Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the time when Henry VIII broke the political power of Rome in England until the day when the last revolution destroyed the influence of the Jesuits in English politics, the English state lived and developed in an atmosphere charged with the thunderstorm and resonant with the note of war. War against foes within the land and without was the characteristic condition of its existence. Besides conflict with foreign powers, war and rebellion, constant in Scotland and almost chronic in Ireland, may be counted in eight reigns three completed revolutions, ten[454] armed rebellions, two great civil wars, and plots innumerable, all emanating from within the English nation alone. From beyond seas enemies schemed almost without ceasing to overturn religion or government or both as they were established at home. There is no need to wonder that the English government was a fighting machine. In this light it was regarded by all men. Where government is now looked on as a means of getting necessary business done, of ameliorating conditions of life, and directing the energy of the country to the highest pitch of efficiency, two centuries and a half ago it was anxiously watched as an engine of attack or defence of persons, property, and conscience. The first duty of government is to govern; to guard the tranquillity of the society over which it is set, to anticipate the efforts of malignants against the social security, and to punish crime, the commission of which it has been unable to prevent. This is at all times a heavy burden; but its weight is redoubled when private gives way to public crime, and the criminal turns his strength against the state itself. For acts directed against society in its corporate being are fraught with far more danger than those which touch it indirectly, however great their magnitude, not only because the consequences of the successful act in the former case are vital, but also because the restless class from which the actors are drawn commands a higher ability than that containing men to whom crime is a means to private gain, and is endowed with a reckless hardihood which springs from the certainty of detection and retribution in case of failure. In the seventeenth century this class was numerous, and the difficulties of guarding against it great. The state was always in danger, the government always battling for its own life and the safety of society, the morrow always gloomy for the success of their cause. To be for or against the government was the shibboleth which marked the peaceable man from the revolutionary. To be “counted to be a very pernicious man against the government”[455] was sufficient to weigh against the credibility of a witness before the highest tribunal of the kingdom. Therefore it was that far wider scope could then be allowed to acts of administration than ought to be allowed in peaceful