who should do in sincerity what he had done from cowardice.

knee. For Burghley alone, a chair was set in
her presence; and there the old minister, by
birth only a plain Lincolnshire esquire, took
his ease, while the haughty heirs of the Fitz-
alans and the De Veres humbled themselves to
the dust around him. At length, having sur
vived all his early coadjutors and rivals, he
died full of years and honours. His royal

Early in the reign of Mary, Cecil was em-
ployed in a mission scarcely consistent with
the character of a zealous Protestant. He
was sent to escort the Papal legate, Cardinal
Pole, from Brussels to London. That great
hody of moderate persons, who cared more for
the quiet of the realm than for the controvert-mistress visited him on his death-bed, and
ed points which were in issue between the
churches, seem to have placed their chief
hope in the wisdom and humanity of the gen-
tle cardinal. Cecil, it is clear, cultivated the
friendship of Pole with great assiduity, and re-
ceived great advantage from his protection.

cheered him with assurances of her affection
and esteem; and his power passed, with little
diminution, to a son who inherited his abili
ties, and whose mind had been formed by his
counsels.

The life of Burghley was commensurate
with one of the most important periods in the
history of the world. It exactly measures the
time during which the house of Austria held
unrivalled superiority, and aspired to univer-
sal dominion. In the year in which Burghley
was born, Charles the Fifth obtained the impe-
rial crown. In the year in which Burghley
died, the vast designs which had for nearly a
century kept Europe in constant agitation,
were buried in the same grave with the proud
and sullen Philip.

But the best protection of Cecil, during the gloomy and disastrous reign of Mary, was that which he derived from his own prudence and from his own temper;-a prudence which could never be lulled into carelessness, a temper which could never be irritated into rashness. The Papists could find no occasion | against him. Yet he did not lose the esteem even of those sterner Protestants who had preferred exile to recantation. He attached himself to the persecuted heiress of the throne, and entitled himself to her gratitude and confidence. Yet he continued to receive marks of favour from the queen. In the House of Com-ral revolution was effected; a revolution, the mons, he put himself at the head of the party opposed to the court. Yet so guarded was his language, that even when some of those who acted with him were imprisoned by the Privy Council, he escaped with impunity.

The life of Burghley was commensurate also with the period during which a great mo

consequences of which were felt, not only in
the cabinets of princes, but at half the firesides
in Christendom. He was born when the great
religious schism was just commencing. He
lived to see the schism complete, to see a line
of demarcation, which, since his death, has
been very little altered, strongly drawn between
Protestant and Catholic Europe.

At length Mary died. Elizabeth succeeded, and Cecil rose at once to greatness. He was sworn in privy counsellor and secretary of state to the new sovereign before he left her The only event of modern times which can prison of Hatfield; and he continued to serve be properly compared with the Reformation, is her for forty years, without intermission, in the the French Revolution; or, to speak more achighest employments. His abilities were pre-curately, that great revolution of political feelcisely those which keep men long in power. ing which took place in almost every part of He belonged to the class of the Walpoles, the the civilized world during the eighteenth cenPelhams, and the Liverpools; not to that of tury, and which obtained in France its most the St. Johns, the Carterets, the Chathams, and terrible and signal triumph. Each of these the Cannings. If he had been a man of origi- memorable events may be described as a rising nal genius, and of a commanding mind, it up of human reason against a caste. The would have been scarcely possible for him to one was a struggle of the laity against the keep his power, or even his head. There was clergy for intellectual liberty; the other was a not room in one government for an Elizabeth struggle of the people against the privileged and a Richelieu. What the haughty daughter orders for political liberty. In both cases, the of Henry needed, was a moderate, cautious, spirit of innovation was at first encouraged by flexible minister, skilled in the details of busi- the class to which it was likely to be most preness, competent to advise, but not aspiring to judicial. It was under the patronage of Frecommand. And such a minister she found in derick, of Catharine, of Joseph, and of the Burghley. No arts could shake the confidence French nobles, that the philosophy which which she reposed in her old and trusty ser- afterwards threatened all the thrones and arisvant. The courtly graces of Leicester, the tocracies of Europe with destruction, first bebrilliant talents and accomplishments of Es- came formidable. The ardour with which men sex, touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of betook themselves to liberal studies at the close the woman; but no rival could deprive the of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixTreasurer of the place which he possessed in teenth century, was zealously encouraged by the favour of the queen. She sometimes chid the heads of that very church, to which liberal him sharply; but he was the man whom she studies were destined to be fatal. In both cases delighted to honour. For Burghley, she forgot when the explosion came, it came with a vio her usual parsimony both of wealth and of lence which appalled and disgusted many of dignities. For Burghley, she relaxed that se- those who had previously been distinguished vere etiquette to which she was unreasonably by the freedom of their opinions. The violence attached. Every other person to whom she of the democratic party in France made Burke addressed her speech, or on whom the glance a tory, and Alfieri a courtier; the violence of of her eagle eye fell, instantly sank on his the chiefs of the German schism made

mus a defender of abuses, and turned the author of Utopia into a persecutor. In both cases, the convulsion which had overthrown deeplyseated errors, shook all the principles on which society rests to their very foundations. The minds of men were unsettled. It seemed for a time that all order and morality were about to perish with the prejudices with which they had been long and intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed. Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe swarmed with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits, zeal soured into malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political agitation of the eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the religious agitation of the sixteenth century sprang the Anabaptists. The partisans of Robespierre robbed and murdered in the name of fraternity and equality. The followers of Cnipperdoling robbed and murdered in the name of Christian liberty. The feeling of patriotism was, in many parts of Europe, almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral boundaries. Nations made war on each other with new arms; with arms which no fortifications, however strong by nature or by art, could resist; with arms before which rivers parted like the Jordan, and ramparts fell down like the walls of Jericho. Those arms were opinions, reasons, prejudices. The great masters of fleets and armies were often reduced to confess, like Milton's warlike angel, how hard they found it

"To exclude

of their spiritual bondage was effected "by plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war' We cannot but remember, that, as in the case of the French Revolution, so also in the case of the Reformation, those who rose up against tyranny were themselves deeply tainted with the vices which tyranny engenders. We cannot but remember, that libels scarcely less scandalous than those of Herbert, mummeries scarcely less absurd than those of Clootz, and crimes scarcely less atrocious than those of Marat, disgrace the early history of Protest antism. The Reformation is an event long past. The volcano has spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgot ten. The landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once de vastated; and after having turned a garden into a desert, has again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second great eruption is not yet over. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are still hot beneath our feet. In some directions, the deluge of fire still continues to spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe that this explosion, like that which preceded it, will fertilize the soil which it has de vastated. Already, in those parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs of these times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up with a good hope for the future destinies of the human race.

Spiritual substance with corporeal bar." The history of the Reformation in England Europe was divided, as Greece had been di- is full of strange problems. The most promivided during the period concerning which Thu-nent and extraordinary phenomenon which it cydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is presents to us, is the gigantic strength of the in ordinary times, between state and state, but government contrasted with the feebleness of between two omnipresent factions, each of the religious parties. During the twelve or which was in some places dominant, and in thirteen years which followed the death of other places oppressed, but which, openly or Henry the Eighth, the religion of the state was covertly, carried on their strife in the bosom of thrice changed. Protestantism was establish. every society. No man asked whether another ed by Edward; the Catholic Church was rebelonged to the same country with himself, but stored by Mary; Protestantism was again eswhether he belonged to the same sect. Party tablished by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation spirit seemed to justify and consecrate acts seemed to depend on the personal inclinations which, in any other times, would have been of the sovereign. Nor was this all. An estab considered as the foulest of treasons. The lished church was then, as a matter of course, a French emigrant saw nothing disgraceful in persecuting church. Edward persecuted Catho bringing Austrian and Prussian hussars to lics. Mary persecuted Protestants. Elizabeth Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no persecuted Catholics again. The father of those impropriety in serving the French Directory three sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of against his own native government. So, in the persecuting both sects at once; and had sent sixteenth century, the fury of theological facto death, on the same hurdle, the heretic who tions often suspended all national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards were invited into France by the League; the English were invited into France by the Huguenots.

We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the spirit of democracy. But when we find that men zealous for the Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution as radically and essentially evil on account of those crimes and excesses, we cannot but remember, that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house

denied the real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal supremacy. There was nothing in England like that fierce and bloody opposition, which, in France, each of the religious factions in its turn offered to the government. We had neither a Coligni nor a Mayenne; neither a Moncontour nor an Ivry. No English city braved sword and famine for the reformed doctrines with the spirit of Rochelle; nor for the Catholic doctrines with the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a league. Neither sect extorted a recantation from the sovereign. Neither sect could obta

from an adverse sovereign even a toleration. The English Protestants, after several years of domination, sank down with scarcely a struggle under the tyranny of Mary. The Catholics, after having regained and abused their old ascendency, submitted patiently to the severe rule of Elizabeth. Neither Protestants nor Catholics engaged in any great and well-organized scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings, suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies, in which only a small number of desperate men engaged-such were the utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.

The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been given, is very simple, but by no means satisfactory. The power of the crown, it is said, was then at its height, and was, in fact, despotic. This solution, we own, seems to us to be no solution at all.

It has long been the fashion, a fashion introduced by Mr. Hume, to describe the English monarchy in the sixteenth century as an absolute monarchy. And such undoubtedly it appears to a superficial observer. Elizabeth, it is true, often spoke to her Parliaments in language as haughty and imperious as that which the Great Turk would use to his divan. She punished with great severity members of the House of Commons, who, in her opinion, carried the freedom of debate too far. She assumed the power of legislating by means of proclamation. She imprisoned her subjects without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was often employed, in defiance of the laws of England, for the purpose of extorting confessions from those who were shut up in her dungeons. The authority of the Star-Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission was at its highest point. Severe restraints were imposed on political and religious discussion. The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could print without a license; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny of the primate or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were displeasing to the court were cruelly mutilated ke Stubbs, or put to death, like Penry. Non formity was severely punished. The queen prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and discipline; and whoever departed from that rule, either to the right or to the left, was in danger of severe penal

ties.

Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the great body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the fierce contests of the sixteenth century, both the hostile parties spoke of the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. The great queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in Henry the Seventh's chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people.

The truth seems to be, that the government of the Tudors was, with a few occasional deviations, a popular government under the forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Louis the Fourteenth, that her Par

liaments were as obsequious as his Parlia ments, that her warrant had as much authority as his lettre-de-cachet. The extravagance with which her courtiers eulogized her personal and mental charms, went beyond the adulation of Boileau and Molière. Louis would have blushed to receive from those who composed the gorgeous circles of Marli and Versailles, the outward marks of servitude which the haughty Britoness exacted of all who approached her. But the power of Louis rested on the support of his army. The power of Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people. Those who say that her power was absolute do not sufficiently consider in what her power consisted. Her power consisted in the willing obedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her person and to her office, in their respect for the old line from which she sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed under her government. These were the means, and the only means, which she had at her command for carrying her decrees into execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing domestic treason. There was not a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in any shire in England, which could not have overpowered the handful of armed men who composed her household. If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an ambitious noble raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse only to the trainbands of her capital, and the array of her counties, to the citizens and yeomen of England, commanded by the merchants and esquires of England.

Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which Philip was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first person to whom the government thought of applying for assistance was the Lord Mayor of London. They sent to ask him what force the city would engage to furnish for the defence of the kingdom against the Spaniards. The mayor and common council, in return, desired to know what force the queen's highness desired them to furnish. The answer was-fifteen ships and five thousand men. The Londoners deli berated on the matter, and two days after "humbly entreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and thirty ships amply furnished."

People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were by no means to be misgoverned with impunity. The English in the sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free people. They had not, indeed, the outward show of freedom; but they had the reality. They had not a good constitution, but they had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the king's proclamation against vice and immorality, that which, without any constitution, keeps rulers in awe-force, and the spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held; and were not very respectfully treated. The Great Charter was often violated. But the people had a security against gross and systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment that was ever marked with the sign manual, and than all the wax that was ever pressed by the great seal.

It is a common error in politics to confound governs in conformity with certain rules esmeans with ends. Constitutions, charters, pe- tablished for the public benefit; and the sanctitions of right, declarations of right, repre- tion of those rules is, that every Afghan apsentative assemblies, electoral colleges, are not proves them, and that every Afghan is a solgood government; nor do they, even when dier. most elaborately constructed, necessarily produce good government. Laws exist in vain for those who have not the courage and the means to defend them. Electors meet in vain where want renders them the slaves of the landlord; or where superstition renders them the slaves of the priest. Representative assemblies sit in vain unless they have at their command, in the last resort, the physical power which is necessary to make their deliberations free, and their votes effectual.

The Irish are better represented in Parliament than the Scotch, who indeed are not represented at all. But are the Irish better governed than the Scotch? Surely not. This circumstance has of late been used as an argument against reform. It proves nothing against reform. It proves only this; that laws have no magical, no supernatural virtue; that laws do not act like Aladdin's lamp or Prince Ahmed's apple; that priesteraft, that ignorance, that the rage of contending factions may make good institutions useless; that intelligence, sobriety, industry, moral freedom, firm union, may supply in a great measure the defects of the worst representative system. A people whose education and habits are such, that, in every quarter of the world, they rise above the mass of those with whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the top of water; a people of such temper and self-government, that the wildest popular excesses recorded in their history partake of the gravity of judicial proceedings, and of the solemnity of religious rites; a people whose national pride and mutual attachment have passed into a proverb; a people whose high and fierce spirit, so forcibly described in the haughty motto which encircles their thistle, preserved their independence, during a struggle of centuries, from the encroachments of wealthier and more powerful neighbours, such a people cannot be long oppressed. Any government, however constituted, must respect their wishes, and tremble at their discontents. It is indeed most desirable that such a people should exercise a direct influence on the conduct of affairs, and should make their wishes known through constitutional organs. But some influence, direct or indirect, they will assuredly possess. Some organ, constitutional or unconstitutional, they will assuredly find. They will be better governed under a good constitution than under a bad constitution. But they will be better governed under the worst constitution than some other nations under the best. In any general classification of constitutions, the constitution of Scotland must be reckoned as one of the worst, perhaps as the worst in Christian EuTupe. Yet the Scotch are not ill governed. And the reason is simply that they will not bear to be ill governed.

The monarchy of England in the sixteenth century was a monarchy of this kind. It is called an absolute monarchy, because little respect was paid by the Tudors to those insti tutions which we have been accustomed to consider as the sole checks on the power of the sovereign. A modern Englishman can hardly understand how the people can have had any real security for good government under kings who levied benevolences and chid the House of Commons as they would have chid a pack of dogs. People do not sufficiently consider that, though the legal checks were feeble, the natural checks were strong. There was one great and effectual limitation on the royal authority-the knowledge that if the pa tience of the nation were severely tried, the nation would put forth its strength, and that its strength would be found irresistible. If a large body of Englishmen became thoroughly discontented, instead of presenting requisitions, holding large meetings, passing resolutions, signing petitions, forming associations and unions, they rose up; they took their halberds and their bows; and if the sovereign was not sufficiently popular to find among his subjects other halberds and other bows to oppose to the rebels, nothing remained for him but a repeti tion of the horrible scenes of Berkeley and Pomfret. He had no regular army which could by its superior arms and its superior skill overawe or vanquish the sturdy commons of his realm, abounding in the native hardihood of Englishmen, and trained in the simple discipline of the militia.

It has been said that the Tudors were as absolute as the Cæsars. Never was parallel so unfortunate. The government of the Tudors was the direct opposite to the government of Augustus and his successors. The Cæsars ruled despotically, by means of a great standing army, under the decent forms of a republi can constitution. They called themselves citizens. They mixed unceremoniously with other citizens. In theory they were only the elective magistrates of a free commonwealth. Instead of arrogating to themselves despotic power, they acknowledged obedience to the senate. They were merely the lieutenants of that venerable body. They mixed in debate. They even appeared as advocates before the courts of law. Yet they could safely indulge in the wildest freaks of cruelty and rapacity while their legions remained faithful. Our Tudors, on the other hand, under the titles and forms of monarchical supremacy, were essentially popular magistrates. They had no means of protecting themselves against the public hatred; and they were therefore compelled to court the public favour. To enjoy all the state and all the personal indulgences of absolute power, to be adored with Oriental prostrations, In some of the Oriental monarchies, in Af- to dispose at will of the liberty and even of the ghanistan, for example, though there exists | life of ministers and courtiers-this the nation nothing which a European publicist would granted to the Tudors. But the condition on all a constitution, the sovereign generally which they were suffered to be the tyrants of

Whitehall was, that they should be the mild queen found that it would be madness to atand paternal sovereigns of England. They tempt the restoration of the abbey lands. She were under the same restraints with regard to found that her subjects would never suffer her their people under which a military despot is to make her hereditary kingdom a fief of Casplaced with regard to his army. They would tile. On these points she encountered a steady have found it as dangerous to grind their sub-resistance, and was compelled to give way. If jects with cruel taxation as Nero would have found it to leave his prætorians unpaid. Those who immediately surrounded the royal person, and engaged in the hazardous game of ambition, were exposed to the most fearful dangers. Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Sudley, Somerset, Suffolk, Norfolk, Percy, Essex, perished on the scaffold. But in general the country gentleman hunted and the merchant traded in peace. Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian but far more politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the Lamia, to be the favourite with the cobblers.

The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts. But in their ordinary dealings with the people they were not, and could not safely be tyrants. Some excesses were easily pardoned. For the nation was proud of the high and fiery blood of its magnificent princes; and saw, in many proceedings which a lawyer would even then have condemned, the outbreak of the same noble spirit which so manfully hurled foul scorn at Parma and at Spain. But to this endurance there was a limit. If the government ventured to adopt measures which the great body of the people really felt to be oppressive, it was soon compelled to change its course. When Henry the Eighth attempted to raise a forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings of unusual rigour, the opposition which he encountered was such as appalled even his stubborn and imperious spirit. The people, we are told, said that if they were to be taxed thus, "then were it worse than the taxes of France, and England should be bond, and not free." The county of Suffolk rose in arms. The king prudently yielded to an opposition which, if he had persisted, woald in all probability have taken the form of a general rebellion. Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people felt themselves aggrieved by the monopolies. The queen, proud and courageous as she was, shrunk from a contest with the nation, and, with admirable sagacity, conceded all that her subjects had demanded, while it was yet in her power to concede with dignity and grace.

she was able to establish the Catholic worship and to persecute those who would not conform to it, it was evidently because the people cared far less for the Protestant religion than for the rights of property and for the independence of the English crown. In plain words, they did not think the difference between the hostile sects worth a struggle. There was undoubted. ly a zealous Protestant party and a zealous Catholic party. But both these parties were, we believe, very small. We doubt whether both together made up, at the time of Mary's death, the twentieth part of the nation. The remaining nineteen-twentieths halted between the two opinions, and were not disposed to risk a revolution in the government for the purpose of giving to either of the extreme factions an advantage over the other.

We possess no data which will enable us to compare with exactness the force of the two sects. Mr. Butler asserts that, even at the accession of James the First, a majority of the population of England were Catholics. This is pure assertion, and is not only unsupported by evidence, but, we think, completely disproved by the strongest evidence. Dr. Lingard is of opinion that the Catholics were one-half of the nation in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Richton says, that when Elizabeth came to the throne, the Catholics were two-thirds of the nation, and the Protestants only one third. The most judicious and impartial of English historians, Mr. Hallam, is, on the contrary, of opinion that two-thirds were Protestants, and only one-third Catholics. To us, we must confess, it seems altogether inconceivable that, if the Protestants were really two to one, they should have borne the government of Mary; or that, if the Catholics were really two to one, they should have borne the government of Elizabeth. It is absolutely incredible that a sovereign who has no standing army, and whose power rests solely on the loyalty of his subjects, can continue for years to persecute a religion to which the majority of his subjects are sincerely attached. In fact, the Protestants did rise up against one sister, and the Catholics against the other. Those risings clearly showed how small and feeble both the parties were. Both in the one case and in the other the nation ranged itself on the side of the government, and the insurgents were speedily put down and punished. The Kentish gentlemen who took up arms for the reformed doctrines against Mary, and the Great Northern Earls who displayed the banner of the Five Wounds against Elizabeth, were alike considered by the great body of their countrymen as wicked disturbers of the public peace.

It cannot be supposed that a people who had in their own hands the means of checking their prir.ces, would suffer any prince to impose upon them a religion generally detested. It is absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been decidedly attached to the Protestant faith, Mary could have re-established the Papal supremacy. It is equally absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been zealous for the ancient religion, Elizabeth could have restored the Protestant Church. The truth is, that the people were not disposed to engage in a struggle either for the new or for the old doctrines. Abundance The account which Cardinal Bentivoglio of spirit was shown when it seemed likely that gave of the state of religion in England well Mary would resume her father's grants of deserves consideration. The zealous Cathochurch property, or that she would sacrifice lics he reckoned at one-thirtieth part of the the interests of England to the husband whom nation. The people who would witnout the she regarded with unmerited tenderness. That least scruple become Catholics if the Catholic VOL. II.-23