Nor were the arts of peace neglected | perate struggles, and with many bitter by our fathers during that stirring regrets, our ancestors gave up the conperiod. While France was wasted by test. Since that age no British governwar, till she at length found in her own ment has ever seriously and steadily desolation a miserable defence against pursued the design of making great invaders, the English gathered in their conquests on the Continent. The peoharvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, ple, indeed, continued to cherish with traded, and studied in security. Many pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poiof our noblest architectural monuments tiers, and of Agincourt. Even after the belong to that age. Then rose the fair lapse of many years it was easy to fire chapels of New College and of Saint their blood and to draw forth their subGeorge, the nave of Winchester and the sidies by promising them an expedition choir of York, the spire of Salisbury for the conquest of France. But hapand the majestic towers of Lincoln. A pily the energies of our country have copious and forcible language, formed been directed to better objects; and by an infusion of French into German, she now occupies in the history of manwas now the common property of the kind a place far more glorious than if aristocracy and of the people. Nor was she had, as at one time seemed_not it long before genius began to apply improbable, acquired by the sword an that admirable machine to worthy pur- ascendency similar to that which forposes. While English warriors, leaving merly belonged to the Roman republic. behind them the devastated provinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike Wars of people employed in civil strife the Roses. those arms which had been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the English barons from the oppressed provinces of France. That source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity had engendered still remained; and the great lords, unable to gratify their tastes by plundering the French, were In so splendid and imperial a man- eager to plunder each other. The realm ner did the English people, properly to which they were now confined would so called, first take place among the not, in the phrase of Comines, the most nations of the world. Yet while we judicious observer of that time, suffice contemplate with pleasure the high and for them all. Two aristocratical faccommanding qualities which our fore- tions, headed by two branches of the fathers displayed, we cannot but admit royal family, engaged in a long and that the end which they pursued was fierce struggle for supremacy. As the an end condemned both by humanity animosity of those factions did not and by enlightened policy, and that the really arise from the dispute about the reverses which compelled them, after a succession, it lasted long after all long and bloody struggle, to relinquish ground of dispute about the succession the hope of establishing a great conti- was removed. The party of the Red nental empire, were really blessings in Rose survived the last prince who the guise of disasters. The spirit of claimed the crown in right of Henry the French was at last aroused: they the Fourth. The party of the White began to oppose a vigorous national Rose survived the marriage of Richresistance to the foreign conquerors; mond and Elizabeth. Left without and from that time the skill of the Eng-chiefs who had any decent show of lish captains and the courage of the English soldiers were, happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many des

right, the adherents of Lancaster rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a succession

Extinction

age.

of villen- than the acquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall of any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere accompanied were fast disappearing.

She

of impostors. When, at length, many | Church of Rome such distinctions are aspiring nobles had perished on the peculiarly odious; for they are incomfield of battle or by the hands of the patible with other distinctions which executioner, when many illustrious are essential to her system. houses had disappeared for ever from ascribes to every priest a mysterious history, when those great families dignity which entitles him to the reverwhich remained had been exhausted ence of every layman; and she does and sobered by calamities, it was uni- not consider any man as disqualified, versally acknowledged that the claims by reason of his nation or of his family, of all the contending Plantagenets for the priesthood. Her doctrines were united in the house of Tudor. respecting the sacerdotal character, Meanwhile a change was proceeding however erroneous they may be, have infinitely more momentous repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy altogether indeIt is remarkable that the two greatest pendent of race, inverts the relation and most salutary social revolutions between the oppressor and the opwhich have taken place in England, that pressed, and compels the hereditary revolution which, in the thirteenth master to kneel before the spiritual century, put an end to the tyranny of tribunal of the hereditary bondman. nation over nation, and that revolution To this day, in some countries where which, a few generations later, put an negro slavery exists, Popery appears end to the property of man in man, in advantageous contrast to other forms were silently and imperceptibly effected. of Christianity. It is notorious that They struck contemporary observers the antipathy between the European with no surprise, and have received and African races is by no means so from historians a very scanty measure strong at Rio Janeiro as at Washington. of attention. They were brought about In our own country this peculiarity of neither by legislative regulation nor by the Roman Catholic system produced, physical force. Moral causes noise- during the middle ages, many salutary lessly effaced first the distinction be- effects. It is true that, shortly after tween Norman and Saxon, and then the the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates distinction between master and slave. and abbots were violently deposed, and None can venture to fix the precise that ecclesiastical adventurers from the moment at which either distinction Continent were intruded by hundreds ceased. Some faint traces of the old into lucrative benefices. Yet even then Norman feeling might perhaps have pious divines of Norman blood raised been found late in the fourteenth cen- their voices against such a violation of tury. Some faint traces of the institu- the constitution of the Church, refused tion of villenage were detected by the to accept mitres from the hands of curious so late as the days of the William, and charged him, on the peril Stuarts; nor has that institution ever, of his soul, not to forget that the vanto this hour, been abolished by statute. quished islanders were his fellow It would be most unjust not to Christians. The first protector whom Beneficial acknowledge that the chief the English found among the dominant agent in these two great de- caste was Archbishop Anselm. At a liverances was religion; and time when the English name was a it may perhaps be doubted reproach, and when all the civil and whether a purer religion might not military dignities of the kingdom were have been found a less efficient agent. supposed to belong exclusively to the The benevolent spirit of the Christian countrymen of the Conqueror, the morality is undoubtedly adverse to despised race learned, with transports distinctions of caste. But to the of delight, that one of themselves,

operation of the Roman Catholie religion.

That the political institutions of England were, at this early period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the nature of those institutions there has been much dishonest and acrimonious controversy.

polity

represent

Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated | happiness and virtue of our species: to the papal throne, and had held out but no man was altogether above the his foot to be kissed by ambassadors restraints of law; and no man was sprung from the noblest houses of Nor- altogether below its protection. mandy. It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented him as one of their The historical literature of England own race. A successor of Becket was has indeed suffered grievously The early foremost among the refractory magnates from a circumstance which has English who obtained that charter which secured not a little contributed to her often misthe privileges both of the Norman prosperity. The change, great ed, and barons and of the Saxon yeomanry. as it is, which her polity has why. How great a part the Roman Catholic undergone during the last six cenecclesiastics subsequently had in the turies, has been the effect of gradual abolition of villenage we learn from development, not of demolition and the unexceptionable testimony of Sir reconstruction. The present constituThomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant counsellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for the last sacraments, his spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ had died. So successfully had the Church used her formidable was not old. A polity thus formed machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly treated.

There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had been effected, our forefathers were by far the best governed people in Europe. During three hundred years the social system had been in a constant course of improvement. Under the first Plantagenets there had been barons able to bid defiance to the sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of the peasant had been gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy and the working people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural and commercial. There was still, it may be, more inequality than is favourable to the

tion of our country is, to the constitution under which she flourished five hundred years ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The alteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment at which the chief part of what existed

must abound in anomalies. But for the evils arising from mere anomalies we have ample compensation. Other societies possess written constitutions more symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.

This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of those drawbacks is that every source of information as to our early history has been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country where statesmen have been so much under the influence of the past, so there is no country where historians have been so much under the influence of the present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a natural connection. Where history is regarded merely as a picture of life and manners, or as a collection of experiments from

which general maxims of civil wisdom | those who have written concerning the may be drawn, a writer lies under no limits of prerogative and liberty in the very pressing temptation to misrepre- old polity of England should generally sent transactions of ancient date. But have shown the temper, not of judges, where history is regarded as a reposi- but of angry and uncandid advocates. tory of titledeeds, on which the rights For they were discussing, not a specuof governments and nations depend, lative matter, but a matter which had the motive to falsification becomes a direct and practical connection with almost irresistible. A Frenchman is the most momentous and exciting disnot now impelled by any strong interest putes of their own day. From the either to exaggerate or to underrate the commencement of the long contest power of the Kings of the house of between the Parliament and the Stuarts Valois. The privileges of the States down to the time when the pretensions General, of the States of Britanny, of of the Stuarts ceased to be formidable, the States of Burgundy, are to him few questions were practically more matters of as little practical importance important than the question whether as the constitution of the Jewish San- the administration of that family had hedrim or of the Amphictyonic Council. or had not been in accordance with the The gulph of a great revolution com- ancient constitution of the kingdom. pletely separates the new from the old This question could be decided only by system. No such chasm divides the reference to the records of preceding existence of the English nation into reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the Mirror two distinct parts. Our laws and cus- of Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, toms have never been lost in general were ransacked to find pretexts for the and irreparable ruin. With us the excesses of the Star Chamber on one precedents of the middle ages are still side, and of the High Court of Justice valid precedents, and are still cited, on on the other. During a long course of the gravest occasions, by the most years every Whig historian was anxious eminent statesmen. For example, to prove that the old English governwhen King George the Third was ment was all but republican, every attacked by the malady which made Tory historian to prove that it was all him incapable of performing his regal but despotic. functions, and when the most distinguished lawyers and politicians differed widely as to the course which ought, in such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not proceed to discuss any plan of regency till all the precedents which were to be found in our annals, from the earliest times, had been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to examine the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported was that of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of 1326, of 1377, and of 1422: but the case which was justly considered as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the dearest interests of parties have frequently been staked on the results of the researches of antiquaries. The inevitable consequence was that our antiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of partisans.

It is therefore not surprising that

With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the Stuarts could easily point out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which Kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on Kings. Those

who saw only one half of the evidence and his assent was necessary to all would have concluded that the Planta- their legislative acts. He was the genets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would have concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from the truth.

the limited monarchies of

ages.

chief of the executive administration, the sole organ of communication with foreign powers, the captain of the military and naval forces of the state, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had large powers for the regulation of trade. It was by him The old English government was one that money was coined, that weights Nature of of a class of limited monarchies and measures were fixed, that marts His which sprang up in Western and havens were appointed. the middle Europe during the middle ages, ecclesiastical patronage was immense. and which, notwithstanding His hereditary revenues, economically many diversities, bore to one another administered, sufficed to meet the ordia strong family likeness. That there nary charges of government. His own should have been such a likeness is not domains were of vast extent. He was strange. The countries in which those also feudal lord paramount of the monarchies arose had been provinces of whole soil of his kingdom, and, in the same great civilised empire, and that capacity, possessed many lucrative had been overrun and conquered, about and many formidable rights, which the same time, by tribes of the same enabled him to annoy and depress rude and warlike nation. They were those who thwarted him, and to enrich members of the same great coalition and aggrandise, without any cost to against Islam. They were in commu- himself, those who enjoyed his favour. nion with the same superb and am- But his power, though ample, was bitious Church. Their polity naturally limited by three great consti- Limitatook the same form. They had institutional principles, so ancient tions of the tutions derived partly from imperial that none can say when they tive. Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old Germany. All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictly hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which had originally indicated military rank. The dignity of knighthood, the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal corporations enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent was necessary to the validity of some public acts.

preroga

began to exist, so potent that their natural development, continued through many generations, has produced the order of things under which we now live.

First, the King could not legislate without the consent of his Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax without the consent of his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executive administration according to the laws of the land, and, if he broke those laws, his advisers and his agents were responsible.

Of these kindred constitutions the No candid Tory will deny that these Preroga English was, from an early principles had, five hundred years ago, early Eng period, justly reputed the best. acquired the authority of fundamental lish Kings. The prerogatives of the sove- rules. On the other hand, no candid reign were undoubtedly extensive. Whig will affirm that they were, till The spirit of religion and the spirit a later period, cleared from all ambiof chivalry concurred to exalt his dig-guity, or followed out to all their connity. The sacred oil had been poured sequences. A constitution of the on his head. It was no disparagement to the bravest and noblest knights to kneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke the Estates of the realm: he could at his pleasure dismiss them;

middle ages was not, like a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single document. It is only in a refined and speculative age that a polity is con