Suffolk four thousand men appeared | ful arts must at length make war a in arms. The King's lieutenants in distinct science and a distinct trade. that county vainly exerted themselves A time arrives when the use of arms to raise an army. Those who did not begins to occupy the entire attention join in the insurrection declared that of a separate class. It soon appears they would not fight against their that peasants and burghers, however brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, brave, are unable to stand their ground proud and selfwilled as he was, shrank, against veteran soldiers, whose whole not without reason, from a conflict life is a preparation for the day of with the roused spirit of the nation. battle, whose nerves have been braced He had before his eyes the fate of by long familiarity with danger, and his predecessors who had perished at whose movements have all the precision Berkeley and Pomfret. He not only of clockwork. It is found that the cancelled his illegal commissions; he defence of nations can no longer be not only granted a general pardon to safely entrusted to warriors taken from all the malecontents; but he publicly the plough or the loom for a campaign and solemnly apologised for his in- of forty days. If any state forms a fraction of the laws. great regular army, the bordering states must imitate the example, or must submit to a foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, can exist no longer. The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the chief restraint on his power; and he inevitably becomes absolute, unless he is subjected to checks such as would be superfluous in a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none permanently. His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole policy of his house. The temper of the princes of that line was hot, and their spirit high: but they understood the character of the nation which they governed, and never once, like some of their predecessors, and some of their successors, carried obstinacy to a fatal point. The discretion of the Tudors was such, that their power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted. The reign of every one of them was disturbed by formidable discontents: but the government was always able either to sooth the mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely concessions, it succeeded in averting civil hostilities; but in general it stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The nation obeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled him to quell the disaffected minority. chies of the absolute chies. With the danger came also the means of escape. In the mo- Limited narchies of the middle ages the monar power of the sword belonged middle to the prince; but the power rally turnof the purse belonged to the ed into nation; and the progress of civi- monarlisation, as it made the sword of the prince more and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the nation more and more necessary to Thus, from the age of Henry the the prince. His hereditary revenues Third to the age of Elizabeth, England would no longer suffice, even for the grew and flourished under a polity expenses of civil government. It was which contained the germ of our pre- utterly impossible that, without sent institutions, and which, though regular and extensive system of taxanot very exactly defined, or very ex- tion, he could keep in constant effiactly observed, was yet effectually ciency a great body of disciplined prevented from degenerating into des- troops. The policy which the parliapotism, by the awe in which the gover-mentary assemblies of Europe ought to nors stood of the spirit and strength have adopted was to take their stand of the governed. a firmly on their constitutional right to But such a polity is suited only to give or withhold money, and resolutely a particular stage in the progress of to refuse funds for the support of society. The same causes which pro- armies, till ample securities had been duce a division of labour in the peace-provided against despotism. This wise policy was followed in our | after a contest protracted through three country alone. In the neighbouring generations, was at length successful. kingdoms great military establishments were formed; no new safeguards for public liberty were devised; and the consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always been feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weakness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part of Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles the Fifth. As vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of Saragossa stand up against Philip the Second, for the old constitution of Aragon. One after another, the great national councils of the continental monarchies, councils once scarcely less proud and powerful than those which sate at Westminster, sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they met merely as our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms. The Eng archy a Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been desirous to show that his own party was the party which was struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The truth, however, is that the old constitution could not be preserved unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had decreed that there should no longer be governments of that peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had been common throughout Europe. The question, therefore, was not whether our polity should undergo a change, but what the nature of the change should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force had disturbed the whole equilibrium, and had turned one limited monarchy after another into an absolute monarchy. What had happened elsewhere would assuredly have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed by a great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament. Our princes were about to have at their command means of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed. They must inevitably have become despots, unless they had been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject. formation In England events took a different course. This singular felicity lish mon- she owed chiefly to her insular singular situation. Before the end of the exception. fifteenth century great military establishments were indispensable It seems certain, therefore, that, had to the dignity, and even to the safety, none but political causes been The Reof the French and Castilian monarchies. at work, the seventeenth century and its If either of those two powers had dis- would not have passed away effects. armed, it would soon have been com- without a fierce conflict between our pelled to submit to the dictation of the Kings and their Parliaments. But other. But England, protected by the other causes of perhaps greater potency sea against invasion, and rarely engaged contributed to produce the same effect. in warlike operations on the Continent, While the government of the Tudors was not, as yet, under the necessity of was in its highest vigour an event took employing regular troops. The six-place which has coloured the destinies teenth century, the seventeenth century, of all Christian nations, and in an espefound her still without a standing army. cial manner the destinies of England. At the commencement of the seven- Twice during the middle ages the mind teenth century political science had of Europe had risen up against the domade considerable progress. The fate mination of Rome. The first insurrecof the Spanish Cortes and of the French tion broke out in the south of France. States General had given solemn warn- The energy of Innocent the Third, the ing to our Parliaments; and our Par-zeal of the young orders of Francis and liaments, fully aware of the nature and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crumagnitude of the danger, adopted, in saders whom the priesthood let loose good time, a system of tactics which, on an unwarlike population, crushed About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of Constance, that great change emphatically called the Reformation began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy were no longer the sole or the chief depositories of knowledge. The invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the Church with a mighty weapon which had been wanting to their predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid development of the powers of the modern languages, the unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman court, the exactions of the Roman chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which the Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use. the Albigensian churches. The second | prophets might have founded empires; reformation had its origin in England, and Christianity might have been disand spread to Bohemia. The Council torted into a cruel and licentious super. of Constance, by removing some eccle- stition, more noxious, not only than siastical disorders which had given Popery, but even than Islamism. scandal to Christendom and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly using fire and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement. Nor is this much to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness and virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is reason to believe that, if that Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would have been occupied by some system more corrupt still. There was then, through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge; and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of the Bible, inferior Those who hold that the influence of in beauty and clearness to those which the Church of Rome in the dark ages every cottager may now command, sold was, on the whole, beneficial to manfor prices which many priests could not kind may yet with perfect consistency afford to give. It was obviously impos- regard the Reformation as an inessible that the laity should search the timable blessing. The leading strings, Scriptures for themselves. It is pro- which preserve and uphold the infant, bable therefore, that, as soon as they would impede the full-grown man. And had put off one spiritual yoke, they so the very means by which the human would have put on another, and that mind is, in one stage of its progress, the power lately exercised by the clergy supported and propelled, may, in anoof the Church of Rome would have ther stage, be mere hindrances. There passed to a far worse class of teachers. is a season in the life both of an indiThe sixteenth century was compara-vidual and of a society, at which subtively a time of light. Yet even in the mission and faith, such as at a later sixteenth century a considerable num-period would be justly called servility ber of those who quitted the old reli- and credulity, are useful qualities. The gion followed the first confident and child who teachably and undoubtingly plausible guide who offered himself, listens to the instructions of his elders and were soon led into errors far more is likely to improve rapidly. But the serious than those which they had re- man who should receive with childlike nounced. Thus Matthias and Kniper-docility every assertion and dogma utdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and tered by another man no wiser than murder, were able for a time to rule himself would become contemptible. It great cities. In a darker age such false is the same with communities. The childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults, were by far the wisest portion of society. It was, therefore, on the whole, good that they should be respected and obeyed. The encroachments of the ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power produced much more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was in the hands of the only class that had studied history, philosophy, and public law, and while the civil power was in the hands of savage chiefs, who could not read their own grants and edicts. But a change took place. Knowledge gradually spread among laymen. At the commencement of the sixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual attainment fully equal to the most enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, in spite of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became an unjust and noxious tyranny. actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence which, even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a great people. But this apparent exception, when examined, will be found to confirm the rule; for in no country that is called Roman Catholic has the Roman Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority as in From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science, to civilisation, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind France. The literature of France is has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they justly held in high esteem throughout the world. But if we deduct from that literature all that belongs to four parties which have been, on different grounds, in rebellion against the Papal domination, all that belongs to the Protestants, all that belongs to the assertors of the Gallican liberties, all that belongs to the Jansenists, and all that belongs to the philosophers, how much will be left? It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and assailed with equal fury by all who intellectual freedom, and for all the were zealous either for the new or for blessings which political and intellectual the old opinions. The ministers who freedom have brought in their train, she held the royal prerogatives in trust for is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion his infant son could not venture to of the laity against the priesthood. persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as The struggle between the old and the new theology in our country was long, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful. There were two extreme parties, prepared to act with violence or to suffer with stubborn resolution. Between them lay, during a considerable time, a middle party, which blended, very illogically, but by no means unnaturally, lessons learned in the nursery with the sermons of the modern evangelists, Anti-christian numerous dogmas and and, while clinging with fondness to practices to which Henry had stubold observances, yet detested abuses bornly adhered, and which Elizabeth with which those observances were reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a closely connected. Men in such a strong repugnance even to things frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thankfulness, the dictation of an able ruler who spared them the trouble of judging for themselves, and, raising a firm and commanding voice above the uproar of controversy, told them how to worship and what to believe. It is not strange, therefore, that the Tudors should have been able to exercise a great influence on ecclesiastical affairs; nor is it strange that their influence should, for the most part; have been exercised with a view to their own interest. Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly favourable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain a position be indifferent which had formed part of |