BEFORE THE RESTORATION.

25

reconstruction. The present constitution of our country is, CIIAI> 'to the constitution under which she flourished five hundredyears ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is tothe boy. The alteration has been great. Yet there neverwas a moment at which the chief part of what existed was notold. A polity thus formed must abound in anomalies. Butfor the evils arising from mere anomalies we have ample com-pensation. Other societies possess written constitutions moresymmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded inuniting revolution with prescription, progress with stability,the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial an-tiquity.

This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: andone of those drawbacks is, that every source of informationas to our early history has been poisoned by party spirit. Asthere is no country where statesmen have been so much underthe influence of the past, so there is no country where histori-ans have been so much under the influence of the present.Between these two things, indeed, there is a natural con-nection. Where history is regarded merely as a picture oflife and manners, or as a collection of experiments fromwhich general maxims of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writerlies under no very pressing temptation to misrepresent trans-actions of ancient date. But where history is regarded as arepository of title-deeds, on which the rights of governmentsand nations depend, the motive to falsification becomes almostirresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by any stronginterest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of thekings of the house of Valois. The privileges of the StatesGeneral, of the States of Brivanny, of the States of Burgundy,are now matters of as little practical importance as the con-stitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim, or of the AmphictyonicCouncil. The gulph of a great revolution completely se-parates the new from the old system. No such chasm divides