ALGERNON SIDNEY.

ALGERNON SIDNEY, one of the most violent republicans of modern times, was born about 1617. He was the son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and, by his mother's side, grandson of the Earl of Northumberland. The birth of Sidney, his education and connexion with the court, the honours bestowed on his family, and the offices they held, should have attached him to the party of Charles I. at the beginning of the civil wars. The hatred to arbitrary power, which appeared innate in him, induced him, at the age of twenty-one, to support the parliament. Fairfax gave him a commission in the army, which led him to support, with infinite zeal and courage, the cause of liberty. In 1647 he was nominated one of the king's judges, but did not sit in the high court of justice on that occasion. He was at that period attached to the Independents, who, aiding the ambitious views of Cromwell, were desirous of establishing a republican form of government. When Cromwell, however, assumed the sovereignty under the title of Protector, Sidney retired to private life. Secluded in the family seat at Penshurst, he composed his first " Discourse on Government." In 1659, after the death of the protector, and the abdication of his son, Sidney re-appeared in parliament, was appointed a member of the privy council, and chosen to negotiate a peace between Denmark and Sweden. Far from promoting the reestablishment of royalty, he did every thing in his

power to prevent it. At the moment when the English were celebrating the restoration of Charles II. Sidney, their ambassador, in inscribing his name in the album of the university of Copenhagen, added this device,

Manus hæc inimica tirannis

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.

Either from distrust, or attachment to his principles, he resisted the overtures of Monk, refused to avail himself of the amnesty which was at first promised, but afterwards most dishonourably violated; he wandered for seventeen years over the principal states on the Continent, without suffering the length of this voluntary exile, the unkindness of his family, the danger of his situation, and even the indigence to which he was at times reduced, to weaken his intrepidity. At length, in 1677, his father, the Earl of Leicester, having obtained his pardon, he returned to his native country. Twice he offered himself a candidate for a seat in parliament, but the court dreading the violence of his character, and the ascendancy of his talents, prevented his election. At this time the ferment which prevailed seemed to presage a renewal of the troubles to which the country had been a prey. The influence which the Duke of York exercised in the administration, and the avowed attachment of that prince to the catholic religion, operated as a motive or pretext for the animosity of the leaders of the popular party. This Sidney joined, and connecting himself with the Duke of Monmouth, the lords Essex, Russel, Shaftesbury, Grey, &c. was implicated with them, and apprehended on a charge of being con

ENGLAND.] ALGERNON SIDNEY.

cerned in the Rye-house plot, the object of which was to destroy the king, and occasion a general revolt. On this point historians differ, but even those who consider the conspiracy as proved, confess that a spirit of revenge directed openly the violent proceedings of which Sidney was the victim. The laws were unjustly violated. A single person stepped forward as his accuser; to supply the place of a second witness the manuscript of his "Discourse on Government," found among his papers, was produced, and this very production, which had been long previously composed, which had never been published, nor communicated to any one, was, in the opinion of a sanguinary judge, considered a sufficient motive for his condemnation. Sidney was then 61. After having defended himself with great warmth, during his trial, he gloried dying a martyr in the cause of liberty, and proceeded to the place of execution with the tranquil intrepidity of a man who had taken M. Brutus for his model. chief justice Jefferies, so celebrated for his judicial assassinations, exhorted him to bear his lot with firmness. "Feel my pulse," replied Sidney, coolly, to him," and judge if it be agitated; I was never more composed." He was beheaded, on Tower Hill, on the 7th of December, 1683. After the revolution of 1688, the sentence against him was declared illegal, in the first parliament of William and Mary.

The

Sidney, in his political conduct, was doubtless led away, like many others, by that spirit of enthusiasm with which the nation was deluded from the

end it at first proposed. His mind, naturally generous and impassioned, enlarged by the study of the ancients, and worthy of the best days of Rome, might easily