Let us understand where we are, and look about us for a little while. When King Edward III. entered London in triumph on the 14th of October, 1347, he was the foremost man in Europe, and England had reached a height of power and glory such as she had never attained before. At the battle of Creçi France had received a crushing blow, and by the loss of Calais, after an eleven months' siege, she had been reduced well-nigh to the lowest point of humiliation. David II., King of Scotland, was now lying a prisoner in the Tower of London. Louis of Bavaria had just been killed by a fall from his horse, the Imperial throne was vacant, and the electors in eager haste proclaimed that they had chosen the King of England to succeed. To their discomfiture the King of England declined the proffered crown. He "had other views." Intoxicated by the splendour of their sovereign and his martial renown, and the Success which seemed to attend him wherever he showed himself, the English people had gone mad with exultation--all except the merchant princes, the monied men, who are not often given to lose their heads. They took a much more sober view of the outlook than the populace did--they had an eye to their own interests and the interests of the trade and commerce in which they were engaged. They were very much in earnest in asserting their rights and protesting against their wrongs, and they presented their petitions to the King after the fashion of the time--petitions which must have seemed rather startling protests in the fourteenth century, betraying, as they did, some advanced opinions for which the world at large was hardly then prepared. Students of the manual, compendium, and popular handbook style of literature may possibly be hardly aware that the war of protection _versus_ free trade, and the other war concerned with the incidence of taxation upon property, real and personal, had already begun. Even my distinguished friend, Mr. Cadaverous, who never made a mistake in his life, and whose memory for facts is portentous--even Mr. Cadaverous assures me that he has never met with any mention of the above fact in all his study of history. History! What is history but the science which teaches us to see the throbbing life of the present in the throbbing life of the past?