BEFORE THE RESTORATION.

as soon as the actual conflict was over. The calamities of civilwar were confined to the slaughter on the field of battle, and to -a few subsequent executions and confiscations. In a week thepeasant was driving bis team and the esquire flying his hawksover the field of Towton, or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinaryevent had interrupted the regular course of human life.

A hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since theEnglish people have by force subverted a government.During the hundred and sixty years which preceded theunion of the Roses, nine Kings reigned in England. Sixof these nine Kings were deposed. Five lost their lives aswell as their crowns. It is evident, therefore, that any com-parison between our ancient and our modern polity must leadto most erroneous conclusions, unless large allowance bemade for the effect of that restraint which resistance and thefear of resistance constantly imposed on the Plantagenets.As our ancestors had against tyranny a most important se-curity which we want, they might safely dispense with somesecurities to which we justly attach the highest importance.As we cannot, without the risk of evils from which the imagi-nation recoils, employ physical force as a check on misgo-vernment, it is evidently our wisdom to keep all the consti-tutional checks on misgovernment in the highest state ofefficiency, to watch with jealousy the first beginnings ofencroachment, and never to suffer irregularities, even whenharmless in themselves, to pass unchallenged, lest they ac-quire the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago suchminute vigilance might seem unnecessary. A nation of hardyarchers and spearmen might, with small risk to its liberties,connive at some illegal acts on the part of a prince whosegeneral administration was good, and whose throne was notdefended by a single company of regular soldiers.

Under this system, rude as it may appear when comparedwith those elaborate constitutions of which the last seventy

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