nd to conduct them, imputed all errors to the person who had
the misfortune to be intrusted with the reins of empire.

But though such mistakes are natural and almost unavoidable while the
events are recent, it is a shameful delusion in modern historians,
to imagine that all the ancient princes who were unfortunate in
their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct; and that the
seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their
privileges by the monarch. Even a great and a good king was not in that
age secure against faction and rebellion, as appears in the case of
Henry II.; but a great king had the best chance, as we learn from the
history of the same period, for quelling and subduing them. Compare
the reigns and characters of Edward I. and II. The father made several
violent attempts against the liberties of the people: his barons opposed
him: he was obliged, at least found it prudent, to submit: but as they
dreaded his valor and abilities, they were content with reasonable
satisfaction, and pushed no farther their advantages against him. The
facility and weakness of the son, not his violence, threw every thing
into confusion: the laws and government were overturned: an attempt
to reinstate them was an unpardonable crime: and no atonement but the
deposition and tragical death of the king himself could give those
barons contentment. It is easy to see, that a constitution which
depended so much on the personal character of the prince, must
necessarily, in many of its parts, be a government of will, not of laws.
But always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders
upon the sovereign would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve
as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion: as if the turbulence
of the great, and madness of the people, were not, equally with the
tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less
carefully to be guarded against in every well-regulated constitution.

While these abominable scenes passed in England, the theatre of France
was stained with a wickedness equally barbarous, and still more public
and deliberate. The order of knights templars had arisen during the
first fervor of the crusades; and uniting the two qualities the most
popular in that age, devotion and valor, and exercising both in the most
popular of all enterprises, the defence of the Holy Land, they had made
rapid advances in credit and authority, and had acquired,