The nation was unanimous in the dread of a marriage between their Queen and Philip. They feared that England might then sink into a Spanish dependency, and have to endure the horrors inflicted on the Low Countries. They wished to keep their country isolated and not entangled in the wars of the continent. They therefore desired that their Queens should marry with the English Nobility (_Froude_ vi, 92), who were then as they are now, every way superior in family fortune, the eminent qualifications of mind or body—above all in social and political importance, to any rank or class of men in the world, many of the great Houses of the Aristocracy being allied to our Plantagenet kings, the greatest heroes, legislators, and rulers that ever governed men. It is true that Protestantism, the right of private judgment, is favourable to Civil Liberty, as was evident in the struggle of our Puritan Fathers with the Stuarts. But the principles of the English Constitution were laid before Protestantism had a being or a name. Who were the men that wrung from the tyrant John the GREAT CHARTER at Runnemede, and many another after it, and maintained them in defiance of all the thunders of Rome?—Who passed the Statutes of Premunire, of Provisors, of Mortmain, and all the other Acts for restraining the illegitimate authority of the Pope and the Clergy, and defending their estates and country against both Regal and Ecclesiastical Despotism? The Catholic Nobility of England, who knew well how to distinguish between their Creed and their Civil Polity, between their duty to their Church and their duty to their Country, to themselves—to Posterity! And so long as that Posterity are worthy of the great inheritance they have bequeathed to them, so long as Englishmen shall be capable of appreciating Civil Liberty and the value of their Constitution, the founders of that Constitution shall receive their just reward, IMMORTAL GLORY! Where is that Constitution now? Let the Protestant Parliaments that have legislated during late years, and regardless of our ANCIENT CONSTITUTION, have delivered over Englishmen to be TAXED by boards, without the consent of Parliament, and to be fined! imprisoned! degraded! ruined! in their persons, characters, and fortunes, by arbitrary Magistrates, Councils, and Officials, without TRIAL BY JURY, and who but for the timely protest and warning of the Judges, would have ABOLISHED that great BULWARK of CIVIL LIBERTY altogether. Let them answer! Let the great THAUMATURGISTS who pulled the strings of these parliamentary puppets, and before whom they danced, answer! England may some day awake from her torpor, to examine that legislation, and to ask the QUESTION—WHERE?—Then—What then?