even the all-engrossing question of the war, raised his voice for certain ancient privileges of the nation. On the 1st of March, he spoke on the question of the Spanish treaties, in the high strain of popular feeling. He alluded to war, as that "which alone will secure and repair us;" and recommended the setting out of a fleet "by those penalties the papists and recusants have already incurred2, - means which would have been especially odious to the court. But Eliot never waited to trim his propositions by the court fashion, even in its popular days, and we never discern in him the bated breath, or the whispering humbleness. On that occasion, also, he seems to have resented the long and vacillating negotiations of the king and his secretaries. "Fitter for us to do than to speak," he said, and most justly said, at that crisis. On the 8th of the same month, he opposed a hasty decision with respect to the king's answer at Theobald's. It was not satisfactory, owing to the immediateness of its demand for supplies. He had been appointed one of the deputation; and, alluding to "many strange reports," since their return, he moves "to have some time each to take copies, and then to deliberate and advise."4 This he carried.

On the 11th, he went up to the lords, on this same subject, with some of the great leaders of the house Philips, Selden, Coke, Rudyard, Saville, Stroude - to confer with them about his majesty's estate." 5 This conference elicited an assurance from the treasurer, the following day, of "his majesty's resolution to call parliaments oft, to make good laws, and redress public grievances." From this may be well inferred the nature of the previous day's remonstrance from Eliot and his friends. Nor did this plausible assurance put those faithful men off their guard. They answered the treasurer, "that we had no doubt here yesterday, as among the lords. We fittest to relieve the king's particular wants, when we have enabled the subjects to do it, by removing their grievances." An explanation of the disputed passages in the answer was subsequently given, such as satisfied the house.

In the same spirit were all Eliot's speeches in the matter of this Spanish war. He never supported it but for the promotion of the popular cause, and always accompanied his approbation of the measure with an avowal of those greater ulterior objects, which he felt it ought to accomplish. I need not go through the numerous minutes of the journals, in which his name appears at this time. His attention to the business of debate, as to the committees, must have been most arduous, since it was unremitting. Besides the great number of private bills, in the management of which his name appears, he took part in all public questions; lent his aid to the best legal reforms; and generally formed one in the more learned committees appointed to consider disputed questions on the privileges of the universities.2 He opposed always, with watchful jealousy, any attempt to move from the constitutional usages of the house; and when the ministers proposed, through sir Guy Palmer, to have a committee to draw a bill for the continuance of all bills the next session in statu quo, that they might so "husband time," - the name of Eliot was found successfully opposed to this, in connection with his friends, Philips, Coke, and Digges. He was unceasing in his exertions against monopolies 4; and in reminding the house of the petitions - those "stinging petitions," as the king used bitterly to call them - "not to be forgotten against recusants5;" but, when duty to the cause permitted it, he never pressed the letter of

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offence against any offender. Humanity came in rescue of the strictness of his judgments. When some of the popular party pushed hard against the under-sheriff of Cambridge, for a misdemeanor at the election, Eliot humanely interceded. He suggested that the custody the sheriff had already undergone, and the expenses he had been put to, were surely sufficient punishment, and recommended his immediate dismissal. The ever true and able sir Robert Philips seconded the suggestion. In no single respect can the enemies of Eliot taunt him with his conduct in this session; nor will they dare hereafter to use their equally dangerous weapon, the imputation of his silence, to prove that his patriotism was sluggish or inactive, or moving only at the will of others.

After the most anxious search, I can find no allusion from Eliot, respecting Buckingham, which indicates a feeling of any sort. His silence on this head is indeed remarkable, as the lauded name of the duke was then most frequently on the lips of other popular members; and yet, that it did not proceed from any vindictive feeling at an abrupt cessation of intercourse, I think I am enabled to prove. From a minute of the journals of the house, it appears that, on one of the debates respecting the Spanish treaties, some private letters of the duke of Buckingham were referred to, whereupon Eliot stated that he had that morning seen those letters. This is specially entered in the journals. No other member makes the remotest allusion to having seen them. This appears to me to offer a fair presumption that Eliot still continued to meet Buckingham in private intercourse. If this is admitted, then the amiable theory of those writers who have concluded that the letter to the duke, previously quoted, was the last of a series of unanswered applications, and that, from the time of its date, a vindictive feeling had been awakened in the breast of the offended writer, - that Eliot's patriotism, in fact, was altogether a personal pique at Buckingham 1,-has received another blow, prostrate as it was before.

And another, should any one chance to think another necessary, remains to be inflicted. In this parliament a question arose, on which I have discovered the note of a speech by Eliot, which could never have been delivered by him, if his character had not rested clearly free from all imputations of personal dependence or political subserviency. It occurred in a debate " at the close of 1623," the very period fixed by our modern commentators, from which to date their obstinate accusations. At that period, several committees were sitting on the various courts of justice, to investigate complaints against their mal-administration. Among many petitions presented to the house in consequence of these committees, was one from the wife of a person named Grys, complaining of wrongs she had suffered from the court of chancery, and appealing against the long delays of that court. To this petition sir Edward Coke objected. The lawyer stood in the way of the redresser of grievances. He told the house that the woman was half distracted; that the wrong she complained of occurred in "Egerton's time;" that he was now gone; and that it was a most unusual thing to complain against the dead. After some discussion, it was at last resolved that the grievance in question, with others, should be argued by counsel before a sub-committee. This sub-committee was then about to be chosen, when sir John Eliot rose. He spoke, as was his custom ever, in concern for the wrongs of the oppressed. He warned the house to be careful in their choice, for he knew of what vast importance it was that the "cries of the vexed subject" should be heard by unbiassed men. He implored them to "have a special care" that its members should "have

no dependence upon men in place; " he suggested that it would be better to have no lawyers upon it; that it were more just to "have countrymen, that have no dependence." There are few who will disagree with me in thinking, that these are not the words of a follower of Buckingham. That they should have been spoken by one, who laboured under the very odium of what he so earnestly condemned, is, to a monstrous degree, improbable. Not on that occasion, nor on any other, did his opponents in the house dare to hint such a charge. I find the patriotic old lawyer replying to this earnest appeal, with a statement of “ great inconveniences in having such a sub-committee," and an entreaty to "have it well considered of :"-but not a word of reproach on the motives of Eliot.

It is necessary that I should now advert to the terms on which Eliot and his friends in this parliament consented to furnish supplies for the Spanish war. On the gross abuse of these supplies, their subsequent bitter opposition was most justly founded.

Their earnest desire to see James's mean subserviency to Spain at once destroyed, never for an instant blinded them to the serious consequence of pressing the people by heavy subsidies. Nine hundred thousand pounds had been demanded. They granted three hundred thousand; promising more, if, in the right prosecution of the contest, more should become necessary. Over and over again they distinctly stated, that the country was not in a condition to hazard a general war; and, by many sharp stipulations, they restricted hostilities to one object, specific and defined. They seem, indeed, to have had some reason, before the final arrangement, to suspect the gross duplicity which had been practised on them by Buckingham, and to have resolved to defend their own policy at all events. They declared, that their object, in so earnestly promoting war, was the recovery of the Palatinate, and that alone: that hostilities with Spain,