[Sidenote: England from 1630 to 1730, and France from 1780 to 1880.] [Sidenote: Sovereignty of the French National Assembly.] [Sidenote: Sovereignty of the House of Commons.] English critics usually take France during her revolutionary period and compare her with England at another stage when she has got through her revolutionary and is in her reforming period. A more just comparison would be to take England between 1630 and 1730, and France between 1780 and 1880. There are so many points of resemblance between the two that history has almost repeated itself. Our ancestors decapitated a king and the French decapitated theirs; the difference being that the axe was used in one case, and a more ingenious mechanical contrivance in the other. After the execution of Charles I., the English were not yet ripe for liberty, so they fell under the dictatorship of a soldier; the French did exactly the same. When the English were not disposed to endure the Stuarts any longer, they sent them across the Channel. When the French were not disposed to endure the Bourbons any longer, they sent them across the Channel. The constant tendency in both countries has been to increase the power of the representative chamber and diminish that of the nominal head of the State, with this final result: that in France the National Assembly (the two chambers meeting as one) is declared to be sovereign, and in England the Marquis of Hartington has openly attributed sovereignty to the House of Commons, quoting Professor Dicey in reply to an old-fashioned member who stood aghast at what seemed to him an almost treasonable employment of the word.[23] [Sidenote: Difference between France and England in the Intermediate Stage.] [Sidenote: The English Aristocratic Republic.] [Sidenote: Value of Shelter in Times of Change.] [Sidenote: The French dwelt in Tents.]