potic, should resume the functions they originally conferred, only for the purpose of putting due restrictions upon their future operation: remembering that though, in the exercise of their undoubted right to amend (even perforce, when circumstances absolutely demand it) the institutions by which they are governed, they may have lawfully possessed themselves, for the moment, both of the executive and legislative powers, THEY CANNOT, either in right or in fact, either collectively or in the persons of representatives, RETAIN THEM BOTH: for that if they could, in their own persons, society would have arrived at that state of perfection by which all government would be rendered unnecessary; and if in the persons of representatives, such representatives, and themselves likewise, must equally have become divested of those differences in talent, and those common human passions, by the operation of which, an individual or individuals from among them will always be incited to desire, and sooner or later will be certain to obtain, AN EXECUTIVE MASTERY. Simple as may be thought these axioms, it might require but little argument to prove, that their timely recollection. on the part of the governors and the governed, would have operated to prevent the whole train of revolutionary evils that overwhelmed England in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, as their practical adoption did prevent

such at the justly-styled 'glorious' revolution of 1688.

England, like all the other monarchical states of Europe, owes the leading principle of her political system to those feudal institutions, of which monarchy, from their nature, formed a part. And monarchy is a form of government, in itself so simple and so natural, so fitted to the frame to which society, in its rudest or most polished state, can most readily and with the greatest advantage adjust itself, that it is neither to be wondered at, that the idea of it should have been impressed upon the minds of men in the earliest times, or that its constitutions should have been retained to the present era. But the feudal spirit, that originated monarchy in Europe, was in itself so little capable of improving it to wise governing purposes, that the Norman Conqueror of England, who carried feudal institutions in this country to the utmost perfection of which they were perhaps capable, was, it may be, of all the sovereigns recorded in her history, the most absolute despot.* For, by the sublimity of his

* The Saxon constitution of England, it is true, was, in a great degree, feudal, and, in so far as it admitted of villeinage in the lowest classes, slavish; but it is rendered extremely probable, by records of indisputable authority, that, agreeably

feudal genius, William attached a consequence to his crown, in the too heightened splendours of which the rights of the free subjects of England grew dim, and declined; and in the end, (though he occasionally deferred, there can be no doubt, to convocations of all the barons, major and minor, of the land), by his perfecting the system of military tenures, and by his alterations of those Saxons laws he had so solemnly sworn to maintain, his commands became as imperative upon the nobles of every degree, as upon

to Saxon usage, every subject of the degree of thane (afterward rendered baron) was endowed with the privilege, which he exercised or not at his discretion, of forming a part of the great national council, by which the laws were enacted that regulated his own civil conduct, and the proportion of his contributions toward the expences of the state; while, in the same capacity, he advised the monarch on the public affairs, and arraigned his public actions, or those of his officers;-thus possessing, and possessing personally, not by representation, the loftiest attributes of a freeman. At the same time, the ordinary administration of justice was local throughout the realm, and its administrators neither appointed by, nor dependent on, the royal authority. In fact, the early political institutions of all nations are necessarily popular in a considerable degree; for no society of men, although they may per ceive the expediency of giving themselves a common head, will ever intend that the chieftain of their own appointing shall, at the existing or any future period, govern entirely without reference to their common approbation.

the very bondmen attached to the soil. And yet, it is especially deserving of remark, that very slavery, which he had thus found means equally to impose upon all classes of the people whom he subdued, proved, in union with those remembrances of Saxon liberty he could not crush, the sources, when the power he had created was sustained by weaker hands, of that principle of counterpoise, to which every order in the state at length became subjected, which, to the constitution, up to the present day, should be deemed the life, and the strength, and the only certain earnest of durability. The means, by which this grand, stable, and useful principle was in great degree developed in the early ages of the monarchy, and through which, even in those early ages, as was noticed by Comines, it made large approaches to perfection, will be seen in a brief review of the reigns of the immediate successors of the Norman Conqueror, and those of their successors, inclusively, down to Henry the Seventh.

The Conqueror attached a degree of consequence to his crown, possessed by that of no other European prince; and indeed laid the foundations of its greatness so securely, that it has seemed enhaloed by a sacred lustre through each succeeding age; and nothing but the grossest misconduct, accompanied by the grossest weakness, in its wearer, have ever

proved of force to wrest it from the head it had once virtually encircled, even though unlawfully. This sacredness of character, inherent in the crown of England, is, whatever well-meaning asserters of undue popular independence may imagine, a main pillar of support to her true constitution. Other European sovereigns, at the period of William's sway, continued to reign by little other than the sufferance of numerous scarcely inferior sovereigns, their chief nobility; while the power of the nobility themselves continued despotic over the people. In consequence, there arising no community of interests, of which the people formed a part, in opposition to those of the sovereign head, the various contests that ensued between the kings and their nobles, ended only in more effectually securing the advantages of the party that obtained the mastery, without procuring, as De Lolme so properly remarks, “the acknowledgment of one popular right, or the removal of one popular grievance." And, in process of time, every European state, that of England alone excepted, became either a despotic, or a nullified sovereignty, or else an open aristocracy; while, in either case, the king, or the nobles, were the only real gainers. But the government of England, despotic from the first moment of its complete establishment by William, over