As they would hear of neither, I then ventured to offer a Coburg for their Queen, on which there was an outburst of what, in the French Chambers, is called “Denegation.” I said that we were very well satisfied with a similar arrangement. “The very reason,” exclaimed one of the party, “why it will not suit us;” an avowal which I did not fail to turn to account. I was then questioned as to Parliamentary proceedings, currency laws, and so on, and I endeavoured to make them apprehend that in regard to the real business of Government, the liberties of England depended upon the Judges, with whom rested the interpretation of the law and who alone had the power of action; and to whom were rendered amenable the Executive and its functions, and the House of Commons, if ever it took upon itself by an act _of its own_ to infringe the liberty of the subject. That these were the two elements at war in England--the unwritten and the written law: the last was the disease, and that alone they saw or dreamed of copying. “Then,” said they, “let us have your courts and judges.” I told them they could not have the Bench without the Bar, and that neither could be transplanted like lettuces, or grafted like slips of orange-trees. They were endeavouring to begin where we had left off. That which was abuse to us, and therefore, capable of remedy, came to be to them principle. “After all,” said one of them, “look at the cloth you wear,” putting his hand on my sleeve; “we make none such. Probably you have a penknife in your pocket;--at all events, you have shaved with a razor this morning: it is far beyond anything that we can make. We owe you a great deal of money, which you have lent us out of your superfluity.” I replied that there was no connexion between individual dexterity and collective wisdom. They made the mistake of attributing our prosperity--the result of private industry--to our political institutions; and we, in like manner, attributed their disorders--the results of the political theories which they had copied from us--to their individual character. The general Cortes of Spain has been constructed theoretically, without the consent or the presence of the separate kingdoms. They are thus figuratively merged, not in one of the kingdoms more powerful than the rest, but in an abstraction which they call “constitution.” Lamentable would be the fate of humanity if follies such as these could profit or endure.