nor even know, till it should be in every respect too late. A prince, engaged in the contest we suppose, would scarcely have completed his first preparations,— his project would scarcely be half ripe for execution,before his army would be taken from him. And the more powerful this army might be, the more adequate, seemingly, from its numbers, to the task it is intended for, the more open it would be to the danger we mention. Of this, James the Second made a very remarkable experiment. He had augmented his army to the number of thirty thousand. But when the day came in which their support was to have been useful to him, some deserted to the enemy; others threw down their arms; and those who continued to stand together, 469 showed more inclination to be spectators of, than agents in, the contest. In short, he gave all over for lost, without making any trial of their assistance. From all the facts before-mentioned, it is evident 470 that the power of the crown, in England, rests upon foundations quite peculiar to itself, and that its security and strength are obtained by means totally different from those by which the same advantages are so incompletely procured, and so dearly paid for, in other countries. It is without the assistance of an armed force that the crown, in England, is able to manifest that dauntless independence of particular individuals, or whole classes of them, with which it discharges its legal functions and duties. Without the assistance of an armed force, it is able to counterbalance the extensive and un- 471 restrained freedom of the people, and to exert that resisting strength which constantly keeps increasing in a superior proportion to the force by which it is opposed, -that ballasting power by which, in the midst of bois terous winds and gales, it recovers and rights again the vessel of the state (q). It is from the civil branch of its office the crown derives that strength by which it subdues even the military power, and keeps it in a state of subjection to the laws, unexampled in any other country. It is from a happy arrangement of things it derives that uninterrupted steadiness, that invisible solidity, which procure to the subject both so certain a protection and so extensive a freedom. It is from the nation it receives 472 the force with which it governs the nation. Its resources are accord, and not compulsion,-free action, and not fear, and it continues to reign through the political drama, the struggle of the voluntary passions of those who pay obedience to it. On the peculiar Foundations of the English Monarchy as a Monarchy. The reader will also find, that several remarkable new instances prove the fact of the peculiar stability of the executive power of the British crown, and exhibit a much more complete delineation of the (q) There are many circumstances in the English government, which those persons who wish for speculative meliorations, such as parliamentary reform, or other changes of a like kind, do not perhaps think of taking into consideration. If so, they are, in their proceedings, in danger of meddling with a number of strings, the existence of which they do not suspect. While they only mean reformation and improvement, they are in danger of removing the talisman on which the existence of the fabric depends; or, like the daughter of King Nisus, (Scylla. -ED.), of cutting off the fatal hair with which the fate of the city is connected. (Megara besieged by Minos.-ED.) advantages that result from that stability in favour of public liberty. These advantages may be enumerated in the following order: I. The numerous restraints the governing authority is able to bear, and the extensive freedom it can afford to allow the subject, at its own expense: II. The liberty of speaking and writing, carried to the great extent it is in England: III. The unbounded freedom of the debates in the legislature: IV. The power to bear the constant union of all orders of subjects against its prerogatives: V. The freedom allowed to all individuals to take an active part in government concerns: VI. The strict impartiality with which justice is dealt to all subjects, without any respect whatever of persons: VII. The lenity of the criminal law, both in regard to the mildness of punishments, and the frequent remission of them: VIII. The strict compliance of the governing authority with the letter of the law: IX. The needlessness of an armed force to support itself by, and, as a consequence, the singular subjection of the military to the civil power. The above-mentioned advantages are peculiar to the English government. To attempt to imitate them, or transfer them to other countries, with that degree of extent to which they are carried in England, without at the same time transferring the whole order and conjunction of circumstances in the English government, would prove unsuccessful attempts (r). (r) Many persons, satisfied with seeing the elevation and upper parts of a building, think it immaterial to give a look under ground and notice the foundation. Those readers, therefore, who choose, may consider this chapter as a kind of foreign digression, or parenthesis, in the work. F F CHAPTER XIII. How far the Examples of Nations who have lost their 472 EVERY government (those writers observe, who have treated on these subjects) contains within itself the efficient cause of its ruin,-a cause which is essentially connected with those very circumstances that had produced its prosperity,-the advantages attending the English government cannot therefore (according to these writers) exempt it from that latent defect which is secretly working its ruin; and M. de Montesquieu, giving his opinion both of the effect and the cause, says, that "as all human things have an end, the English constitution will lose its liberty,-will perish; and that as 473 Rome, Lacedæmon, and Carthage, perished-so England will perish when the legislative power shall have become more corrupt than the executive.” (1) Though it cannot be pretended that any human establishment can escape the fate to which we see every thing in nature is subject, nor is the author so far prejudiced by the sense he entertains of the great advantages of the English government as to reckon among (1) Sp. Laws, vol. 2, b. 11, c. 6. This chapter is supposed to have been written, not by Montesquieu, but by the Lord Chancellor York.-EDITOR. them that of eternity, it may however be observed in general, that as it differs by its structure and resources from all those with which history makes us acquainted, so it cannot be said to be liable to the same dangers. To judge of one from the other is to judge by analogy where no analogy is to be found. The writer of the above opinion having neglected, (as indeed all systematic writers upon politics have done), to inquire attentively into the real foundations of power and of government among mankind, the principles he lays down are not always so clear, or even so just, as we might have expected from a man of so 474 acute a genius. When he speaks of England, for instance, his observations are much too general: and though he had frequent opportunities of conversing with men who had been personally concerned in the public affairs of this country, and he had been himself an eye-witness of the operations of the English government, yet, when he attempts to describe it, he rather tells us what he conjectured than what he saw. The examples he quotes, and the causes of dissolution which he assigns, particularly confirm this observation. The government of Rome,-to speak of the one which, having gradually, and as it were of itself, fallen to ruin, may afford matter for exact reasoning,— had no relation to that of England. The Roman people were not, in the latter ages of the Commonwealth, a people of citizens, but of conquerors. Rome was not a state, but the head of a state. By the immensity of its conquests, it came in time to be in a manner only an accessory part of its own empire. Its power became so great, that, after having conferred it, it was at length no longer able to resume it: and from that moment it |