Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 3.djvu/465

The malice of John Hampden, however, was unwearied and unabashed. A few days later, in a committee of the whole House of Commons on the state of the nation, he made a bitter speech, in which he ascribed all the disasters of the year to the influence of the men who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, been censured by Parliaments, of the men who had attempted to mediate between James and William. The King, he said, ought to dismiss from his counsels and presence all the three noblemen who had been sent to negotiate with him at Hungerford. He went on to speak of the danger of employing men of republican principles. He doubtless alluded to the chief object of his implacable malignity. For Halifax, though from temper averse to violent changes, was well known to be in speculation a republican, and often talked, with much ingenuity and pleasantry, against hereditary monarchy. The only effect, however, of the reflection now thrown on him was to call forth a roar of derision. That a Hampden, that the grandson of the great leader of the Long Parliament, that a man who boasted of having conspired with Algernon Sidney against the royal House, should use the word republican as a term of reproach! When the storm of laughter had subsided, several members stood up to vindicate the accused statesmen. Seymour declared that, much as he disapproved of the manner in which the administration had lately been conducted, he could not concur in the vote which John Hampden had proposed. "Look where you will," he said, "to Ireland, to Scotland, to the navy, to the army, you will find abundant proofs of mismanagement. If the war is still to be conducted by the same hands, we can expect nothing but a recurrence of the same disasters. But I am not prepared to proscribe men for the best thing that they ever did in their lives, to proscribe men for attempting to avert a revolution by timely mediation." It was justly said by another speaker that Halifax and Nottingham had been sent to the Dutch camp because they possessed the confidence of the nation, because they were universally known to be hostile to the dispensing power, to the Popish religion, and to the French ascendency. It was at length resolved that the King should be