20. At the restoration, the government returned to the position in which it had been left when Charles the First, eighteen years be fore, withdrew from his capital. The acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assent were evidently still binding upon the crown and the nation; but all subsequent proceedings of the gov ernment were regarded by the party of the court as the acts of a usurping faction. The complexion of the first parliament called by Charles the Second was decidedly Royalist; and under the ministry of Lord Chancellor Hyde, soon created Earl of Clarendon, a man who venerated the royal prerogative, who was strongly attached to Episcopacy, and who regarded the Roundheads with political and personal aversion, the old ecclesiastical polity was revived, and the ancient principles of the monarchy restored. Again the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of the king was placed at the head of the creed of the dominant party; and although it was acknowledged that the royal prerogatives were limited by the House of Commons, as regards taxation, and by the judicial tribunals in matters affecting private rights, yet they still gave to the crown an almost complete independence in point of government, and a preponderating control over Parliament.

21. But notwithstanding the strong reaction at first in favor of royalty, the fundamental principles upon which the Clarendon ministry was based had now become old and powerless; twenty years of parliamentary rule had destroyed them forever: the coalition that had restored royalty terminated with the danger from which it sprung; and the reform party, though trampled upon, and seemingly annihilated, again raised its head, and renewed the interminable war.

22. Meanwhile a general profligacy of morals and manners had grown up in the nation, and pervaded the court; Clarendon, an unflinching royalist, but a despiser of fashionable debauchery, became unpopular with both parties, and his administration odious; a new party arose out of the discontented spirits who cared little about legal order, and were only anxious for their own success; and from the profligates and libertines of the court, the Cabal administration was formed, an administration regardless of law, or right, or justice; and that sought the means of success by every tortuous policy, without regard to its own dignity, or the honor of the nation.

23. But corruption so glaring and so public ere long deprived the king of the whole stock of popularity with which he had commenced his administration: the national pride was wounded by the reverses

sustained in foreign wars; a deep anxiety for civil liberty pervaded the nation, and alarming rumors of Popish plots, and of a design to restore the Roman Catholic faith, were industriously circulated. The Cabal ministry fell before the gathering storm; a national party became gradually formed in the House of Commons; and in 1679 the king was obliged to take the leaders of it into his council.

24. Although the national ministry consisted, in great part, of those eminent men, of pure intentions, who had headed the opposition in both houses of parliament, yet the suspicions attached to the king's character greatly abated the public esteem for those who had gone into his council; they could neither gain the confidence. of the nation, nor manage the interests, habits, or prejudices of the king, who soon broke his faith with those by whom he had pledged himself to be directed. The national ministry, after holding power less than a year, was broken up, and the agitation became more violent than ever.

25. Thus the English restoration, like the English Revolution; had in a manner tried all parties; and the Clarendon or legal ministry, the Cabal or corrupt ministry, and the national ministry, had successively failed to afford the nation a satisfactory government. As at the close of the revolutionary troubles in 1653 Cromwell turned the disordered elements of party strife to his own advancement, so Charles II. now turned them to the profit of the crown, by entering upon a career of absolute power, although he seldom dared to infringe upon the fundamental privileges of the nation. The Anglican clergy of this period boldly asserted the doctrine of absolute non-resistance; servile writers endeavored to show that Mag. na Charta, and other constitutional laws, were but rebellious encroachments upon the prerogatives of monarchy; and among the propositions which the University of Oxford denounced as damnable, was the republican doctrine that all civil authority is derived orig. inally from the people. Under Charles II. royalty had not abated any of its pretensions; and under his successor, James II., it rapidly approached the despotic rule of the first Charles. But what hastened the crisis of the Revolution was the desire of James to achieve a triumph for popery as well as for absolute power; and from the prospect thus presented, the nation shrunk with horror. Thus, as at the commencement of the Revolution, there was a religious struggle and a political struggle, both directed against the government; and, as at the restoration, a coalition was formed between the two great

parties of the nation, the reformers and the conservatives, since better known as Whigs and Tories, and the result was a deposition of the reigning sovereign, and a change of dynasty by a transfer of the crown to William, Prince of Orange.

VI.

26. The concluding event of the Revolution, the act by which the crown was settled on William and Mary, terminated a contest which had been waged ever since the reign of king John, between the crown and the people; and which, under the last of the Stuarts, had been obstinately maintained by royalty against the liberties and the religion of England. By the Act of Settlement, and the Declaration of Rights which soon followed it, all the arbitrary prerogatives of royalty were taken away; and in place of the maxim of the "divine right of kings," and the doctrine of passive obedience, it was henceforth conceded that the rights of the crown emanated from the parliament and the people. The immediate beneficial effects of the establishment of this just principle of government were not confined to the British islands; they extended across the ocean, and relieved the British American colonies of much of that royal tyranny against which they had so long been struggling.

27. The effects of William's elevation went far beyond a mere change of dynasty. Placed on the throne by the nation itself, to the rejection of the claims of hereditary right, his title was bound up with that of the nation to its liberties. Chosen by the free-will of parliament, the freedom of that body became part of the royal creed; its wishes the king was bound to conform to; its support was ever necessary to his own security; and henceforth the House of Commons, which now, for the first time, assumed the distribution of the revenue the regulation of the expenses of the army, the navy, &c.— became the paramount power in the State. From the Revolution to the death of George the Second, a period of seventy years, the Whig party had the ascendency in the government; and it was a fundamental doctrine of that party, (however often they might depart from it in practice,) that power is a trust for the people, to be used for their benefit. Political science made a great stride during this period, producing its effects not only upon England, but upon France also, and through France, upon Europe.

28. It is at the point when the republican government of Holland was called to the defence of English liberties. that the English Revo

lution links itself with the general course of European civilization. It would be a contracted view of this great event to regard it as exclusively English in its character, without showing the connection of its results with the great drama that was enacting on the broader stage of continental politics. While the struggle of absolute power against civil and religious liberty took place in England, pure monarchy, in the person of Louis XIV., was waging a war against the libties and the independence of States on the other side of the Channel. Against Louis a powerful coalition was entered into, in which the Protestant Republic of Holland, with William of Orange at its head, took the lead. To the one object of securing the liberties of his country and of Europe against the present aggressions of Louis, and his schemes for universal monarchy, the whole of the heroic life of William was devoted with undeviating firmness, and with an ardor and perseverance that has scarcely, a parallel in history; and it was an important part of his magnanimous designs to place England in its natural position, as a party to the coalition which he had formed. Under Charles II. the English government had been treacherously subservient to the counsels of Louis, who had found in James II. a still more devoted adherent, and the liberties of England an enemy whose resentment could never be appeased, and whose power, consequently, must be taken away.

29. A deep feeling of enmity to France and her monarch, and the cause which he represented, had taken possession of William's soul; and that feeling governed the whole of his policy towards England. His public spirit was European in its character; and when the crown of England was tendered him, the chief motive that prompted his acceptance was not personal ambition, nor the interests of the people whose cause he served, nor the safety of his own country, but a desire to lay hold of England as a new force requisite to complete the coalition of feeble and dispirited States against their common enemy. With this view of the subject, the course which William pursued towards the contending parties in England appears far more uniform and consistent than when supposed to be restricted in its objects to the narrow theatre of English politics; and the English Revolution, instead of an isolated struggle for liberty, becomes, independently of the influence of its example, an important act in the great drama of European civilization.

CHAPTER XII.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

ANALYSIS. 1. The French Revolution-the great event of the eighteenth century. In what light we are at first disposed to view it.-2. A great development of the inconstancy of French character. An era in the page of history.-3. Previous inquiry into the state of civilization at the close of the fifteenth century. Farther examination of the state of French society. 4. GROWTH AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY AND NOBILITY. Political aspect of Gaul under its feudal lords. The chieftain Clovis.-5. Limited powers of the Merovingian kings.-6. Overthrow of the Merovingian dynasty.-7. Character, extent, and fall, of the Carlovingian dynasty. Increased power of the nobility. Why the Carlovingian dominion failed.-8. Election of Hugh Capet by the feudal lords, and gradual subversion of the power of the latter. Enlargement of the royal domain.

9. ORIGIN OF THE THIнd Estate, OR COMMONS. The free towns, or municipalities, aid in the overthrow of feudalism. Change in the character of society. The municipal republies absorbed in the absolutism of Louis XIV. Subsequent reappearance of this part of the social system.

10. CHARACTER AND POSITION OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH. The Church early made dependent upon the crown. Pontifical decrees not binding on any Frenchman without the consent of the monarch.-11. Original jurisdiction of the French ecclesiastical courts-gradually, but permanently impaired.-12. Church property not taxed without the free consent of the ecclesiastical order. Immense amount of Church property. Political influence of the Church.

13. PECULIARITIES OF EARLY FRENCH LEGISLATION. The parliaments of the feudal lords. The king's parliament. Enlargement of its powers by Louis VII., and origin of the French peerage. Enlargement by Louis IX. The French noblesse in the seventeenth century. Their mutual jealousies-they are hated by the plebeian classes-their exclusive privileges.-14. Origin and composition of the States-General. Its rights and powers. Previous to Louis XVI., France had no constitution, and the king was the real as well as nominal lawgiver.

15. RELATIONS BETWEEN THE RULING ORDERS AND THE PEOPLE DURING THE CENTURY PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION. The English and French Revolutions, results of the workings of the same principles. Comparative suddenness and violence of the French Revolution.-16. First avowal of republican principles in France. How they were checked. Prevalent ideas respecting popular rights.-17. Character andresults of the Insurrection of the Fronde. Absolutism of Louis XIV-poverty of the people, and wealth of the nobility.-18. Exhaustion of the kingdom, by persecutions of the Protestants, and the wars of Louis. Expedients to replenish the treasury. Why the reign of Louis was, externally, one of glory to his country. Cause of decline. Absolute monarchy unfavorable to the development of the highest talent.— 19. The regency of the Duke of Orleans. Iniquitous measures for removing the public debt. -20. Political and moral character of the reign of Louis XV. Degraded state of the nobility. Ecclesiastical tyranny and immorality. Low state of morals generally. General presentiment of an approaching revolution. The system of absolute power worn out, and nothing to take its place.-21. Struggle between the Jesuits and Legists. Abolition of the order of the Jesuits -the people begin to make common cause against the monarchy.

22. CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF FREE PRINCIPLES. Resistance to despotism increases with the advance of civilization. The three forms of despotism in feudal France-their contests with each other. Society afterwards divided into two classes-the privileged few, and the laboring many. The mastery at first obtained by the former. Various ways through which the people strove for emancipation.-23. Opposition to sacerdotal tyranny: