y by
the strength of an aristocracy endeared to the agricultural population,
owing to that population its own powers of defence, with the wants
and grievances of that population thoroughly familiar, and willing to
satisfy the one and redress the other: in short, the great baron would
have secured and promoted liberty according to the notions of a seigneur
and a Norman, by making the king but the first nobleman of the realm.
Had the policy lasted long enough to succeed, the subsequent despotism,
which changed a limited into an absolute monarchy under the Tudors,
would have been prevented, with all the sanguinary reaction in which
the Stuarts were the sufferers. The earl's family, and his own "large
father-like heart," had ever been opposed to religious persecution; and
timely toleration to the Lollards might have prevented the long-delayed
revenge of their posterity, the Puritans. Gradually, perhaps, might
the system he represented (of the whole consequences of which he was
unconscious) have changed monarchic into aristocratic government,
resting, however, upon broad and popular institutions; but no doubt,
also, the middle, or rather the commercial class, with all the blessings
that attend their power, would have risen much more slowly than
when made as they were already, partially under Edward IV., and more
systematically under Henry VIL, the instrument for destroying feudal
aristocracy, and thereby establishing for a long and fearful interval
the arbitrary rule of the single tyrant. Warwick's dislike to the
commercial biases of Edward was, in fact, not a patrician prejudice
alone. It required no great sagacity to perceive that Edward had
designed to raise up a class that, though powerful when employed against
the barons, would long be impotent against the encroachments of the
crown; and the earl viewed that class not only as foes to his own order,
but as tools for the destruction of the ancient liberties.

Without presuming to decide which policy, upon the whole, would have
been the happier for England,--the one that based a despotism on the
middle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popular
affection,--it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of the
great towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a vast
principle was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a more
natural ally than the feudal baron; and equally clear it is to us, now,
that the true spirit of the age fought