tendency of progress, the House of Commons was continually travelling,--not, I repeat, through any encroaching spirit as the Court and that House of Commons itself partially fancied,--were not yet developed: false laws of men, _i.e._, laws framed under theories misunderstood of rights and constitutional powers, having as much distorted the true natural play of the organic manifestation and tendency towards a whole, as ever a dress too tight, or a flower-pot too narrow, impeded the development of child or plant. Queen Elizabeth, therefore, always viewed the House of Commons as a disturber of the public peace, as a mutineer and insurrectionist, when any special accident threw it upon its natural function; she spoke of State affairs, and especially of foreign affairs, as beyond their '_capacity_,' which expression, however, must in charity be interpreted philosophically as meaning the range of comprehension consistent with their _total_ means of instruction and preparation, including, therefore, secret information, knowledge of disposable home resources as known to the official depositaries of State secrets, etc., and not, as the modern reader will understand it, simply and exclusively the intellectual power of appreciation. Since, with all her disposition to exalt the qualities of princely persons, she could not be so absurdly haughty as to claim for princes and the counsellors whom interest or birth had suggested to them a precedency in pure natural endowments. Charles was a sincere believer but not an earnest believer of the Roman Catholic faith. James was both sincere and preternaturally earnest. _The Reformation._--This seems to show two things: 1st, that a deep searching and 'sagacious-from-afar' spirit of morality can mould itself under the prompting of Christianity, such as could not have grown up under Paganism. For it was the abominations in point of morality (_en fait de moralite?_)--indulgences, the confessional, absolution, the prevalence of a mere ritual--the usurpation of forms--these it was which Rome treated violently; and if she draw in her horns for the present, still upon any occasion offering, upon the cloud of peril passing away, clearly she would renew her conduct. It was a tendency violently and inevitably belonging to the Roman polity combined with the Roman interest, unless, perhaps, as permanently controlled by a counter-force. 2ndly, the synthesis of this curative force is by apposition of parts separately hardly conscious of the danger or even of their own act. For we cannot suppose the vast body of opposition put forward was so under direct conscious appreciation of the evil and by an adequate counter-action--doubtless it was by sympathy with others having better information. These last burned more vividly as the evil was fiercer. That more vivid sympathy drew increase of supporters.