authority.[*] It was only during the next generation that the noble
principles of liberty took root, and spreading themselves under the
shelter of Puritanical absurdities, became fashionable among the people.

It is worth remarking, that the advantage usually ascribed to absolute
monarchy, a greater regularity of police, and a more strict execution of
the laws, did not attend the former English government, though in many
respects it fell under that denomination. A demonstration of this truth
is contained in a judicious paper which is preserved by Strype,[**] and
which was written by an eminent justice of peace of Somersetshire, in
the year 1596, near the end of the queen's reign; when the authority of
that princess may be supposed to be fully corroborated by time, and her
maxims of government improved by long practice.

* It is remarkable, that in all the historical plays of
Shakspeare, where the manners and characters, and even the
transactions of the several reigns, are so exactly copied,
there is scarcely any mention of civil liberty, which some
pretended historians have imagined to be the object of all
the ancient quarrels, insurrections, and civil wars. In the
elaborate panegyric of England, contained in the tragedy of
Richard II., and the detail of its advantages, not a word of
its civil constitution, as anywise different from or
superior to that of other European kingdoms; an omission
which cannot be supposed in any English author that wrote
since the restoration, at least since the revolution.

** Annals, vol. iv. p. 290

This paper contains an account of the disorders which then prevailed in
the county of Somerset. The author says, that forty persons had there
been executed in a year for robberies, thefts, and other felonies;
thirty-five burnt in the hand, thirty-seven whipped, one hundred and
eighty-three discharged: that those who were discharged were most wicked
and desperate persons, who never could come to any good, because
they would not work, and none would take them into service: that
notwithstanding this great number of indictments, the fifth part of the
felonies committed in the county were not brought to trial; the greater
number escaped censure, either from the superior cunning of the felons,
the remissness of the magistrates, or the foolish lenity of the people:
that the rapines committed by the infinite number of wicked, wanderi