believe that they, even from vices, erected a government among them, and a commodious and just society.' 'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation'; and let the reader note here, how the principle which has predominated historically in the English Revolution, the principle which the fine Frankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic faculty, could not strike instinctively or empirically, in its political experiments--it is well to note, how this distinctive element of the _English_ Revolution--that revolution which is still in progress, with its remedial vitalities--already speaks beforehand, from the lips of this foreign Elizabethan Revolutionist. 'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation; change only gives form to injustice and tyranny. WHEN ANY PIECE IS OUT OF ORDER IT MAY BE PROPPED, one may prevent and take care that the _decay and corruption_ NATURAL TO ALL THINGS, do not carry us too far from _our beginnings and principles_; but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do who to _make clean, efface_, who would reform particular defects by a universal confusion, and cure diseases by _death_.' Surely, one may read in good Elizabethan English passages which savor somewhat of this policy. One would say that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance, in this case. 'Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate counsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church of England, as would in effect make it _no church_, said thus to him:--'Sir, the subject we talk of is the _eye_ of England, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' [And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very much the same view of the constitution and vitality of states, about these times:-- He's a disease that must be cut away. Oh, he's a limb that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.]