English history. The executive government, feeble at home and unable to pass any measure except by means of some popular clamour, is paralyzed in its foreign policy. Democracy, so far as limited experience enables us to form an opinion, is a system of government ill-fitted for the management of distant dependencies, and for negociations with foreign states. CHAPTER III. MODERN DEMOCRACY. AMID the commotions of the seventeenth century there arose a party called Independents, or root-and-branch men, who were desirous to abolish monarchy and to establish a republican form of government. Oliver Cromwell was the soul of that party; his genius raised it to power, his ambition brought it into discredit, and at his death it ceased to have any political influence. The Independents, indeed, survived as a religious sect, who cherished the memory of what they called "the good old cause," and were the ardent assertors of civil and religious liberty, which they held to be hardly reconcilable with regal government. Meanwhile discussions upon the origin of civil government, and upon the rights of kings and of subjects, occupied the attention of political writers. Sir Robert Filmer, by his attempt to vindicate the divine right of kings, excited a controversy leading to a directly opposite result, and induced many persons to read the heavy folio of Algernon Sidney, or to study the argumentative essay of Locke. Questions respecting the origin of political societies, and the rights which man possesses by nature, may amuse the leisure of philosophical students, but become mischievous when appealed to for the guidance of men living under the artificial conditions of modern civilization. POLITICAL RIGHT AND RIGHTS. Few words in the political vocabulary have caused more confusion and disturbance than the word "right" in the singular and in the plural. The French equivalent "droit" has exercised an equally turbulent influence. Here Political philosophers have not succeeded in affixing a precise meaning to this ambiguous term. Hobbes asserted as an absolute and fundamental truth: "There is nothing to which every man has not a right by nature.” another doubtful word is joined to the word right, and it was assumed that right was derived from what was called nature. The Latin word "jus" conveys a more definite meaning than the word right, and when Roman lawyers employed the phrase "jus naturæ," they attempted to remedy the defects of existing laws by an appeal to the first principles of justice, which they assumed to be the ordinance of nature. This fiction, when applied by jurists to the interpretation of law, may have exercised a salutary influence, but when it was associated with political theories it tended to the confusion and disquietude of civilized society. There is a certain order or regularity in the phenomena of the visible world, and this has been denominated law of nature. The phrase was not well chosen, as it assumed a similarity between the inflexible regularity of nature and the fluctuating codes of human legislation. The most violent conflict which the word right has occasioned arose long since from the antagonism between the right of the sovereign and the rights of the subject. The right of the sovereign was glorified by flattery into divine right. The rights of the subject were magnified by fiction into the rights of man. These two delusions produced deplorable consequences, and have stained with blood the saddest pages of history. England had its full share of these troubles; but fortunately the practical statesmen, to whom we owe our constitutional freedom, did not perplex themselves with theories of natural rights and laws of nature, but founding their claims on the Great Charter (which Hallam justly calls the keystone of English freedom) proceeded to assert in the Petition of Right, in |