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

says,

"a deputation of the commons to the assembly of the estates; that, seeming to create a new controul on the Crown, they might in reality give greater scope and freer exercise to arbitrary will.” Letter 15.

Among other causes of the stability of the English government, are to be ranked, the unity of the executive power, the division of the legislative power, and the business of proposing laws, which is lodged in the hands of the people. These subjects are fully and ably discussed in the four first chapters of De Lolme on the English Constitution, Book II.

PAGE 6.-Peculiarity of the British Government.

How far the British government differs from republican governments, is shewn by De Lolme, chap. x. book II. In chapter XVII. is explained the total difference between the English monarchy as a monarchy, and every other monarchy with which we are acquainted; and in chapter XVIII. he shows, by the most decisive and important proofs, how far the examples of nations that have lost their liberty are applicable to England-" All the political passions of mankind, says he, if we attend to it, are satisfied and provided for in the English government; and whether we look at the monarchical, or the aristocratical, or the democratical part of it, we find all those powers already settled in it in a regular manner, which have an unavoidable tendency to arise, at one time or other, in all human societies." Page 427.