the danger of the established church, all joined in a hearty detestation of the measures of the crown.

One singular circumstance was the infatuation of the king, and his total blindness to the progress of those measures both at home and on the continent which were preparing his immediate downfall. When Louis XIV. apprized him of his danger, and offered to send him the aid of a fleet, and to make a, diversion in his favor by invading the United Provinces, he refused the offer, and would not give credit to the information.

At length the prince of Orange set sail with a fleet of five hundred ships and fourteen thousand men. He landed in England on the 15th of November, 1688, having sent before him a manifesto, in which he declared his intentions of saving the kingdom from destruction, vindicating the national liberty, and procuring the election of a free parliament. He was received with general satisfaction. The chief of the nobility and officers hastened to join him. James found himself abandoned by his people, by his ministers, his favorites, and even by his children. In a state of despair and distraction, he formed the dastardly resolution of escaping into France, and he sent off beforehand the queen and the infant prince. Following them himself, he was taken by the populace at Feversham and brought back to London. But the prince of Orange, to facilitate his escape, sent him under a slight guard to Rochester, from whence he soon found an opportunity of conveying himself to the continent.

The parliament was now summoned, but met simply as a Convention, not having the authority of the king's convocation. The Commons declared, that James having attempted to overturn the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between the king and people, and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant. This vote, the terms of which, rather than the subtance of it, occasioned some debate in the House of Peers, was at last passed by a considerable majority.

The most important question remained how was the government to be settled? A variety of different opinions ultimately resolved into two distinct proposals: either that a regent should be appointed, or the crown settled upon the king's eldest daughter Mary, the princess of Orange, and in case of her issue failing, upon the princess Anne. The stadtholder, while these matters were in agitation, conducted himself with infinite prudence and good policy. He entered into no intrigues with either of the houses of parliament, but during their whole deliberations preserved a total silence. At length, when it was resolved that the crown should be settled in the way of one of these alternatives, he assembled some of the chief nobility, and announced that,

having been invited into the kingdom to restore its liberties, he had now happily effected that purpose; that it behooved not him to interfere in the determinations of the legislature with regard to the settlement of the crown; but that, being informed as to the two alternatives which were proposed, he thought it his duty to declare that in executing either of these plans he could give no assistance; that he was determined to decline the office of a regent, and that he would rather remain a private person than enjoy a crown which must depend upon the life of another.

The sister princesses themselves seconded these views of the stadtholder; and the principal parties being thus agreed, a bill was proposed and passed by the convention, settling the crown on the prince and princess of Orange-the former to have the sole administration of the government; the princess Anne to succeed after their death; her posterity after those of the princess of Orange, but before those of the prince by any other wife.

To this settlement of the crown the convention added a declaration, fixing the nature of the constitution with respect to the rights of the subject and the royal prerogative. Of this declaration the following are the most essential articles. The king cannot suspend the laws nor the execution of them without the consent of parliament. He can neither erect an ecclesiastical nor any other tribunal by his own sole act. He cannot levy money without a parliamentary grant, nor beyond the terms for which it shall be granted. It is declared the right of the subjects to petition the crown, for which they can neither be imprisoned nor prosecuted. Protestant subjects may keep such arms for their defence as are allowed by law. No standing army can be kept up in time of peace but by consent of parliament. The elections of members of parliament must be free and uninfluenced, and there must be a freedom of parliamentary debate. Excessive bails, exorbitant fines, and too severe punishments are prohibited. The juries on trials for high treason must be members of the communities; and to remedy abuses, it is necessary that parliaments be frequently assembled. A new form was published instead of the old oath of supremacy, which declares that no prince, prelate, state, or foreign sovereign, hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, in the kingdom.

In Scotland the revolution was not, as in England, effected by a coalition of the whigs and tories. There was an entire separation of these opposite parties. A convention was summoned at Edinburgh, where the tories, finding themselves greatly inferior in numbers, withdrew from the assembly, which then proceeded to pass a decisive vote that Jarnes, by mal-administration and abuse of power, had forfeited all title to the crown; they therefore made a tender of the royal dignity to the prince and princess of Orange.

Such was the final settlement of the British government at the great era of the revolution of 1688.

CHAPTER XXXI.

ON THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND: -Historical Sketch of, up to the Rev olution-The Legislative Power-Constitution of the House of CommonsHouse of Peers-the Executive Power-Powers of the Crown now limited -Habeas Corpus Act-Trial by Jury-Liberty of the Press.

IT has been customary for our political writers, in order to give the greater weight to their theories of government; to trace the origin of the British constitution to a most remote period of antiquity. The opinion of Montesquieu is well known, who derives our constitution from the woods of Germany, and finds among those rude nations in their military assemblies the model of the British parliament; but if every assembly of a people is the model of a parliament, I see no reason why we may not derive it as well from the Spartans, the Athenians, or Romans, as from the Germans. Its antiquity is sufficiently remote if we can trace our constitution even as far back as the Norman conquest.

The Anglo-Saxon Wittenagemot, as has been observed, contained, indeed, the rude model of a parliament; at least of a great council for there are no grounds for believing that there was any thing in that assembly approaching to a representation of the people.

William the Conqueror subverted the ancient fabric of the Saxon government; he dismissed the former occupiers of lands to distribute them among his Normans; and he established at once a system best suited to maintain his own power-the feudal government, till then unknown in Britain. In the continental nations of Europe, the feudal system arose by slow degrees. The authority of the crown was limited by the power of the barons, and the king had scarcely any thing more than a nominal superiority over his nobles. It was very different in England: the feudal system was introduced at once, by a monarch whose power was absolute. He totally extinguished the ancient liberties of the people; he divided England into 60,215 military fiefs, all held of the crown, the possessors of which were obliged, under pain of forfeiture, to take up arms and repair to his standard on the

first signal. The feudal system in France was only a number of parts, without any reciprocal adherence: in England it was a compound of parts, united by the strongest ties-where the regal authority, by its immense weight, consolidated the whole into one compact, indissoluble body; and from that remarkable difference we may account for the great difference of their constitutions. In France, the several provinces had no principle of union. The people found themselves oppressed by the great feudal lords, and often raised insurrections, and made frequent struggles for freedom; but these struggles, being partial, were of no consequence to the general liberty of the kingdom. In England, again, all found themselves oppressed by the enormous weight of the crown. It was a common grievance, and broke out at times into a violent struggle for the general liberty. It was the excessive power of the crown that in England produced at length the liberty of the people, because it gave rise to a spirit of union among the people in all their efforts to resist it.

The forest laws were a grievance felt by the whole nation; both by the barons and their vassals. William the Conqueror reserved to himself the exclusive privilege of killing game throughout all England, and enacted the severest penalties against all who should attempt it without his permission. The suppression, or rather mitigation of these penalties, was one of the articles of the Charta de Forestá, which the barons and their vassals afterwards obtained by force of arms. "Nullus de cetero amillat vitam vel membra pro venatione nostra." (Charta de Forestâ, cap. 10.) In these struggles they began to scrutinize into the foundations of authority, and to open their eyes to the natural rights of mankind.

Henry I. was forced to give way a little to this rising spirit, and to mitigate those laws which lay heaviest on the general liberty. Under Henry II. liberty took still a greater stretch, and the people obtained the privilege of trial by juries, one of the most valuable parts of the English constitution. John, imprudently, oppressed this spirit, and sought to check it in its infancy. We know the consequence-a general confederacy of all ranks and orders of men, which at length forced the sovereign into those valuable concessions, the Charta de Forestá and Magna Charta, which, had they but been scrupulously observed, the English would have been from that time a free people. The Magna Charta, however, observed or not observed, was always a code which certified the people of what were really their rights, and what they were entitled to vindicate.

The next memorable era in the growth of the English constitution was the reign of Henry III., when the deputies of the towns and boroughs were first admitted into parliament. It was always the chief object of his successor, Edward I., to ingratiate himself with his subjects; and requiring large subsidies for his

great enterprises against Wales and Scotland, he took the new method of obtaining from the consent of the people, what his predecessors had endeavored to exact by their own power This, therefore, is the era of the origin of the House of Commons. Edward confirmed the great charter no less than eleven times in the course of his reign,-a certain proof to what lengths the people had attained in the assertion of their liberties; he likewise enacted one statute, which, next to the Magna Charta, may be considered as the great foundation of the rights of the people: "That no tax should be raised, or impost levied, without the consent of Lords and Commons."

Thus matters continued gradually advancing; and the scale of the people was daily acquiring an increase of weight, during the reigns of Edward II., Edward III., and Henry IV.; but the subsequent reigns were not so favorable. The wars against France, and the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, so embroiled the nation, that the people had not leisure to think of grievances from the power of the crown, while their lives and fortunes were otherwise at stake; and when Henry VII. mounted the throne, the people, wearied out by calamities and longing for repose, abhorred even the idea of resistance. The nobility, almost exterminated, had no strength; and the people, who in their struggles with the crown had had nobles for their leaders, were now afraid to form any opposition. During the government of the house of Tudor the royal prerogative was gradually enlarging itself, and the people became accustomed to all compliances; comforting themselves with the thought that if the sovereign had the right of demanding, they had the right of granting, and consequently, if they chose, might still refuse. But the crown, even had they refused, had opened to itself collateral channels of supplies, and was, in fact, very soon independent of parliament in every article, unless in the framing of new laws. The authority of the Star-chamber and High Commission under the two last Henrys, and under Mary and Elizabeth, supplied in most respects to the sovereign the place of a parliament, and was always at his command. The talents of Elizabeth, and the respectable figure then made by the nation in all public measures against foreign powers, blinded the people to such exertions of authority as would. in these days appear the height of tyranny. The nation then seemed drowned in the most supine indifference to domestic liberty; and the people, like the subjects of an absolute monarchy (which England, at that time, truly was in almost every sense,) had confined all their ideas to the power, dignity, and splendor of the crown.

But the succeeding prince awakened them from that inglorious lethargy. The former monarchs had marched in silence from one step to another, till they arrived at the height of despotism. James I. imprudently proclaimed his title and right to that au