582 
assuredly the facts of history will not 
bear out the supposition’ that it was 
either the power, or the patriot virtue 
of the nobility, or the’ sensitive’ con- 
sciousness ‘of an identity of interests 
between them and the people that pre- 
vented Henry VIII. from doing without 
a parliament. The power of the nobi- 
lity had been brought into abeyance by 
the -confiscations,  decapitations, and 
slaughters: of the civil wars of York and 
Lancaster, and their humiliation had 
been completed by the cold-blooded fis- 
cal policy of Henry VII.. Henry VIII. 
smiled the degenerate remnant of a once 
imperious baronage into sycophant-like 
servility, or frowned them into extinc- 
tion,'as his jollity or the caprice of the 
moment dictated; or shortened them 
by the head'with as little ceremony as 
he did his wifes ; and with as much in- 
difference apparently as he dissipated 
the treasures which the avarice of his 
father. had accumulated, or his own ra- 
pacity could seize; and it was not, in 
fact, to the. virtues of the nobility, but 
to the wices of the king, that the people 
of England were indebted for the pre- 
servation of what was preserved of their 
liberties. Had not his profligate pro- 
digality kept pace with his insatiable 
tyranny —had he husbanded with fore- 
thought and economy what with un- 
sparing rapacity he seized, he need never 
have even asked the people of England 
to part with their parliaments. He might 
have ruled of his own will without them ; 
and the experiment of governing the 
nation by a privy council, and a star- 
chamber, need not have been deferred 
till the people themselves had become 
sufficiently assured in their intelligence ~ 
and their power to set at defiance both 
king and lords: united, when they at- 
tempted so unconstitutional an inno- 
vation. 
permanent purposes of his government 
the domains and treasures, of which he 
plundered the monks and monasteries, 
(and. who, whatever might have been. 
their real’yices, and how much soever 
we imay rejoice in their suppression, 
were-certainly neither more. hypocriti- 
cal, more profligate, nor more oppres- 
sively intolerant than himself), what, we 
should’ be glad’ to know, would have 
stood in the way of his despotic will? 
But what monks aud abbots reserved 
for their own voluptuousness, or dis- 
pensed to the blind, the halt, the indi- 
gent—perhaps to the idle, of their res 
pective neighbourhoods, he wasted at 
once upon his more insatiate and osten- 
Had he appropriated to the 
Memoirs of the Affairs. of 
tatious gratifications, or dispensedanvong 
the courtly favourites of the hour.o' Amd’ 
though his dissolute prodigality assured 
our redemption ‘from ‘the’ gripe’ of “des=" 
potism, ‘by’ rendering the’ crown “still 
dependent for its reveriues on the votes 
of parliament, ‘and his thoughtless pro- 
fusion laid the foundations: also” for the 
power and oppulenceof the patriot house 
of Russell; yet, let us not, inour grati- 
tude to that Providence; which has tus 
brought good out of evil, sacrificé' our. 
reason to a baseless theory, and from’ 
a present exception, making out a rule 
for the past, ascribe events’ to causes 
which had not even a shadow of influ= 
ence in their production. FOU 
In the enquiry, how it happened that 
“the period of the revival of letters, to 
which we are accustomed to look ‘back 
as the commencement~of every liberal 
art and civilized ‘institution, should be 
in fact the zra of the downfall of *free- 
dom, and of the establishment’ of arbi- 
trary power?”—and “ how’ it happened 
that, at such a time” the people’ of the 
continent of Europe’ resigned ‘their an- 
cient liberties and prescriptive ‘constitu- 
tions with such degrading tameness ? 
We give to his Lordship’s solution 
a more unhesitating acquiescence.” Un- 
influenced here by those ‘natural preju- 
dices, that irresistible esprit ‘dw ‘corps, 
which links us to rank “and 'élassj“he 
looks upon facts with a clear and’ philo- 
sophic eye, and beholds ‘at once’ 'the 
cause in that * dove (if it be ‘not too 
weak a word) of property,” which came’ ” 
in upon the nations with the spring-tide 
flow of commerce and civilization; ‘and 
which taught (a lesson: by the:cupidity ° 
of the grasping, the ostentatious, and™ 
the voluptuous, how quickly conned) 
that the accumulation of pelr is*more 
estimable than the security of rights, 
and even concentrates all ‘rights in thé 
one sordid idea of such accumulation:— 
“ So as the government left their subjects 
undisturbed in the enjoyment of, property 
and ease, therefore, the community. was. 
ready to leave the government to act as if 
pleased in matters of political concern. 
Hence an indifference prevailed onthe con- 
tinent from the beginning of the sixteenth 
to the middle of the eighteenth century on- 
questions of mere liberty”’ : 
What a warning this to. the present 
generation! What a picture of the 
growing state of feeling in this prospe- ~ 
rous and most flourishing nation! Hap- 
pily, indeed, the diffusion of education ” 
and the industry of the press are spread- 
ing intelligence, with uncontrollingta-"~ 
pidity 
