violent reaction which had laid the Whig party
prostrate was followed by a still more violent reaction in the
opposite direction; and signs not to be mistaken indicated that
the great conflict between the prerogatives of the Crown and the
privileges of the Parliament, was about to be brought to a final
issue.
CHAPTER III.
I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a
description of the state in
which England was at the time when the crown passed from Charles
the Second to his brother. Such a description, composed from
scanty. and dispersed materials, must necessarily be very
imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions which
would make the subsequent narrative unintelligible or
uninstructive.
If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we
must be constantly on our guard against that delusion which the
well known names of families, places, and offices naturally
produce, and must never forget that the country of which we read
was a very different country from that in which we live. In every
experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In
every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own
condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when
counteracted by great public calamities and by bad institutions,
to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary misfortune, no
ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation
wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the
constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a
nation prosperous. It has often been found that profuse
expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions,
corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions,
conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy
capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been
able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in our own land,
the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been
almost uninterruptedly