IN THE YEAR 1613. 
17 
practice in the administration of affairs on an extended 
scale, — were working as surely and effectively to the 
same end; and, in the study of causes, are deserving of 
no less careful consideration. 
It is not merely the explorations and discoveries that 
sprang from the ambitions and rivalries of commerce, 
nor the plantations to which the supposed riches of the 
sea and land in the Western Hemisphere were an in¬ 
ducement, that represent the consequences to us of these 
commercial undertakings. They contributed directly to 
the moulding of our political institutions, and the de¬ 
termination of our national characteristics. 
In the first place, they enriched the middle classes 
of England, so that the House of Commons thrice over¬ 
matched the House of Lords in wealth. In the second 
place, they gave that experience in the management of 
men as well as things, involving more or less the prin¬ 
ciples of political science, which entitled the Long 
Parliament to be described by Bishop Warburton as 
comprising “ a set of the greatest geniuses for govern¬ 
ment that the world ever saw embarked together in any 
one cause.” 
The great English Revolution, whatever it became, 
cannot be attributed to scruples of conscience under 
religious constraint as its chief cause. It arose rather 
from a resistance of property, under a sense of personal 
independence, to the claims of prerogative. Hence it 
began with a refusal, on the part of the rich merchants, 
to submit to illegal taxation. It may be no more than 
a coincidence, that Nathaniel Manstreye, William Spur- 
stowe, Thomas Sharpe, and Thomas Webb, citizens of 
3 
