.  The historians most partial to the minister admit their truth, and censure them in terms which, though too lenient for the occasion, axe still severe.  These facts are alone sufficient to justify the appellation with which Pym branded him “the wicked Earl.”

In spite of all Strafford’s vices, in spite of all his dangerous projects, he was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law; but of the law in all its rigour; of the law according to the utmost strictness of the letter, which killeth.  He was not to be torn in pieces by a mob, or stabbed in the back by an assassin.  He was not to have punishment meted out to him from his own iniquitous measure.  But if justice, in the whole range of its wide armoury, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before God and man, to employ.