One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance.

The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous.

One might have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the Stuarts.

This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a Republican, and even a Regicide, invention.

It meant, as we have passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653.