become the Founders of Families, but who on being raised to the Peerage should, as an indispensable accompaniment have, or be put in possession of, Lands proportional and the House of Commons of two classes, the one, constituting a powerful and respectable minority in number, the representatives of the Minor Barons, i. e., the landed Proprietors, free-hold or copy-hold, not sitting with the Major Barons jure proprio, nor yet included in their Estates and Dependencies; and of a majority (say two-thirds) the representatives of Cities, Towns, and Sea-Ports. The Cities and Boroughs, to whom the elective franchise is entrusted, need not be more numerous than at present-if only (alas! the one oversight of our ancestors) the franchise adhered to the thing originally meant, and not to the name (Old Sarum for instance) when the thing had ceased-if from A-C it passed to B+C, instead of remaining in A-C only because it was ci-devant A+C! These are the three proper Estates of the Realm,-change of times having dis-estated the Church or identified it with the first or second as they now exist—namely, first, the Major Barons who sit jure proprio and form a House of their own; second, the Minor Barons, who sit by representatives; and, thirdly, the Inhabitants of Towns, &c., or the commercial, manufacturing, distributive, and professional interests, who sit by their representatives in the same House with those of the Minor Barons. The two former estates form the elements of permanence in a nation, and bind the present with the past: the third is the element of Progression and Improvement, the former supplying the main nutriment of the common-weal, the latter its requisite stimulus. Call them A, E, I. Then, whenever, as will oftenest happen, the interests of A and E coincide, their combined strength will suffice

to counteract any attempted encroachment on the part of I, though I is numerically the majority in the lower House and when, as will sometimes happen, a real or supposed division of interest takes place between A and E, it is not less than a moral certainty that I will join with E to the efficient protection of E against any novelty attempted by A: and should (as in the case of Corn Laws and the like) A and E combine against I, I by its numerical majority has the power of protecting itself. To connect, therefore, this long note with the text that occasioned it— it is clear, I say, that the King is not an Estate of the Realm, but the Majesty of all three—that is, the Crown in its legislative character represents the Nation, its ancient Laws and Customs, ante-Parliamentary as well as Parliamentary, and on his solemn oath alone (violent and extra-regular means not in question) does the Commonwealth depend for the continuance of its super-Parliamentary Rights: while as the Executive Power, the Crown is the Agent and Trustee for all, chosen by the Nation, not elected by the Estates; or, more truly, appointed by Providence, as the copula of all the complex causes, the grounds and acts and results of which constitute the National History. Thus, my dear Gillman! without intending it, I have left on record for you the sum of my political religion,, or the Constitutional Creed of S. T. Coleridge.

Ibid. p. 520.

It is not to be concealed that even Hyde encouraged the attempts of Captain Titus and others to remove Cromwell by assassination.

Nor ought it to be concealed that Hyde suborned assassins against an honester man than Cromwell, the patriot Ludlow. When to this detestable

wickedness we add his hardening of Charles I. in his prelatical superstition, his being an accomplice of the King's in the three contradictory treaties with three different parties at the same time, neither of which the King intended to fulfil, and his total abandonment of the religious rights of the subjects to the fury of the Bishops after the Restoration, we must attribute the high praise bestowed on Clarendon by historians, and the general respect attached to his memory chiefly to the infamy of the rest of the Cavalier Faction canonising bad by incomparably worse.

Ibid. p. 522.

When the death of Cromwell, and the deposition of his son, enabled the active spirits to resume the business of framing Constitutions, they showed that their political sagacity had undergone no improvement. Without comprehending the distribution of powers, by which the authority of rulers is rendered at once effectual and innoxious, their crude discussions turned upon the eligibility of vesting the supreme power in one man, in a few, or in the people at large; and men seemed ready to lose their lives for theoretical governments, which were either pernicious or impracticable,

This at least cannot be said of Harrington's scheme: nor should it be forgotten, that Cromwell's Scheme of Representation, eulogised by Clarendon himself, and which would have more than superseded the Revolution, owed its failure not to the ambition of Cromwell, but the narrow prejudices and persecuting bigotry of the Presbyterians, who furthermore brought back the perjured popish Brotheller without conditions, and met their due reward. ·

Ibid. pp. 538-9,

It would have been fortunate for the memory of Clarendon, if the same good sense and benevolence which guided his civil policy had governed his religious opinions. But in these prejudice triumphed over his better judgment; and we find him breathing sentiments, which, in a darker age, would have led him to promote the most cruel persecution. From his early youth he had imbibed the maxim of No Bishop, no King, as an infallible truth; and had conscientiously instilled into the mind of his sovereign the doctrine that Episcopacy is the only form of Church Government compatible with Monarchy.

It is sad to think, how dangerous a poison the tone and general spirit of our modern historians instil into the public mind, and (still worse) into the souls of the young men, whose talents, rank, or connections destine them to a public life: a poison, slow indeed and lurking, and thereforethe fittest to undermine the moral constitution. What an effect must not [be produced by] the mere attachment of the honours of virtue to wicked statesmen only because they were much less wicked than others! "Conscientiously!" What? was

Hyde a poor simple recluse? must not the knowledge, that this tenet was despised as absurd, and detested as base and ruinous by Falkland, Southampton, and a majority of the great and good men who lived and died for the monarchy, have at least so far influenced an honest mind as to prevent him from persecuting with remorseless cruelty thousands, nay, myriads, of men whose only charge was that of holding the same opinion respecting the prelates (for the quarrel was not concerning Episcopacy, such as Archbishop Usher supported, but Prelacy), as Falkland? If a conscience sered by party-passions, and the assumption of infallibility, is to be the sufficient

reason for calling actions conscientious, for Heaven's sake, say not an unkind word against the Massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day, or the horrors of Bonner and Gardner!

The plausibility of the sophism, No Bishop, no King! rests wholly on the circumstance, that there is some truth in the converse, viz.: No King, no Prelate.

NOTES WRITTEN IN THE "LAW MAGAZINE,” FOR JANUARY AND APRIL, 1830. VOL. III.

Life of Lord Hardwicke. P. 97.

In framing his judgments, Lord Hardwicke appears always to have been anxious to bring the case within the scope of some broad general principle. This, however, he never effected by means of forced interpretations or fanciful analogies.

I am too well aware of my incompetence to set any value on my own opinion; but in reading, some years back, Atkyn's and Vesey's Reports (23 Vol.) and afterwards, Sir James Burrows, and (while I was at Malta) Robinson's Admiralty Reports, I was exceedingly impressed with the measureless superiority of Lords Hardwicke and Mansfield and of Sir W. Scott to Lord Eldon, on the score of solid and comprehensive principle.

Ibid. p. 102.

It is to no purpose to argue that none but weak and plastic minds suffer themselves to be influenced by habit.

Better thus-none but soft and fictile minds yield