" Our Second Charles was very fond of
liberty, and of dropping the king, or as some writers say, he never took
the office up: this was for another purpose, in times when
License they mean when they cry liberty.
Voluntarily parting with one's liberty is, however, very different to
having it taken from us, as in the anecdote of the citizen who never
having been out of his native place during his lifetime, was, for some
offence, sentenced to stay within the walls a whole year; when he died
of grief not long afterwards.
State imprisonment is like a set of silken fetters for kings and other
great people. Thus, almost all our palaces have been used as prisons,
according to the caprice of the monarch, or the violence of the uppermost
faction. Shakspeare, in his historical plays, gives us many pictures of
royal and noble suffering from the loss of liberty. One of the latter,
with a beautiful antidote, is the address of Gaunt to Bolingbroke, after
his banishment by Richard II.:--
All places that the eye of heaven visits,
Are to a wise man ports, and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not, the king did banish thee;
But thou the king: woe doth heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34