not a collision between the Lords and
the people, but between the Ministers and the Constitution.

CHAPTER III.

_The Menace to England_

IT MAY be as well to remind the English nation that a revolutionary
party is not necessarily a liberal one, and that a republic is not
indispensably a democracy. Such is the disposition of property in
England that, were a republic to be established here to-morrow, it would
partake rather of the oligarchical than of the aristocratic character.
We should be surprised to find in how few families the power of the
State was concentrated. And although the framers of the new commonwealth
would be too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible principle of
exclusion, but on the contrary would in all probability ostentatiously
inaugurate the novel constitution by virtue of some abstract plea about
as definite and as prodigal of practical effects as the rights of man or
the sovereignty of the people, nevertheless I should be astonished were
we not to find that the great mass of the nation, as far as any share in
the conduct of public affairs was concerned, was as completely shut out
from the fruition and exercise of power as under that Venetian polity
which has ever been the secret object of Whig envy and Whig admiration.
The Church, under such circumstances, would probably have again been
plundered, and therefore the discharge of ecclesiastical duties might
be spared to the nation; but the people would assuredly be practically
excluded from its services, which would swarm with the relations and
connections of the senatorial class; for, whether this country be
governed only by the House of Commons, or only by the House of Lords,
the elements of the single chamber will not materially differ; and
although in the event of the triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of
periodical election may be retained (and we should not forget that the
Long Parliament soon spared us that unnecessary form), the selected
members will form a Senate as irresponsible as any House of Parliament
whose anomalous constitution may now be the object of Whig sneers or
Radical anathemas.

The rights and liberties of a nation can only be preserved by
institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge or the march of
intellect that will be found a sufficient surety for the public
welfare in the crisis of a country's freedom. Our interest taints our
intelligence, our passions paralyse our reason. Knowledge and cap