528 EXTRACTS FROM ANSWER TO COMBE'S STATEMENT.

which do not appear in the second volume of the Variorum Edition.

PULMAN.

The book which I lent Mr. Homer before the Horace was sent to press, contained Pulmanni Annotationes in Q. Horat. Flacc.; Aldi Manuti Scholia, et de Metris Horatianis; M. Antonii Mureti Scholia; Joannis Hartungi Annotationes, published at Antwerp in 12mo, 1577; together with Jani Dousæ in novam Q. Horatii Editionem Commentariolus, published at Antwerp 1580. It is a valuable collection for any scholar to possess, and contains much information which ought to have appeared in the Variorum Edition. Mr. Homer, on returning it, told me that he had procured some of the editions in which are found the contents of my book; I see their names in Dr. Combe's Catalogue.

NOTES

ON

RAPIN'S DISSERTATION.

PAGE 4.*-Causes of the Stability of the British Government.

FOR the causes that enabled England to preserve the form of government, which other nations have lost, see chap. I. of De Lolme—"While the kingdom of France, in consequence of the slow and gradual formation of the feudal government, found itself, in the issue, composed of a number of parts simply placed by each other, and without any reciprocal adherence; the kingdom of England, on the contrary, in consequence of the sudden and violent introduction of the same system, became a compound of parts united by the strongest ties; and the regal authority, by the pressure of its immense weight, consolidated the whole into one compact indissoluble body." Chap. I. page 15.

Another cause is assigned by the same writer, "When the tyrannical laws of the Conqueror became still more tyranically executed, the Lord, the vassal, the inferior vassal, all united. They even implored the assistance of the peasants and cottagers;

*The pages refer to an edition of Rapin's Dissertation, which will be published with Dr. Parr's Notes.

and that haughty aversion with which on the continent the nobility repaid the industrious hands which fed them, was, in England, compelled to yield to the pressing necessity of setting bounds to the royal authority." Page 23.

In chapter the second he states and explains a third advantage of England, viz. because it formed one undivided state-"England was not, like France, an aggregation of a number of different sovereignties; it formed but one state, and acknowledged but one master, one general title. The same laws, the same kind of dependence, consequently the same notions, the same interests, prevailed throughout the whole. The extremities of the kingdom could, at all times, unite to give a check to the exertions of an unjust power-from the river Tweed to Portsmouth, from Yarmouth to the Land's End, was all in motion; the agitation increased from the distance like the rolling waves of an extensive sea; and the monarch, left to himself, and destitute of resources, saw himself attacked on all sides by an universal combination of his subjects." Page 26.

Bolingbroke, in his dissertation upon parties, observes that, "the defects which he had censured in the Roman constitution of government, were avoided in some of those that were established on the breaking of that empire, by the northern nations and the Goths. In letters 14 and 15 he makes some judicious remarks on the origin and decline both of the Spanish and French governments. The Parliaments in France, he affirms, never gave the people any share in the government of that kingdom." When prerogative failed, they added, he