mities reigned in the highest degree," or, according to Harrington, "where there was no love, but that of the lusty god of gallantry, Asmodeus."

Elizabeth firmly believed, and zealously upheld, the principles of government established by her father; the exercise of absolute authority by the sovereign, and the duty of passive obedience in the subject. The doctrine, with which the lord keeper Bacon opened her first parliament, was indefatigably inculcated by all his successors during her reign, that if the queen consulted the two houses, it was through choice, not through necessity, to the end that her laws might be more satisfactory to her people, not that they might derive any force from their assent. She possessed by her prerogative whatever was requisite for the government of the realm. She could, at her pleasure, suspend the operation of existing statutes, or issue proclamations which should have the force of law. In her opinion the chief use of parliaments was to vote money, to regulate the minutiae of trade, and to legislate for individual and local interests. To the lower house she granted, indeed, freedom of debate; but it was to be a decent freedom, the liberty of "saying ay or no ;" and those who transgressed that decency were liable, as we have repeatedly seen, to feel the weight of the royal displeasure.

A foreigner, who had been ambassador in England, informs us, that under Elizabeth the administration of justice was more corrupt than under her predecessors. We have not the means of instituting the comparison. But we know that

in her first year the policy of Cecil substituted men of inferior rank in the place of the former magistrates; that numerous complaints were heard of their tyranny, peculation, and rapacity; and that a justice of peace was defined in parliament to be an animal, who, for half a dozen chickens, would dispense with a dozen laws: nor shall we form a very exalted notion of the integrity of the higher courts, if we recollect that the judges were removable at the royal pleasure, and that the queen herself was in the habit of receiving, and permitted her favourites and ladies to receive bribes, as the prices of her or their interference in the suits of private individuals.

Besides the judicial tribunals, which remain to the present day, there were in the age of Elizabeth several other courts, the arbitrary constitution of which was incompatible with the liberties of the subject; the court of high commission, for the cognizance of religious offences; the court of star chamber, which inflicted the severest punishments for that comprehensive and undefinable transgression, contempt of the royal authority; and the courts martial, for which the queen, from her hasty and imperious temper, manifested a strong predilection. Whatever could be supposed to have the remotest tendency to sedition was held to subject the offender to martial law; the murder of a naval or military officer, the importation of disloyal or traitorous books, or the resort to one place of several persons who possessed not the means of subsistence. Thus, in 1595, under the pretence that the vagabonds in London were not to be restrained by the usual

punishments, she ordered Sir Thomas Wyllford to receive from the magistrates the most notorious and incorrigible of these offenders, and to execute them upon the gallows, according to the justice of martial law."

Another, and intolerable grievance, was the discretionary power assumed by the queen, of gratifying her caprice or resentment by the restraint or imprisonment of those who had given her offence. Such persons were ordered to present themselves daily before the council till they should receive further notice, or to confine themselves within their own doors, or were given in custody to some other person, or were thrown into a public prison. In this state they remained, according to the royal pleasure, for weeks, or months, or years, till they could obtain their liberty by their submission, or through the intercession of their friends, or with the payment of a valuable composition.

The queen was not sparing of the blood of her subjects. The statutes inflicting death for religious opinion have been already noticed. In addition, many new felonies and treasons were created during her reign; and the ingenuity of the judges gave to these enactments the most extensive application. In 1595 some apprentices in London conspired to release their companions, who had been condemned by the star chamber to suffer punishment for a riot: in 1597 a number of peasants in Oxfordshire assembled to break down inclosures, and restore tillage: each of these offences, as it opposed the execution of the law, was pronounced treason by the judges; and

both the apprentices in London, and the men of Oxfordshire, suffered the barbarous death of traitors.

We are told that her parsimony was a blessing to the subject, and that the pecuniary aids voted to her by parliament were few and inconsiderable, in proportion to the length of her reign. They amounted to twenty subsidies, thirty tenths, and forty fifteenths. I know not how we are to arrive at the exact value of these grants; but they certainly exceed the average of the preceding reigns; and to them must be added the fines of recusants, the profits of monopolies, and the monies raised by forced loans: of which it is observed by Naunton, that "she left more debts unpaid, taken upon credit of her privy seals, than her progenitors did take, or could have taken up, that were a hundred years before her."

The historians, who celebrate the golden days of Elizabeth, have described with a glowing pencil the happiness of the people under her sway. To them might be opposed the dismal picture of national misery, drawn by the catholic writers of the same period. But both have taken too contracted a view of the subject. Religious dissension had divided the nation into opposite parties, of almost equal numbers, the oppressors and the oppressed. Under the operation of the penal statutes, many ancient and opulent families had been ground to the dust; new families had sprung up in their place; and these, as they shared the plunder, naturally eulogised the system to which they owed their wealth and their ascendency. But their prosperity was not the prosperity of the

nation it was that of one half obtained at the expense of the other.

It is evident that neither Elizabeth nor her ministers understood the benefits of civil and religious liberty. The prerogatives which she so highly prized have long since withered away: the bloody code which she enacted against the rights of conscience has ceased to stain the pages of the statute book; and the result has proved that the abolition of despotism and intolerance adds no less to the stability of the throne, than to the happiness of the people.

LINGARD.

Both nature and fortune conspired to render Queen Elizabeth the ambition of her sex, and an ornament to crowned heads. This is not a subject for the pen of a monk, or any such cloistered writer. For such men, though keen in style, are attached to their party; and transmit things of this nature unfaithfully to posterity. Certainly this is a province for men of the first rank; or such as have sat at the helm of states, and been acquainted with the depths and secrets of civil affairs.

All ages have esteemed a female government a rarity if prosperous, a wonder; and if both long and prosperous, almost a miracle. But this lady reigned forty-four years complete; yet did not outlive her felicity. Of this felicity I purpose to say somewhat, without running into praises; for praise is the tribute of men, but felicity the gift of God.

And first, I account it a part of her felicity,