CHARLES AND HIS SUBJECTS. 337 



tyrant-loving lords of our own intelligent day) had the double 

 effect of strengthening the crown by their suppression, and leading 

 to the formation of burghs and free associations among the lower 

 people, whose vocation of private war was now in a great measure 

 destroyed, and who were, therefore, driven back on the pursuits of 

 industry and the independent assertion of their rights, by this revo- 

 lution in the state of society. The COMMONS, consequently, grew 

 into consideration, precisely as the barons declined, and succeeded 

 naturally to the benefit of those limitations on the royal power, 

 which the latter had established chiefly with a view to themselves. 



The suppression of religious houses under Henry VIII. operated 

 substantially in the same manner ; and, though the temper of that 

 prince (whose name cannot fail to disgust every manly bosom 

 every feeling heart, filled by the blood of human tenderness, and 

 responsive to heaven-born freedom), and the wealth he had thus ac- 

 quired, enabled him to venture on stretches of not only unconstitu- 

 tional, but profligate, wicked, and even criminal assumptions of 

 despotic power, certainly unknown to his predecessors, there are 

 the plainest indications both of a dominant spirit of resistance in the 

 parliaments, and of an independent supremacy in the law, that 

 mark the true character of the BRITISH GOVERNMENT, as a limited 

 and not an absolute monarchy. 



The intolerant reign of Mary was that of a bigoted and vindictive, 

 if not a scandalous, faction. 



That of Elizabeth, on the contrary, was marked by wise and popular 

 measures. Elizabeth was indeed a sensible woman, and popular 

 sovereign. She was looked upon with peculiar veneration 

 and even indulgence, as the PROTECTRESS of the " protestant 

 cause" in Christendom. The Pope's influential toe was at this time, 

 however, more frequently kissed than of late, or at present ; but the 

 known political advocates of popery were more manly if not Chris- 

 tian-like and more open in their advocacy of that unhappy system 

 of non-educational darkness and superstitious terrorism ; that 

 appalling ignorance, which his abandoned brothel Highness POPE 

 JOAN impressed upon the muckworms, whose slime irradiates 

 the territorial hell which feeds the exchequer of the pontifical 

 circus ? of Rome, and pays the obedient scarlet-ones so handsomely 

 for their confessional as well as professional performances. (When 

 will this baleful mockery be overpassed? When will the nations of 

 the earth be brought to the footstool of the God of the Bible and of 

 nature, to pay entire homage to worship with holy worship, the 

 everlasting and infinite God the revealed Almighty ?) 



Let me proceed, however. It was in the reign of this stupid and 

 blind blind to his own happiness and the security of the crown, by 

 means of the support and concord of his fain-would-be-faithful sub- 

 jects, combined with, and arising out of, the pedantic and irrelevant 

 nature of his education, favourite studies, and peculiar writings (for 

 James was a political writer), that the first solemn and precise 

 claim of absolute authority was made in behalf of an English 

 monarch, and a naked and elaborate exposition attempted of the 

 duty of passive obedience on the part of his people. That these 



