cord a great schism was latent; and when,
in October, 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two
hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different
names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the
direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During
some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They
were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these
appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.

It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or panegyric on either
of these renowned factions. For no man not utterly destitute of judgment
and candor will deny that there are many deep stains on the fame of the
party to which he belongs, or that the party to which he is opposed may
justly boast of many illustrious names, of many heroic actions, and of
many great services rendered to the state. The truth is that, though
both parties have often seriously erred, England could have spared
neither. If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the advantages
arising from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription,
have been combined to an extent elsewhere unknown, we may attribute this
happy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and alternate victories
of two rival confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous for
authority and antiquity, and a confederacy zealous for liberty and
progress.

It ought to be remembered that the difference between the two great
sections of English politicians has always been a difference rather of
degree than of principle. There were certain limits on the right and on
the left, which were very rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one
side were ready to lay all our laws and franchises at the feet of
our Kings. A few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing,
through endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic.
But the great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse
to despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular rights
were averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century,
the two parties suspended their dissensions, and united their strength
in a common cause. Their first coalition restored hereditary monarchy.
Their second coalition rescued constitutional freedom.

It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been the whole
nation, nay, that they have never, taken together, made up a m