4 On the ORIGIN and S TR UCTUR E of 



Hence the rights of the kings, of the nobility, and of the peo- 

 ple, came to be a matter of general difcuflion : And as men are 

 ufually prejudiced in favour of the wifdom of their remote 

 anceftors, and derive their more common notions of their poli- 

 tical rights from what was cuftomary in ancient times, the me- 

 rits of the difpute were univerfally fuppofed to turn on the 

 hiftorical queftion of facl:, What conftitution was adopted by the 

 original founders of each particular nation. 



HENCE the firft refearches into the ancient hiflory of the Eu- 

 ropean governments were made with a view to fupport the te- 

 nets of political factions. Thofe who wifhed to gain the favour 

 of courts laboured to prove the ancient fovereignty of the 

 Gothic kings, and founded their fyftems on the defpotic powers 

 of the leader of a conquering army, and the abfolute nature of 

 a right of conqueft ; from whence they inferred, that the pri- 

 vileges of the ariflocracy were ufurpations on the crown, and 

 the rights of the people the grants of its bounty. The parti- 

 sans of the people again endeavoured to trace the political rights 

 of the commons to a remote antiquity, and exhibited them as 

 underflood and exercifed in the fulleft manner in the earlieft 

 ages of the conftitution j and they contended, that the happi- 

 nefs of thofe times was to be reftored only, by the people re- 

 fuming the conftitutional powers which kings and nobles had 

 alternately ufurped. In fine, thofe who had imbibed from the 

 Greek and Roman claffics, or from family-conneclions, a pro- 

 found reverence for ariftocratic virtues, together with a propor- 

 tionable averfion to plebeian manners, delighted to efpoufe the 

 caufe of the falling nobility, to difplay the ancient powers of 

 the order, and to confute their antagonifts, by tracing the cir- 

 cumfcribed limits of the royal prerogative in remote times, the 

 oppreffions under which the commons laboured, and the little 

 importance they pofTefTed in national affairs. 



IN this way, opinions with regard to the original ftruclure of 

 the European governments entered into the creeds of contend- 

 ing 



