dictated by a consciousness of wanting an armed force or money to support it, as well as by some uncertainty as to the public spirit, in respect at least of religion. But a government that directs its chief attention to prevent offences against itself, is in its very nature incompatible with that absence of restraint, that immunity from suspicion, in which civil liberty, as a tangible possession, may be said to consist. It appears probable, that Elizabeth's administration carried too far, even as a matter of policy, this precautionary system upon which they founded the penal code against popery; and we may surely point to a contrast very advantageous to our modern constitution, in the lenient treatment which the Jacobite faction experienced from the princes of the house of Hanover. She reigned however in a period of real difficulty and danger. At such seasons, few ministers will abstain from arbitrary actions, except those who are not strong enough to practise them. _Disposition of the House of Commons._--I have traced, in another work, the acquisition by the House of Commons of a practical right to enquire into and advise upon the public administration of affairs, during the reigns of Edward III., Richard II., and the princes of the line of Lancaster. This energy of parliament was quelled by the civil wars of the fifteenth century; and, whatever may have passed in debates within its walls that have not been preserved, did not often display itself in any overt act under the first Tudors. To grant subsidies which could not be raised by any other course, to propose statutes which were not binding without their consent, to consider of public grievances, and procure their redress, either by law or petition to the Crown, were their acknowledged constitutional privileges, which no sovereign or minister ever pretended to deny. For this end liberty of speech and free access to the royal person were claimed by the speaker as customary privileges (though not quite, in his modern language, as undoubted rights), at the commencement of every parliament. But the House of Commons in Elizabeth's reign contained men of a bold and steady patriotism, well read in the laws and records of old time, sensible to the dangers of their country and abuses of government, and conscious that it was their privilege and their duty to watch over the common weal. This led to several conflicts between the crown and parliament; wherein, if the former often asserted the victory, the latter sometimes kept the field, and was left on the whole a gainer at the close of the campaign.