the common weal; whatever should overthrow it, would in sure and immediate consequence bring down the goodly fabric of the Constitution, whereof it is a constituent and necessary part. If the friends of the Constitution understand this as clearly as its enemies, and act upon it as consistently and as actively, then will the Church and State be safe, and with them the liberty and the prosperity of our country."

Charles I. succeeded to a war, conducted as feebly as it had been rashly undertaken, and to an exhausted treasury. The House of Commons refused supplies for a contest, which had unquestionably been of their own seeking, and thus, at the commencement of his reign, the King unexpectedly found himself at variance with his Parliament. A crisis had arrived at which it might have been possible, had there been prudence on both sides, to have defined and balanced the Constitution without a struggle. The political reform, really needful, might have been effected with less difficulty than had attended our religious reformation, because there was less evil to be corrected. But the men by whom popular opinion was directed, aimed at more than the correction of real grievances, and the throne was surrounded by councillors, of whom some were weak, and others treacherous, whilst Charles distrusted no one so much as himself. To this infirmity of purpose it was owing, that he did not make himself an absolute King, after it was rendered impossible for him to govern as a constitutional one. The experiment of ruling without a parliament, and raising by his own prerogative the necessary revenues, which the Commons persisted in withholding, might have succeeded, and the liberties of England might have then been lost, had not a stronger, or at least a more active principle than the abstract love of liberty been opposed to the success of Charles.

In every European state there exist two grand and master principles of essential being, which, not sometimes or often, but ever and always are silently and irresistibly operating every change that ameliorates, every struggle that convulses the frame of human society. These are the principle of permanency, and the principle of progres

sion. These two distinct and opposite tendencies have each their visible exponents and representatives, as distinct and peculiar. In a sound, and wholesome, and not unduly excited state of society, the principle of permanency is embodied, and, as it were, personified, in the aristocratic classes generallythe noblesse, the clergy, and the gentry, resident upon, and drawing their resources from landed property. In all these there is, for the most part, an instinctive repugnance to innovation-a prudent fear of theoretic experiments -a comparative indifference to political rights, till the private and the personal are thought to be in jeopardy.

Progression, on the other hand, animates and impels the mercantile, the manufacturing, and the merely literary classes. In some of these the pride of wealth, acquired by the individual's own exertion, the levelling spirit of barter, and in some, perhaps, the irritation of feeling produced by a consciousness of inferiority in position in the social scale, to those to whom they deem themselves intellectually superior; and in some, it may be, the ardent imaginations of youth, or the theoretical reasonings of learning, operate still more actively, and therefore more powerfully towards innovation and change.

Hence, it may be justly, as well as charitably, concluded, that upon the two principles coming to an actual struggle between themselves, great and wise and good men will often be found ranged on opposite sides, equally honest and equally sincere in their intentions for their country's weal. Thus much, at least, may well be borne in mind, when endeavouring to form a just conception of the motives and the relations of the parties opposed to each other in the civil wars of 1641; and still more this should be had in lasting remembrance, as fatally evinced alike in the English great rebellion, and the first French revolution, that the efforts which are primarily directed to the redress of real grievances, are afterwards too surely turned to the worst purposes of democratic tyranny. A parliament which originally offered little more than a legitimate resistance to oppression, proceeded, after the accomplishment of all it ought to have effected, to such intolerable lengths in its subsequent acts and requirements, as to drive from its councils into the ranks of the royalists,

many of the most distinguished speakers and movers in laying open the original grievances of the nation, and demanding reform and redress of the King.

Radical reformers, whether they breathe the air of England or of France, whether they rejoice in the denomination of rooters, or roundheads, or of sansculottes, are an insatiate people. Like the daughters of the horse-leech, their cry is ever "give, give," and their joy is not full till they are gorged with blood. Which of their just demands was not granted by Charles? Which even of their cruel and unreasonable requisitions was not conceded, so as it were not utterly inconsistent with all law and order? Had they not sent Laud to the tower and Stafford to the Block? They had destroyed the Courts of the High Commission and the StarChamber. They had reversed the proceedings, confirmed by the voices of the King's Judges, in the matter of ship-money. They had taken from the King his ancient and undoubted privilege touching the order of knighthood. They had provided that after their dissolution, triennial parliaments should be holden, and that their own power should continue till in the condescension of their wisdom they should be pleased to lay it down of themselves. What more could they desire? But it was not enough that they had taken from their King all his oppressive powers, and many that were most salutary-it was not enough that they had filled his council board with his enemies and his prisons with his adherents-it was not enough that they had raised a furious rabble to shout and swagger under the doors and windows of his royal palace-it was not enough that, complaining of intolerance themselves, they had denied all toleration to others —that they had urged against forms, scruples more childish than those of any formalist-that they had persecuted the least remnant of the Popish rites, with more than the bitterness of the Popish spirit. But besides all this, they must needs have the command of the King's army, and full power to massacre all they deemed his friends, and therefore their own foes.

The power of the sword is not one fit to be possessed by the commons, nor was that sword which they then drew, in defiance of the prerogative of the King, wielded for their advantage, or sheathed again at their command. Then, as since, civil anarchy soon paved the way to military despotism. "Some devils," says the allegory," are easily raised, but never to be laid," so that if the unlucky magician calls them up, he will be forced to find them in constant employment, for though they are bound to obey his behests while he has work for them to do, yet if he leave them for one moment unoccupied by mischief of his own brewing, they turn their destructive claws upon himself.

Such a foul fiend is a mob, or a modern political union. They who evoke it, who avail themselves of its power to work their own selfish or wicked ends, cannot dismiss it when the deed is done. They are at once its masters and its slaves. Let them not fail to find for it task after task of rapine and destruction. They dare not leave it for a moment in repose, lest it turn and rend them in pieces.

But time and space fail us to tell, at present, how with these "rude and rascal commons" even religion changed her blessed nature. How she ceased to be the parent of arts and letters, of wholesome knowledge, of peaceful innocence, and cheerful godliness. How in the place of these came sour looks and whining tones, the chattering of fools and the yells of madmen. How troopers raved from the tops of tubs against the sons of Belial, and drummers rang the changes on the hollowness of Popery with all the self-satisfied infallibility of the Pope himself.

From the time that systematic opposition to the establishment had been commenced in the commons, by a few persons, then called by an odd coincidence of nicknames," Rooters," the danger to the Church, and through it to the State, was foreseen and foretold.

God grant that in this our day the effort to avert it may be more wise and energetic, and, under his good guidance, more happy and successful.

There is no country, perhaps, which has ever exhibited a more interesting spectacle, than the Turkish Empire does at this moment. It is now nearly five centuries since an obscure people from the mountains of Asia burst into Christian Europe, and, with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, established themselves on its eastern coasts, subverted the remains of a mighty empire, which had given laws to the then known world for 2000 years, endeavoured to extinguish all the arts of civilized life as derogatory from their military character, destroyed libraries and every source of human knowledge as a matter of conscience, and finally enlarged their limits on every side, till they occupied the fairest portion of Christendom, extended their conquests into the very heart of it, and seemed designed as it were by Providence, to extirpate the Religion of the Gospel, and substitute in its place that of the Koran.

For several centuries they seemed to persevere in this object. While all the people about them were advancing in the race of improvement, adopting new lights which the ingenuity of man invented, and ameliorating their social state by the discoveries of art and science, the Turks refused to move. They rejected with disdain every thing which was not found in their koran. All necessary knowledge, they said, is contained in that book, and anything not contained in it, is worse than useless. Under this impression they fancied themselves the chosen of the earth, and the perfection of the human race; and that any change could not be an improvement, and so must be a deterioration. Even their very barbarous language they considered as a mark of their superiority, and the man who was known to have learned any

other lost his cast, and was an object of contempt and persecution to all true Mussulmans. Among the characteristics of this race was a bigotted attachment to their own residence, and a total seclusion from that of every other. A Turk not only never came to the house of a stranger, but no stranger ever came to him. He never voluntarily went abroad to see foreign countries, and if a foreigner visited his, he was not invited or encouraged, but merely tolerated, as an inferior being, who came to learn something better than he could learn at home. Even the Foreign Ambassadors, who appeared as Representatives of the Crowned Monarchs of Europe, and were, among every other people, received on terms of equality and respect, as the images of the Sovereigns they represented, were scarcely recognised by this people. An order was actually issued, that they should be washed, fed, and clothed in the Divan, before they were deemed fit to be admitted into the same place with the august Padisha, and then they were dragged as it were before him; nor did he condescend to speak to or even look at them, during the few minutes they were allowed to stand in his presence.

Whenever this hauteur and tyranny could display itself, it was strongly expressed. The subjects of other powers, allowed to reside in the Turkish dominions, were called Franks, as being amenable only to their own sovereigns, and free from the domination and exactions of the people among whom they lived; and this they enjoyed by certain concessions slowly and reluctantly made, and called capitulations; but the Christian subjects of the Porte, were liable to every oppression and degradation. They were all supposed

VOL. II.

C

to have forfeited their lives, at the taking of Constantinople, and were living by sufferance ever since. To this end an annual tribute called haratch, was imposed on them, as a capitation tax, and as soon as a man paid it, and not till then, he had a security that he would be permitted to wear his head for the current year.

Even the proud and disdainful Turk himself submitted to a tyranny greater than that which he had imposed upon others. By ancient usage not only the property but the lives of his subjects were at the absolute disposal of the Sultan, as descended from Mahomet, and he was allowed, as of inherent right, to kill fifty of his subjects every day peremptorily, and as many more as he could show cause for. This was exercised with such unsparing ferocity by some of the monarchs, that they obtained names indicative of their awful character; one was called Ilderim or Thunderbolt, as if his wrath was an instrument of Heaven; and even to this day, the common appellation in the mouth of every Turk, when he speaks of the Sultan, is Hunker, the Manslayer.

To keep up the relations in which their political situation unavoidably, though reluctantly entangled them, it was necessary to send occasionally though rarely, Ambassadors into other countries, who being men of generally more intellect than their fellows, remarked the difference between themselves and those among whom they resided, brought back with them new lights on various subjects, and were sometimes hardy enough to propose to introduce improvements at home; but most of those unfortunate persons, who thus obtained a glimmering of intelligence and endeavoured to enlighten their countrymen, fell victims to their temerity. Even Sultans themselves destroyed the halo of awe and respect which, as descendants of the Prophet, was cast round their characters, as soon as they attempted to enlighten the venerable ignorance of their subjects, and they fell victims to their innovations, with no more regard to their person than was paid to the meanest Raya. It thus happened that the Turk, who had succeeded to the place and occupied the station of the most intelligent people in the world, continued to be the most ignorant; that he who was in contact with all the lights

of modern science, remained in total darkness, and that up to the year 1826 this European people, great in power, extent, and population, actually persisted in being the same, stubborn, brutal, ignorant, prejudiced, puerile, race that crossed the Hellespont in 1363.

To this state of things, one enlightened and energetic man put a termination. The present Sultan, endued with singular sagacity to know, and unshaken intrepidity to execute, determined no longer to be bound down by the tyranny of custom, or the prejudice of ignorance, and at once undertook a reform of a nature so extensive as, perhaps, never before entered the head of a Turk. In the execution of his enlightened projects, he had to encounter all that virulence of animosity to which a predecessor, and a near relation had fallen a victim. Matters came to an issue between him and the most ignorant and prejudiced part of his subjects, till the existence of both became incompatible, and one or the other must be destroyed. The genius and destiny of the sultan prevailedthe Janissaries were extirpated-their very name like that of Eratostratus, was prohibited to be pronounced-and after one of the most bold but frightful acts of energy, that ever distinguished a monarch, Mahomet created an unanimity of assent to his plans of improvement, by killing every man who differed with him in opinion.

Having thus silenced all opposition, he began his improvement with no sparing hand.

It was at first supposed that his plans were merely military, and that his only object was to establish the Nizam Dgettid, and discipline his soldiers, on the European principle. The ortas of the Janissaries and other military had been a mere rabble; every man dressed and armed as he pleased, marched as he liked, and generallyspeaking, was subject to no controul but his own caprice. They were now formed into regular regiments, completely armed with muskets, and screwed bayonets, having pouches and cross belts; and, instead of the loose and cumbrous robes, slippers, and turbans, which, however picturesque to view, were sad impediments to military movements, officers and soldiers were tightly equipped in Wellington coats, pantaloons, and boots, and regu