those
manly virtues which the Greek and Roman authors, by such animating
examples, as well as pathetic expressions, recommend to us. The severe,
though popular government of Elizabeth had confined this rising spirit
within very narrow bounds; but when a new and a foreign family succeeded
to the throne, and a prince less dreaded and less beloved, symptoms
immediately appeared of a more free and independent genius in the
nation.

Happily, this prince possessed neither sufficient capacity to perceive
the alteration, nor sufficient art and vigor to check it in its early
advances. Jealous of regal, because conscious of little personal
authority, he had established within his own mind a speculative system
of absolute government, which few of his subjects, he believed, and none
but traitors and rebels, would make any scruple to admit. On whichever
side he cast his eye, every thing concurred to encourage his prejudices.
When he compared himself with the other hereditary sovereigns of Europe,
he imagined that, as he bore the same rank, he was entitled to equal
prerogatives; not considering the innovations lately introduced by
them, and the military force by which their authority was supported.
In England, that power, almost unlimited, which had been exercised for
above a century, especially during the late reign, he ascribed solely to
royal birth and title; not to the prudence and spirit of the monarchs,
nor to the conjunctures of the times. Even the opposition which he had
struggled with in Scotland, encouraged him still further in his favorite
notions; while he there saw, that the same resistance which opposed
regal authority, violated all law and order, and made way either for the
ravages of a barbarous nobility, or for the more intolerable insolence
of seditious preachers. In his own person, therefore, he thought all
legal power to be centred, by an hereditary and a divine right: and this
opinion might have proved dangerous, if not fatal to liberty, had not
the firmness of the persuasion, and its seeming evidence, induced him to
trust solely to his right, without making the smallest provision, either
of force or politics, in order to support it.

Such were the opposite dispositions of parliament and prince at the
commencement of the Scottish line; dispositions just beginning to exist
and to appear in the parliament,[*] [46] but thoroughly established and
openly avowed on the part of the prince.

* See note TT, at th