hold intercourse with the Deity,
as familiarly as they now march up the back stairs in European courts,
the world was completely under the government of superstition. This sort
of government lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted.

After these, a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of
William the Conqueror, was founded in power. Governments thus
established last as long as the power to support them lasts; but, that
they might avail themselves of every engine in their favour, they united
fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called _Divine Right_, and
which twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called
_Church and State_. The key of St. Peter and the key of the treasury
became quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude
worshipped the invention.

We have now to review the governments which arise out of society. If we
trace government to its origin, we discover that governments must have
arisen either _out_ of the people or over the people. In those which
have arisen out of the people, the individuals themselves, each in his
own personal and sovereign right, have entered into a compact with each
other to produce a government; and this is the only mode in which
governments have a right to arise.

This compact is the constitution, and a constitution is not a thing in
name only, but in fact. Wherever it cannot be produced in a visible
form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to government,
and a government is only its creature. The constitution of a country is
not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its
government.

Can, then, Mr. Burke produce the English constitution? He cannot, for no
such thing exists, nor ever did exist. The English government is one of
those which arose out of a conquest, and not out of society, and
consequently it arose over the people; and though it has been much
modified since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never
yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.

_II.--France and England Compared_

I now proceed to draw some comparisons between the French constitution
and the governmental usages in England.

The French constitution says that every man who pays a tax of sixty sous
per annum (2s. 6d., English) is an elector. What will Mr. Burke place
against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same time more
capricious, than the qualif