gnity or softened by the
graciousness of the royal presence. Always in war, he considered his
dominions only as a resource for his armies. The demesnes of the crown
were squandered. Every office in the state was made vile by being sold.
Excessive grants, followed by violent and arbitrary resumptions, tore to
pieces the whole contexture of the government. The civil tumults which
arose in that king's absence showed that the king's lieutenants at least
might be disobeyed with impunity. Then came John to the crown. The
arbitrary taxes which he imposed very early in his reign, which,
offended even more by the improper use made of them than their
irregularity, irritated the people extremely, and joined with all the
preceding causes to make his government contemptible. Henry the Second,
during his contests with the Church, had the address to preserve the
barons in his interests. Afterwards, when the barons had joined in the
rebellion of his children, this wise prince found means to secure the
bishops and ecclesiastics. But John drew upon himself at once the hatred
of all orders of his subjects. His struggle with the Pope weakened him;
his submission to the Pope weakened him yet more. The loss of his
foreign territories, besides what he lost along with them in reputation,
made him entirely dependent upon England: whereas his predecessors made
one part of their territories subservient to the preservation of their
authority in another, where it was endangered. Add to all these causes
the personal character of the king, in which there was nothing uniform
or sincere, and which introduced the like unsteadiness into all his
government. He was indolent, yet restless, in his disposition; fond of
working by violent methods, without any vigor; boastful, but continually
betraying his fears; showing on all occasions such a desire of peace as
hindered him from ever enjoying it. Having no spirit of order, he never
looked forward,--content by any temporary expedient to extricate himself
from a present difficulty. Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious,
unquiet, he made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad king, and had
talents fit to disturb another's government, not to support his own.

A most striking contrast presents itself between the conduct and fortune
of John and his adversary Philip. Philip came to the crown when many of
the provinces of Prance, by being in the hands of too powerful vassals,
were in a manner dismembered from the ki