Upper House had been changed, owing to the elimination of the great majority of the ecclesiastics and heads of religious houses who had possessed seats within its walls before the rupture with Rome. Such dignitaries of the church as held their seats, and consented to take the oath of supremacy, were for the most part servile instruments in the hands of the sovereign, who secured their services and their ready acquiescence by means of lavish grants of church and abbey lands. Men thus bribed were powerless to defend the constitution and the liberties of the nation. After the accession of the first Stuart to the English throne a reaction, however, set in. The spirit of liberty grew with the increasing wealth and intelligence of the people, and then the Civil War ensued. Until 1641 the conduct of the Parliament must meet with the approval of all those who are in favour of constitutional government; there can be little doubt that Charles I., by his evasions of the law and his resolve to rule without parliamentary control, had entertained a fixed purpose of destroying the constitution, and of establishing in its stead an absolute monarchy. Such an aim was most culpable, yet the demands of the Houses after 1641 cannot be justified, and in the war which ensued the Parliament were clearly the aggressors. The result of that struggle is familiar to us all. Charles Stuart was made the scapegoat, on whose head were laid, and in whose person were expiated, the sins of his predecessors for more than a hundred years past. With respect to the faction which persecuted him even unto death, but one opinion can now be formed. It was no friend to public liberty, for never under the most arbitrary monarch were the people of England subject to a more rigid tyranny; nor did it ever compose the majority of the nation. But it is ever so in revolutions. A few violent men take the lead, their noise and activity appear to multiply their numbers, and then the great body of the people, either indolent or pusillanimous, are bound in triumph to the chariot wheels of a paltry faction. On the recall of Charles II. from exile, the republican policy introduced by Cromwell was swept away, and the old constitution, which had given place to a democracy controlled by a military despotism, was restored in its integrity. This restoration led to the development of that select committee of the privy council, which is called the Cabinet, as an executive power; to the substitution of indirect for direct taxation; to the final extinction of the feudal system; and to the enrolment in the statute book of that great Act which, taken in connection with trial by jury, offers the most complete security that human laws can afford against the arbitrary infliction of punishment by the sovereign-the Habeas Corpus Act. The darkest hour is the hour before dawn, and the reign of James II. is only memorable for the tyranny and bigoted rule he attempted to introduce, and which faded away like night before the morning at the accession of William of Orange. The famous revolution of 1688 effected not so much a change as a restoration; it developed the system of parliamentary government, until it gradually transferred the centre and force of the state from the crown itself to the legislative assembly, and especially to the House of Commons; it substituted a ministry constructed on some basis of political union, for ministers often at variance with each other and independent of parliamentary control; then, as parliamentary government is essentially government by party, the introduction of the advisers of the crown into the legislative assembly gradually compelled the rival factions of Whig and Tory, and, in later times, of Liberal and Conservative, to have recourse to a recognized system of party tactics. Yet, great as has been the change which these developments have effected, the revolution of 1688 but restored the English constitution to its first principles; it did not enlarge the liberty of the subject, but simply gave it a better security; it neither widened nor contracted the foundation, but simply repaired the fabric. Before 1688 growth of the power and position of the the theory of the English constitution was | into Parliament has been the gradual that the authority of the crown was limited, and that its power was controlled by Parliament. This theory, as we have seen, especially during the Tudor and Stuart periods of our history, was not recognized -if the sovereign was weak, he played into the hands of his council; but if strong, the council became the pliant instrument of his will. Parliament had little voice in the matter, the people were calmly ignored, ministers were dependent only on the exercise of the prerogative, and thus the question of government often became limited to a struggle between the crown and the advisers. The revolution of 1688 brought the theory and practice into harmony, and since that date the crown has never attempted to govern without Parliament. The consequence of this development has resulted in the lowering of the prerogative and the exaltation of the power and influence of Parliament; and Parliament, since the passing of the two Reform Bills, signifies the House of Commons. Thus practically we are a self-governing country. The ministers to whom the executive functions of the crown are intrusted must sit in Parliament, and according to the confidence that Parliament reposes in them, so long will they be permitted to exercise power; but since the redistribution of seats and the lowering of the franchise, consequent upon the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867, the ultimate verdict upon every exercise of political power must be sought for in the judgment of the House of Commons, and the House of Commons signifies the people. One of the most important results of the introduction of the advisers of the crown | first of our With the career of Sir Robert Walpole begins the history of the faults and the advantages, the patriotism and the selfishness, of government by Parliament. He therefore fittingly takes his place as the 'Leaders of the Senate." SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. SIR ROBERT WALPOLE came of a good old stock, that could trace its pedigree in unbroken succession from the days of the Conquest. His ancestors took the name which he has made illustrious, from the small town of Walpole, in Norfolk, where they at one time held a manor-house, which was afterwards exchanged for the property of Houghton, in the same county. For two generations the Walpoles had been actively engaged in politics. Sir Edward, the grandfather of our future Leader of the Senate, had been returned by the borough of Lynn Regis to the Convention Parliament of 1660, which voted for the Restoration. A man of brilliant talents, a keen debater, and a stanch adherent of the Stuarts, Sir Edward threw himself heart and soul into the royal cause, and received from the "Merry Monarch," who seldom rewarded those who served him best, the decoration of the Bath. Disgusted with the conduct of James II.his tyranny, obstinacy, and short-sighted bigotry-Robert, the eldest son of Sir Edward Walpole, declined to walk in the footsteps of his sire, but became a Whig of the most vehement type, and was as active in bringing about the Revolution as his father before him had been in effecting the Restoration. On the accession of William and Mary he sat in Parliament for Castle Rising, and took a prominent part in all the legislative measures which immediately succeeded the expulsion of the Stuarts. and subsoils, irrigation and top-dressing, the manufacture of manure, and the breeding of stock, became at last so agreeable that, though he represented Castle Rising till his death, he gradually merged the legislator into the gentleman-farmer. His farm was the best managed in the county. London dealers came down to Norfolk and offered high prices for his thoroughbred yearlings. Shrewd men from the north competed for his well-conditioned stock. The graziers around, though they knew the squire was a little hard at a bargain, knew also that he was true and just in all his dealings, and that what he sold could. always command its value. A jovial, rough, roystering, hard-drinking man was this Robert Walpole, and as popular with the farmers as he was with the neighbouring gentry. Like his father before him, he was hospitality itself, and Houghton was seldom free from visitors. Open house was kept well-nigh throughout the year, and whether the guests were members of the October Club or supporters of the Hanover, leaders at Newmarket or pillars of the church, peers or adventurers, all were welcome and freely entertained. If not a fine old English gentleman, Robert Walpole was certainly a generous and a kindly one. That farming should be not only a pleasure but a profitable occupation was a matter of some moment to the openhanded squire of Houghton. At an early age he had married one Mary, only daugh A keen man of business, a sharp landlord, with a natural taste for country pur-ter of Sir Jeffrey Burwell of Rougham, in suits, and an Englishman's love for sport, Robert Walpole spent all the time that was not devoted to his parliamentary duties in improving Houghton. The change from debates on the Bill of Rights and Triennial Parliaments to the consideration of soils Suffolk; and though the lady had not come to him dowerless, yet, as she made him in. the course of years the father of nineteen children, there was need that the tenants should pay good rents and the kine command high prices. Fortunately the property |