INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

THE history of England, whence our language, our literature, our common law, and some of our noblest elementary institutions are derived, is second, in interest, only to the history of our own country. It is, in one sense, a part of our own history. The ancestors of the men who achieved the American Revolution fought at Touton and at Bosworth field; they sat in the parliament of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth. Between the period of the first settlement of the colonies and the era of American Independence, our own history is not only intimately blended with that of the mother country, but forms part of it. Separated by the waters of an ocean we were still one people, bound together by a community of interest as well as a common language, common laws, and a common lineage. To us, then, the history of the British empire, the changes in its government, the progress of its civilization, its political and social revolutions, and above all, the character and genius of the men who wrought these great changes and revolutions, must

always remain a subject not only of pleasing interest but of the most instructive study.

No portion of the annals of England deserves a more close and discriminating perusal in a country where the principles of republicanism are established as the fundamental basis of government, than that which records the remarkable event commonly called the Revolution. It properly embraces a period of nearly half a century; commencing with the rupture between Charles I. and his parliament in the year 1640, and ending with the expulsion of James II., and the election of William and Mary to the throne, by the parliament, in the year 1688. The first twenty years of this preiod is, undoubtedly, to the republican reader, the most striking chapter of English history, comprising, as it does, the record of the downfall of the ancient monarchy-the solemn judgment of the people upon a king once almost absolute-the temporary triumph of free principles-the establishment of a republic, and its overthrow by a military usurper. was a period rife with momentous events-fertile of remarkable men. The events of that period have been much misunderstood even on this side the Atlantic; the really great men-the republicans who sought to elevate the people by the establishment of civil and religious liberty, have been misrepresented, or what is, perhaps, equally unjust, have been passed over in contemptuous silence. It is true, the names of the illustrious commoners, РYм and HAMPDEN, stand out prominent upon the annals of that age;

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and so do those of the victorious soldiers, CROMWELL, FAIRFAX, IRETON, and their associates, who headed the parliamentary army. The most zealous royalist has not been able to trace the history of those times, and follow the mighty events which the revolution developed, without assigning to each a place, a character, and a name. But the less prominent sphere of action of the statesmen and civilians, who established and sustained the Republic, has not been thought worthy the same particularity of narrative; and we have been left to estimate their characters, not so much from a faithful record of their lives and actions, as from the partial and unjust judgment pronounced upon them, unheard, by writers, who, like HUME, have shared the opinions, and drawn so largely from the narrative of that vengeful and bigoted royalist, LORD CLARENDON. Thus, some of the purest and noblest statesmen that England, or the world, has produced, have been neglected and forgotten, or, if remembered, and a place assigned them on the page of history, have been remembered only to have their characters misunderstood, and their opinion condemned or execrated. To many readers, even in our own country, scarcely anything more than the mere names are known of such men as Vane, Bradshaw, St. John, Scott, Marten, Ludlow, and Sidney; to the great majority of their own countrymen, for more than a century and a half, most of them have appeared merely as rebels, fanatics, and traitors! It is the peculiar province of biography to correct the

errors, as well as the defects, of general history, in respect to the characters of eminent individuals, and to rescue from unmerited neglect and oblivion, the memory of great and good men, who have deserved well of their country and posperity. The present biography is undertaken with this view. It aims at no higher object than to rescue from obscurity and unmerited neglect, the name, the opinions, and the public acts of one of those noble Republican statesmen whose memory deserves to be cherished forever by the lovers of liberty.

I design to sketch the main incidents in the life and public career of ALGERNON SIDNEY, So far as they are now known, or can be gathered from history, or contemporary annals. I shall present such extracts from his letters, (many of which have been preserved,) and, also, from his other writings, as will serve to illustrate his character, his opinions, and his history; and, in order the more fully to appreciate his true position and character, I shall notice, incidentally, some of his republican contemporaries and associates, who labored with him in the same glorious cause. Sidney lived in the stirring period of which I have spoken; he was an actor in the drama of the Revolution; he commanded a regiment against the king, under the lead of Manchester and Cromwell; he was a member of that famous legislative assembly, known in history as the long parliament; he was appointed a member of the commission to try the king, and though he did not act in that capacity, yet

he never disavowed the principle of the men who sat with John Bradshaw in that tribunal which condemned Charles Stuart to death; he was the friend of Bradshaw, of Vane, of Milton, of the best and wisest men of the age: with them he resisted, in vain, the usurpation of Cromwell; when, upon the restoration of Charles II., liberty was proscribed from England, he chose banishment rather than submission to tyranny; and when, after a period of seventeen years of voluntary exile, he returned to his native. country, it was not to recant an opinion, or seek the favor of government by an abject confession of past error; but to maintain, silently, the doctrines of his life, and, if necessary, to die rather than renounce them.

Sidney was a pure and enlightened republican statesman. Like Vane, he died on the scaffold, faithful among the faithless, and bearing witness in his death to the truth of the principles he maintained with inflexible constancy through life. Had he no other history than this, his name and memory should be cherished by the friends of free institutions. But he has a higher claim on the admiration of posterity. It is not merely in the silent teachings of his fortitude upon the scaffold, in his heroic constancy and truth to republican principles, that he has left a salutary impression upon the world. His precepts, even more than his example, have been eminently favorable to the progress of liberty and free institutions. The written words he left behind him-those philosophical