276

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

chap. Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and confiscations, it

-was greater on the day of Restoration than on the day when

the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration,of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and un-successful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greateron the day of the death of Charles the Second than on the dayof his Restoration. This progress, having continued duringmany ages, became at length, about the middle of the eigh-teenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded, duringthe nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequencepartly of our geographical and partly of our moral position,we have, during several generations, been exempt from evilswhich have elsewhere impeded the efforts and destroyed thefruits of industry. While every part of the Continent, fromMoscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloody and de-vastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen here but as atrophy. While revolutions have taken place all around us,our government has never once been subverted by violence.During a hundred years there has been in our island no tumultof sufficient importance to be called an insurrection. Thelaw has never been borne down either by popular fury or byregal tyranny. Public credit has been held sacred. The ad-ministration of justice has been pure. Even in times whichmight by Englishmen be justly called evil times, we haveenjoyed what almost every other nation in the world wouldhave considered as an ample measure of civil and religiousfreedom. Every man has felt entire confidence that the statewould protect him in the possession of what had been earnedby his diligence and hoarded by his self-denial. Under thebenignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flou-rished, and has been applied to practical purposes on a scaleGreat never before known. The consequence is that a change to

change in * # 0

ihcstato which the history of the old world furnishes no parallel hasland since taken place in our country. Could the England of 1685 be, by