It has rarely happened, if ever, that great political calamities have befallen a civilized nation, without being foreseen and predicted by men wiser than the generation to which they belonged. And at the present day it is the avowed belief of most of the judicious and reflecting that a great crisis, both for the Church and for the State of England, is drawing on, and now at hand. This opinion is founded upon a sober examination of the records of the past; for the practical use of history is to make us wise and forecasting by the sufferings of others, and from a well-digested knowledge of other crises, in other nations, or in our own in other times, to teach the application of past experience to the circumstances of the present distress.

Perhaps, indeed, no small proportion of the manifold errors by which the business of the British Government is now beset, may justly be attributed to the crude, imperfect views, and scrambling knowledge, which the generality of public men, both in and out of office, seem to possess, of the annals of even their own country. Misled by ignorance, and prejudice, and misinformation, ten thousand fold more dangerous than simple ignorance, they are not only incapable of anticipating events from an observation of the profound and half-buried causes which are sure, sooner or later, to give them birth; but even when the contingency takes place, they commonly ascribe it to some cause which was itself but secondary-the symptom, not the source, of the disease. Far otherwise than thus, and armed alike with history and VOL. II.

philosophy, reflecting mutual light upon the facts and reasoning which each in turn presented to their view, our wiser ancestors, those men of might when "there were giants in the land," repaired the breaches of a shattered constitution, removed its incumbrances, cleansed its impurities, and fixing its foundations in the great principles and immutable feelings of human nature itself, transmitted it to us, a standard of political wisdom, an imperishable monument of rational liberty, the study and the admiration of an envying world.

As long as Englishmen continued to value the rights and institutions thus secured to them at the infinite price which their importance merited. They justly deemed that to be ignorant of the origin and growth of these their privileges, was to be undeserving of the inestimable benefit of their excellence. While Magna Charta, and the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement were familiarly referred to in public debate, or common private speech, it was not quite superfluous to be somewhat acquainted with the precise meaning and extent of these household phrases. But now the principles of 1688 are, it seems, out of date. The French, and not the English, revolution is the object from which all lessons of political wisdom should henceforth be drawn, and all beyond this Gallic barrier should be at once rejected, as obsolete, unfounded, and inconclusive. It is assumed, and argued upon as an acknowledged axiom, that the present is a more knowing and enlightened generation than all or any of those which

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have preceded it. All sorts of people are agreed in this. We have discarded the prejudices, exposed the errors, and improved the discoveries of our fathers, yea, and have sought out also many inventions of our own. If gas or steam can constitute the elements of national or individual happiness, we admit the premises; but for the rest, we join issue on behalf of our good old ancestors, and shall be ready, on any fitting occasion, to shiver a lance in their defence, malgre Miss Martineau and the modern science of political economy.

Acting in the spirit of this creed, we deem no further apology necessary for insisting with great earnestness upon the duty of all men, who are capable of doing so, imbuing themselves with the spirit of authentic history, more especially with that of their own country. A master in this most noble science, formerly so cultivated and honoured, was never more indispensable than now, to extricate us from the mazes of error and disaster in which we are involved, and which, if they be not disentangled by a practised and a patient hand, will too surely be rudely cut asunder by the headlong violence of exasperated desperadoes. In pointing out, as we are now about to do, a brief and bird's-eye view of the leading facts of English constitutional history, as bearing on the present crisis, we would be understood as wishing only to incite our readers to consult the well known sources of authentic information for themselves-to fill up by patient, well-digested study, the brief outline they find referred to

here.

If we try back from the constitution of 1688, we shall very soon become convinced that it is not the foundation or beginning of any new rights or privileges, but simply declaratory and corroborative of the old law of England. Indeed the remarkable words with which the declaration of rights, presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince and Princess of Orange, concludes, are sufficiently decisive on this point; "and they do claim, demand, and insist upon, all and singular the premises, as their undoubted rights and liberties." And the act of parliament itself, which followed, solemnly recognises "all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and claimed in

the said declaration, to be the true, ancient, and indubitable rights of the people of this kingdom."

In tracing up the origin, or perhaps we should rather say the absence of any fixible origin, of these "ancient and indubitable” rights, it will be necessary to maintain the distinction between the Constitution and the Government, very clearly in our minds, because while it is contended that the Constitution always has been free, it must be confessed that the Government has very often been tyrannical. This is the answer, and a sufficient one, to that sweeping assertion of Mr. Hume's, "that it is idle to look beyond the revolution of 1688 for any thing like a free constitution in this country; faction or tyranny will alone be met with, and the existence of either disproves the reality of freedom." True; but each may be in turn the violation of the Constitution, not its legitimate operation.

Mr. Hume undoubtedly considered the Crown as originally possessing all power in itself, and consequently that all the boasted rights and privileges of Englishmen were but so many successful usurpations on the Royal prerogative; and this is an opinion held by many at this day : but Hale and Blackstone hold a very different doctrine.

William, the so-called Conqueror, was undoubtedly a despotic and tyrannical Sovereign, but he was so in defiance and open violation of his oath and bond. The very name of Conqueror is attributed to him only by a vulgar error, a mistake of the peculiar force of the feudal term Conquestor, which simply signifies an "acquirer of a feudal inheritance," and might have been applied with equal truth to Harold, before the battle of Hastings. Duke William swore the customary Coronation oath, and took upon him all the customary obligations of an English King. He himself played off his Norman against his English subjects with policy and success; but Rufus, his successor, equally oppressed them both, so that the Normans turned against him too, and with their English lands began also to demand the English liberties. Henry I. went even before the temper of the times, and at his Coronation granted a Charter remedying abuses and establishing the laws of St. Edward. Stephen, in his Charter,

pledges himself, “ Bonas leges et antiquas et justas consuetudines observabo, et observari præcipiam." Henry II. and Richard I., swore no less; and John subscribed and swore to Magna Charta.

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Even Magna Charta was not the origin but the confirmation only of the ancient liberties of Englishmen. Like the Charter of Henry I., it restores to the people (reddit, is the word in the original,) the enjoyment of the old laws and liberties of the Saxons. Accordingly we find Rapin, in commenting upon the Coronation Oath of Edward II., observe expressly: It manifestly appears by this Oath, that, far from supposing the Great Charter to be the original title of the privileges granted by King John to the people of England, it was considered only as a confirmation of the ancient liberties of the nation. Upon this supposition Edward II. was made to swear that he would observe the laws of St. Edward, which were no other than those of the Anglo-Saxons, lest, by causing him to swear to keep the Great Charter, there might be room to imagine the privileges of the people were founded on the concessions of the Kings. Nor was the solemn oath at Coronation then considered, as it sometimes seems to be considered now, a vain ceremony, the technicality of a popular pageant, to amuse the people with idle words, instead of real security. This very Edward, and some of his successors, had ample experience that its obligations were deemed binding on the conscience of the king, and were expected by the people, to be faithfully fulfilled. Let it then be acknowledged that the ancient constitutional liberties of the nation were substantially such as they have been enjoyed in this our day. That great as had been the changes and accumulations of property, great the consequent transitions and transferences of power, numerous as had been the slowly-growing improvements in particulars-the accommodations to new interests-the bulwarks gradually raised against every form of oppression-and bright the splendour which an extensive commerce, a liberal love of science, learning, and the arts, and, above all, which a reformed religion, founded on the pure and unadulterated Word of God, had shed upon this favoured island, the spirit of liberty lived

before all these among us, it struggled hard and often against the Roman dominion, and even when it slumbered through exhaustion it did not die—it breathed in the Witten-agemots of our Saxon forefathers, it groaned under, and fought, and ultimately prevailed against both the Danish and the Roman Sceptre. It softened the harshest features of the feudal system by an assimilation to itself-changed tyrants into kings, edicts into laws, and barons and vassals into lords and commons.

Lord Bolingbroke and Fox, agree in fixing upon the reign of Henry VII. as the æra from which modern English history dates its beginning. The nation which, for more than a century, had been torn and distracted by two infuriated factions then began to repose under the fortunate union of the Roses, and to repair her shattered strength.

The foundations of a steady and principled system, both of internal and external policy also then were laid, by which a fixed shape and intelligible purpose were given to the measures of the domestic government on the one hand, and on the other the futility and loss of continental conquest, were acknowledged, and the grand and far-reaching idea of a European league of balanced powers, influenced by England's international arbitration, was conceived, and its probable consequences foreseen.

Now too it was that a series of magnificent discoveries, alike in the physical and in the moral world, concurred to awaken and exalt the slumbering faculties of mankind. The shadow of the dark ages began to pass off from the face of the earth. The dayspring from on high again shot forth its first pale beams across the bosom of the deep. The great spirit of human knowledge, moved by the divinity that stirs within, gave indications of approaching wakefulness, and already murmured oracles in its latter sleep.The second birth of revelation and of christianity was at hand. Luther was up and doing. The immortal champion of reason and religion was training himself unconsciously, but not unknown to God, for the predestined combat. No mere man ever did, nor will the nature of things perhaps admit that any man ever hereafter should, effect so much for the liberty

of thought and conscience, and the universal happiness of mankind. The lofty and ennobling principles which he asserted were pregnant with life, and prolific of freedom. They were not confined in their application to one country, or to one generation, but adapted for all nations and all timeyea! and after time for all eternity, to which they lead, and on which they teach us to set all our hopes.

It is from the want of a deep, practical persuasion, that all things in this world depend upon fixed laws, that there can be no effect without a cause, and those causes too commensurate, either intrinsically or by relation, to the effects produced, that men are willing to put up with arguments and opinions, substantially so absurd and illogical as they do, and to live as it were by chance, waiting, with gaping mouths and wondering eyes, to see what will turn up next. The error, however, is a very wide-spread one, and lies at the bottom of many worthless theories as well as those of politics and history. It is this wretched mistaking of secondary for primary causes, of symptoms for diseases, that has produced most, if not all, of the miserable materialism and infidelity, which have proved, from time to time, the blot and the humiliation of the human intellect. And thus in politics, even at this day, a great majority of the loud-voiced haranguers about the right of resistance, (a right which it has been well said, the people ought never to remember, nor the rulers ever to forget), seriously believe that the refusal of Hampden to pay ship money was the principal cause of the civil wars in the 17th century. No doubt both this, and the act which made the parliament indissoluble by the crown, and the attempt of the King to seize the five members; all were instrumental in accelerating the crisis, but to pretend or think that they were first and leading causes, so that if these things had not been, neither would the civil struggle which ensued have ever taken place, is of that calibre of childish wisdom which affirms that the spur of the rider is the cause of the fleetness of the horse, or the gilded pipes of the organ the cause of its modulated sound.

But there is a natural eagerness in the minds of all, adults as well as children, to find out some cause or

other for every apparent effect.Hence the majority, not sufficiently long-sighted or informed, to discern the potential agency of, it may be, an obscure, first cause, easily and indolently lapse into the belief, which they perhaps feel necessary to their repose, that some more visible and contiguous events sufficiently account for results with which their connexion is more immediately apparent, and upon which their operation is more sensibly demonstrable.

The accession of Charles I. took place at one of those critical periods to which political as well as natural bodies seem to be subject. The Commons possessed little real power, or influence over the councils of the nation for a very long time after they were recognized as one of the three estates of the realm. Even when the power of the feudal nobility had been broken, some generations passed away before they became sensible of their great and growing strength. From Henry VII. to Elizabeth, the Executive had acted with a high hand, and though no sovereign of the House of Tudor affected wholly to dispense with the appointed forms of the constitution, the parliament had crouched at their feet in fear and submission. Elizabeth indeed found it necessary to curb their rising spirit by a vigorous exertion of her royal prerogative, and even Elizabeth might perhaps have failed in this, if the uniform wisdom of her government had not combined with the chivalrous feeling towards her person as a female sovereign, to impose upon the people a profound and well-merited respect; and if the nation had not been sensible of the blessings which they enjoyed under her singularly favoured reign. She surmounted unprecedented obstacles; she unravelled endless intricacies; established Protestantism, at home and abroad; shook Spain to its centre; gave back to the nation the money which the Parliament had voted to her use, and depended for her safety against Jesuits and assassins, upon nothing save the national pride, and the loving watchfulness of her own people.

With the accession of James Stuart began an æra of mixed imbecility and despotism. He was as flexible in temper, as he was arbitrary in principle. The circumstances under which he