t, are the makers of the law; and
therefore that the nation, which is the source of its own organic
institutions, should be charged with the perpetual custody of their
integrity, and with the duty of bringing the form into harmony with the
spirit, was made, by the singular co-operation of the purest
Conservative intellect with red-handed revolution, of Niebuhr with
Mazzini, to yield the idea of nationality, which, far more than the idea
of liberty, has governed the movement of the present age.

I do not like to conclude without inviting attention to the impressive
fact that so much of the hard fighting, the thinking, the enduring that
has contributed to the deliverance of man from the power of man, has
been the work of our countrymen, and of their descendants in other
lands. We have had to contend, as much as any people, against monarchs
of strong will and of resources secured by their foreign possession,
against men of rare capacity, against whole dynasties of born tyrants.
And yet that proud prerogative stands out on the background of our
history. Within a generation of the Conquest, the Normans were compelled
to recognise, in some grudging measure, the claims of the English
people. When the struggle between Church and State extended to England,
our Churchmen learned to associate themselves with the popular cause;
and, with few exceptions, neither the hierarchical spirit of the foreign
divines, nor the monarchical bias peculiar to the French, characterised
the writers of the English school. The Civil Law, transmitted from the
degenerate Empire to be the common prop of absolute power, was excluded
from England. The Canon Law was restrained, and this country never
admitted the Inquisition, nor fully accepted the use of torture which
invested Continental royalty with so many terrors. At the end of the
Middle Ages foreign writers acknowledged our superiority, and pointed to
these causes. After that, our gentry maintained the means of local
self-government such as no other country possessed. Divisions in
religion forced toleration. The confusion of the common law taught the
people that their best safeguard was the independence and the integrity
of the judges.

All these explanations lie on the surface, and are as visible as the
protecting ocean; but they can only be successive effects of a constant
cause which must lie in the same native qualities of perseverance,
moderation, individuality, and the manly sense of duty, wh