That this second conquest was unspeakably more degrading than the first had been, inasmuch as it was the conquest of a chartered, constitutional liberty, recovered and established in acts that had made the English history, recovered on battle-fields that were fresh, not in oral tradition only; inasmuch as it was effected in violation of that which made the name of Englishmen, that which made the universally recognised principle of the national life; inasmuch, too, as it was an _undivided_ conquest, the conquest of _the single will_--the will of the 'one only man'--not unchecked of commons only, unchecked by barons, unchecked by the church, unchecked by _council_ of any kind, the pure arbitrary absolute will, the pure idiosyncrasy, the crowned demon of the _lawless_, irrational will, unchained and armed with the sword of the common might, and clothed with the divinity of the common right; that _this_ was a conquest unspeakably more debasing than the conquest 'commonly so called,'--this, which left no nobility,--which clasped its collar in open day on the proudest Norman neck, and not on the Saxon only, which left only one nation of slaves and bondmen--that _this_ was a _subjugation_--that this was a government which the English nation had not before been familiar with, the men whose great life-acts were performed under it did not lack the sensibility and the judgment to perceive. A more _hopeless_ conquest than the Norman conquest had been, it might also have seemed, regarded in some of the aspects which it presented to the eye of the statesman then; for it was in the division of the former that the element of freedom stole in, it was in the parliaments of that division that the limitation of the feudal monarchy had begun. But still more fatal was the aspect of it which its effects on the national character were continually obtruding then on the observant eye,--that debasing, deteriorating, demoralising effect which such a government must needs exert on _such_ a nation, a nation of Englishmen, a nation with such memories. The Poet who writes under this government, with an appreciation of the subject quite as lively as that of any more recent historian, speaks of 'the face of men' as a 'motive'--a _motive_ power, a revolutionary force, which ought to be sufficient of itself to raise, if need be, an armed opposition to such a government, and sustain it, too, without the compulsion of an oath to reinforce it; at least, this is one of the three motives which he produces in his conspiracy as motives that ought to suffice to supply the power wanting to effect a change in such a government. 'If not _the face_ of _men_, The sufferance of our _souls, the time's abuse_,-- _If these be motives weak, break of betimes._' There is no use in attempting a change where such motives are weak. 'Break off _betimes_, And every man hence to his idle bed.'