kingdoms united under one head; she was fated to be in time ruled by Ferdinand of Arragon, and Charles V. (m). And Germany, where an elective crown 39 prevented the re-unions (n), was to acquire a few free cities; but her people, parcelled into so many different dominions, were destined to remain subject to the arbitrary yoke of such of her different sovereigns as should be able to maintain their power and independence. In a word, the feudal tyranny which overspread the Continent did not compensate, by any preparation of distant advantages, the present calamities it caused; nor was it to leave behind it, as it disappeared, any thing but a more regular kind of despotism.

(m) Spain was originally divided into twelve kingdoms, besides principalities, which by treaties, and especially by conquests, were collected into three kingdoms, those of Castile, Arragon, and Granada. Ferdinand V., King of Arragon, married Isabella, Queen of Castile; they made a joint conquest of the kingdom of Granada, and these three kingdoms thus united descended, in 1516, to their grandson Charles V., and formed the Spanish monarchy. At this æra the kings of Spain began to be absolute; and the states of the kingdom of Castile and Leon, "assembled at Toledo in the month of November, 1539, were the last in which the three orders met, that is, the grandees, the ecclesiastics, and the deputies of the towns."-See the History of Spain, by Ferrera.

(n) The kingdom of France, as it stood under Hugh Capet and his next successors, may, with a great degree of exactness, be compared with the German Empire; but the imperial crown of Germany, having, through a conjunction of circumstances, continued elective, the emperors, though vested with more high-sounding prerogatives then even the kings of France, laboured under very essential disadvantages: they could not pursue a plan of aggrandisement with the same steadiness as a line of hereditary sovereigns usually do; and the right to elect them, enjoyed by the greater princes of Germany, procured a sufficient power to these, to protect themselves, as well as the inferior lords, against the power of the crown.

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But in England the same feudal system, after having suddenly broken in like a flood, had deposited, and still continued to deposit, the noble seeds of the spirit of liberty, union, and sober resistance.

So early as the time of Edward, the tide was seen gradually to subside; the laws which protect the person and property of the individual began to make their appearance; that admirable constitution, the result of a threefold power, insensibly rose (o); and the eye might even then discover the verdant summits of the fortunate region, that was destined to be the seat of philosophy and liberty, which are inseparable companions.

(0) "Now in my opinion," says Philippe de Comines, in times not much posterior to those of Edward I., and with the simplicity of the language of his times, "among all the sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public good is best attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of England." Mémoires de Comines, tom. 1, lib. 5, chap. 19.

CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.-The Subject continued.

THE representatives of the nation, and of the whole 41 nation, were now admitted into parliament: the great point, therefore, was gained that was one day to procure them the influence which they at present possess; and the subsequent reigns afford continual instances of its successive growth (1).

Under Edward II. the commons began to annex petitions to the bills by which they granted subsidies: this was the dawn of their legislative authority. Under Edward III. they declared they would not, in future, acknowledge any law to which they had not

(1) In the First Report of the Lords' Committee upon the Peerage, p. 252, the committee state, that the first solemn act which they had discovered, by which the constitution of the legislative assembly of the realm was distinctly described, after the charter of King John, was a statute passed in the 15th Edw. II., where it is declared, "that the matters to be established for the estate of the realm, and of the people, should be treated, established, and accorded in parliament by the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm, according as had been before accustomed." This committee also state, that the provision of the charter of King John, about summoning the commune concilium, appears to have been abandoned, and probably did not extend to all legislative purposes, but only to that of granting aid.-EDITOR.

D

expressly assented. Soon after this, they exerted a privilege, in which consists, at this time, one of the great balances of the Constitution: they impeached and procured to be condemned some of the first ministers of state. Under Henry IV. they refused to grant subsidies before an answer had been given to their petitions. In a word, every event of any consequence was attended with an increase of the power of 42 the commons; increases, indeed, but slow and gradual, but which were peaceably and legally effected, and were the more fit to engage the attention of the people, and coalesce with the ancient principles of the Constitution.

Under Henry V. the nation was entirely taken up with its wars against France; and in the reign of Henry VI. began the fatal contests between the houses of York and Lancaster. The noise of arms alone was now to be heard: during the silence of the laws already in being, no thought was had of enacting new ones; and, for thirty years together, England presents a wide scene of slaughter and desolation.

At length, under Henry VII., who, by his intermarriage with the house of York, united the pretensions of the two families, a general peace was reestablished, and the prospect of happier days seemed to open on the nation. But the long and violent agitation under which it had laboured, was to be followed by a long and painful recovery. Henry, mounting the throne with sword in hand, and in great measure as a conqueror, had promises to fulfil, as well as injuries to avenge. In the meantime, the people, wearied out by the calamities they had undergone, and longing only for 43 repose, abhorred even the idea of resistance; so that

the remains of an almost exterminated nobility beheld themselves left defenceless, and abandoned to the mercy of the sovereign.

The commons, on the other hand, accustomed to act only a second part in public affairs, and finding themselves bereft of those who had hitherto been their leaders, were more than ever afraid to form of themselves an opposition. Placed immediately, as well as the lords, under the eye of the king, they beheld themselves exposed to the same dangers. Like them, therefore, they purchased their personal security at the expense of public liberty; and in reading the history of the first two kings of the house of Tudor, we imagine ourselves reading the relation given by Tacitus of Tiberius and the Roman senate (a).

The time, therefore, seemed to be arrived, at which England must submit in its turn to the fate of the other nations of Europe. All those barriers which it had raised for the defence of its liberty, seemed to have been only able to postpone the inevitable effects of power.

But the remembrance of their ancient laws,-of that 44 Great Charter so often and so solemnly confirmed, was too deeply impressed on the minds of the English to be effaced by transitory evils. Like a deep and extensive ocean, which preserves an equability of temperature amidst all the vicissitudes of seasons, England still retained those principles of liberty which were so universally diffused through all orders of the people, and they required only a proper opportunity to manifest themselves.

(a) Quanto quis illustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes.