healed by the first great act of religious toleration, the Edict of Nantz, and she stood upon her feet again under the paternal sway of Henry the IVth and the wise and beneficent administration of Sully. But the still struggling aspirations of a higher and a better liberty which from time to time animated her, for the want of an enlightened and independent body of Commons speaking and acting through an organized representative assembly, were doomed as yet to exhaust themselves in the fitful and tumultuous efforts of the Barricades and the Fronde.

England was happier. She had, at length a people in the true sense of that word, with all the attributes of a moral existence, and that people had now their representative organ in an independent House of Commons. It is at this period, the beginning of the seventeenth century, coincident with the close of the Tudor line of Princes and the accession of the Stuarts, that a new order of things had evidently arisen among our English ancestors. The revival of letters, the art of printing, the extension of commerce resulting from the discovery of America and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and finally the emancipation of the human mind by the Reformation, had been, most of them, in operation, and silently and gradually producing their benign effects, for more than a century. Their matured fruits were now visible in England, in nothing more than in the marked improvement and elevation of the condition of the mass of the nation. The simultaneous increase and diffusion among all classes of society, of property and knowledge, the two great elements of power in

every civilized community, raised the people to the level of their new destinies. Nothing more strikingly illustrates the new-born thirst for knowledge, as well as spirit of national improvement which had taken possession, at this time, of the great body of the people in England, than the fact stated by Dr. Johnson in his introduction to the Harleian Miscellany. "The Treatises on Husbandry and Agriculture," he says, "which were published during the reign of James the First, were so numerous that it can scarcely be imagined by whom they were written or to whom they were sold."*

A similar illustration of the general acquisition and increase of property, which had taken place in the mass of the nation, is furnished in the fact mentioned by Historians, that, when the Parliament which passed the memorable Petition of Right assembled in 1628, the aggregate property of the members of the House of Commons was computed to surpass three times that of the House of Peers. A people, thus possessed of intelligence and of independent livelihoods derived from their own industry, could not but feel and assert their rights. A new power, unknown to the former struggles for English liberty, had arisen in the State. To haughty and steel-clad Barons leading bands of submissive vassals to wrest from their sovereign, by the sword, the precarious boon of extorted, and yet partial concessions, or the mockery of feeble and ser

* Dugald Stewart, remarking on this fact, observes, that "at all times and in every country, the extensive sale of books on agriculture may be regarded as one of the most pleasing symptoms of mental cultivation in the great body of the people." See his Dissertation on the progress of Philosophy since the Revival of Letters in Europe.

vile parliaments more fitted to be the tools of tyranny than the guardians of freedom, had succeeded the majestic spectacle of a people prepared to vindicate and maintain their inherent liberties in their own right, by the safe and salutary agency of their freely chosen representatives in a virtuous and independent House of Commons. Westminster and St. Stephen's had taken the place of Runnymede, not in form only but in spirit and in truth, and the people were henceforward to battle for their liberties in a free Parliament inspired by the new genius and wants of the age, and unawed and unseduced by power.

Such was the sublime mission of the Commons of England at the commencement of the seventeenth century. They had to re-construct the edifice of public liberty from its foundations; for however glorious and animating, as historical recollections, were the Great Charter of King John, or the subsequent confirmations and extensions of that charter in the time of the earlier Henrys and Edwards, yet as muniments of British freedom, they had long ceased to be heeded or regarded in the practical administration of the government. The Crown claimed and exercised the power of dispensing with the laws of the land at its own will-of putting its arbitrary proclamations in the place and upon the footing of legislative enactments of levying taxes upon the people without their consent of imprisoning obnoxious individuals, even such as were protected by privilege of parliament, at pleasure-and finally of interposing between man and his maker, and prescribing to every one, under the pains and penalties of temporal power, the

form in which he should render his worship to God. Surely a government in which such vast and fearful powers were exercised by a single will over the lives, liberties, properties and consciences of men, could have no sound claim to be considered a system of freedom. And yet these powers had been practically exercised by the Kings of England for more than a century, at the time of which we are speaking. However differing, therefore, with Hume upon other questions connected with the history of these eventful times, I cannot but feel there is much foundation for the strong remark made by him in the Memoir of his own life, where he says, "it is ridiculous to consider the English constitution, as it existed at this period, a regular plan of liberty."

It was the task of the noble race of patriots and statesmen who now appeared upon the stage to restore this boasted constitution to its primitive freedom-to realise the picture which had been drawn of it by its earlier oracles and expounders-to wipe out the abusive precedents which had marred and defaced itand to provide new and lasting securities to protect it from similar inroads in future. Never was a set of men better qualified and furnished for their task. Among them, besides Hampden, who became so prominent in the later stages of the contest, were the great names of Coke, Selden, Sandys, Eliot, Pym, Seymour, Philips, St. John and Vane. These were all men profoundly versed in the history and laws of their own country, initiated from early youth in the study of the literature and political institutions of the free states of antiquity, with whose spirit they were

largely imbued, and coming into active life at a time when the gravest questions, which can affect the feelings and interests of man in society, had arisen for decision, they had trained themselves to the duties of the highest practical statesmanship. They well merit the eulogy pronounced upon them by a celebrated English Divine, Bishop Warburton, who after referring to the period of which we are speaking as that at which "the spirit of liberty was at its height in England,” adds, "and its interests were conducted and supported by a set of the greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw embarked together in one common cause."

Such a period in the history of the Land of our Fore-fathers, from which we have derived the model and the spirit of so many of our free institutions, must, on every account, attract the earnest attention of Americans. But it is commended to our special sympathy and regard from the fact that, it was precisely at this epoch, that our own country was settled from England. From this time, the histories of England and of America become tied and dove-tailed into one another, and so continued for near two centuries. Then began that series of action and reaction between the old and new world which may be considered as the great connecting link of modern civilization, and which has exerted and will continue to exert so important an influence upon the destinies of the human race. Our ancestors, the first emigrants to America, left their native shores at a period when, as we have just seen, the spirit of liberty there was at its height. That spirit has been cherished by their