ions were raised up under the
ablest ruler that had ever sprung from a revolution; and England,
seething with the toil of political thought, had produced at least two
writers who in many directions saw as far and as clearly as we do now.
But Cromwell's Constitution was rolled up like a scroll; Harrington and
Lilburne were laughed at for a time and forgotten, the country confessed
the failure of its striving, disavowed its aims, and flung itself with
enthusiasm, and without any effective stipulations, at the feet of a
worthless king.

If the people of England had accomplished no more than this to relieve
mankind from the pervading pressure of unlimited monarchy, they would
have done more harm than good. By the fanatical treachery with which,
violating the Parliament and the law, they contrived the death of King
Charles, by the ribaldry of the Latin pamphlet with which Milton
justified the act before the world, by persuading the world that the
Republicans were hostile alike to liberty and to authority, and did not
believe in themselves, they gave strength and reason to the current of
Royalism, which, at the Restoration, overwhelmed their work. If there
had been nothing to make up for this defect of certainty and of
constancy in politics England would have gone the way of other nations.

At that time there was some truth in the old joke which describes the
English dislike of speculation by saying that all our philosophy
consists of a short catechism in two questions: "What is mind? No
matter. What is matter? Never mind." The only accepted appeal was to
tradition. Patriots were in the habit of saying that they took their
stand upon the ancient ways, and would not have the laws of England
changed. To enforce their argument they invented a story that the
constitution had come from Troy, and that the Romans had allowed it to
subsist untouched. Such fables did not avail against Strafford; and the
oracle of precedent sometimes gave responses adverse to the popular
cause. In the sovereign question of religion, this was decisive, for the
practice of the sixteenth century, as well as of the fifteenth,
testified in favour of intolerance. By royal command, the nation had
passed four times in one generation from one faith to another, with a
facility that made a fatal impression on Laud. In a country that had
proscribed every religion in turn, and had submitted to such a variety
of penal measures against Lollard and Arian, against Aug