PREFACE. vii 



stances have never been bestowed at all, or at least 

 bestowed impatiently and grudgingly. Yet if there 

 be, as some writers have perhaps over-hastily asserted, 

 a science of history, that is a method of analysing facts 

 by which the future of a nation may be predicted, as 

 well as the past interpreted, this will surely be found 

 most fully in that portion of its annals which is eco- 

 nomical. The English nation has not been moulded 

 into its present shape by its constitution and its laws, 

 since its history is by no means an uninterrupted ad- 

 vancement ; for both laws and constitution have been 

 the products of a variety of transient energies, most 

 of them, in so far as they are expressions of the 

 national temper, being derived from economical con- 

 siderations, or in great part modified by them. I 

 cannot, for example, trace the boldness of Henry the 

 Fourth's parliaments to that monarch's usurpation or 

 unpopularity, but to the vigorous growth of a wealthy 

 and hardy peasantry. I do not detect the power of 

 Henry the Eighth's government in the strength of that 

 monarch's understanding, for to any but the shallowest 

 observation he was the most shortsighted and selfish 

 monarch who ever sat on the English throne, but to 

 the fact that society was dislocated for a time by the 

 economical consequences of the great war of succession. 

 The fact that for centuries the battle of constitutional 

 liberty was fought in the counties, was due to the 

 action of those freeholders who had achieved their 

 independence by economical causes ; while contrarily 

 another set of economical causes has accomplished the 



