“A Carlo dona data sunt Offæ, _mucro_, _zona_; Cingat ut imbelles clemens, feriatque rebelles. _Pallia_ donantur velut his secreta tegantur. Tiro mucrone sed et utens munere zonæ, Indomitos punit, pronos sibi nectit et unit, Palliat arcana,--ne signent pallia vana.” [Footnote 9: Woollen gowns were at this time the chief articles of exportation from Britain. Four centuries earlier than the date under review a Gyneceum, or manufactory, existed at Winchester. V. _Gibbon, ch. 17._ V. Mabillon’s Acta S. Ben. pars 1. p. 169, quoting the Chron. Fontanellensis, c. 15.] [Footnote 10: “Aliquid enim dissentionis diabolico fomento inflammante nuper inter Carolum regem et regem Offam exortum est: ita ut utrinque navigatio interdicta negotiantibus cesset.” Leland’s Collectanea, v. 1. p. 401. V. Opera Alcuini, 1. 6. Mabillon’s Annal: L. xxv. n. 76; L. xxvi. n. 10. V. also Matth. West. 278.] A brief review of the Anglo-Saxon system of government may, perhaps, be here not inapplicably inserted, in order to convey some definite idea of Offa’s position as the sovereign of Mercia, and enable the reader to trace more satisfactorily the improvements which he was the means of introducing into Britain. The prescriptive constitution of the Anglo-Saxons was decidedly of a liberal form, and to it may be traced the majority of our own liberal institutions; but one most important difference exists between the ancient and modern constitution of Britain, in the fact of the sovereignty of the Saxon kingdoms not being positively hereditary. “A son who inherited his father’s virtues and talents,” observes the author of a popular History of Modern Europe, “was sure to succeed his sway; but if he happened to be weak or profligate, or was a minor, the next in blood, or the person of the greatest eminence in the state, generally procured an elevation to the throne.”[11] [Footnote 11: This practice, indeed, recognized in the laws of Offa alluded to in a subsequent portion of the Essay, continued so late as the Norman king, John, and the unsettled state of the doctrine of succession has been urged in extenuation of his usurpation.] The Anglo-Saxon annals afford an excellent commentary upon this system of a partially elective monarchy. Scenes of strife and bloodshed, family dissensions, party feuds, assassination, and even fratricide were not unfrequent occurrences amid this optional “setting up and pulling down of kings;” and the liberality and seeming justice of the system, that appear so seductive on a first view of the THEORY, fade before the exercise of tyranny, the right of might, and the injustice of usurpation, that evidence themselves as its prolific offspring when reduced to _practice_.