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OF POLITICAL THEORIES.be found elsewhere, and it needed only a confluence of fortunate events to give it life,and breathe sentiments of freedom into the people.This the Reformation effected. Not only byit was thereligion of the land altered, but its political greatness,underthe reign and guidance of Elizabeth, securely founded. Bythis greatness 1 the spiritof the people became awakened ;but as it did not proceed immediately from the constitution,it was necessary that the latter should receive a shock, nay,for a time, a total overthrow, before it could be fully appreciated, and by being restored, and at the same time indissolublyconnected with religion, could be looked upto as thepalladiumof British freedom.The history of the troubles which produced the civil war,which overturned the throne, and which terminated with therestoration, are sufficiently known, and require barely to bealluded to. The only questionin connexion with which theyhave any interest here, refers to the probable causes of theirhaving been more favourable to the development of politicalspeculation than the disturbances of any other country, andthat in such a degree as to have produced and matured someof its noblest fruits.The obvious reason of this, in my opinion, is, that thetroubles and wars in England were not brought about, as inother countries, merely by practical grievances,but thatthey depended \from the first, upon theoretical points of dispute, which necessarily led to more extended inquiries.Thus, when the Stuarts mounted the British throne, (1603,)they brought with them a maxim which was preserved andpassed from father to son as an heirloom, and James which_Iwas imprudent enoughto assert upon every occasion, evenin open parliament, viz. " That the kingly power emanatedfor God that it was therefore absolute, or if not actuallyso, that it ought of rightto be so that what were termedthe " rights" of the people and the parliament, were not properly so called but? merely grants and privileges,which hadbeen allowed to them by the crown, and which the crownmight therefore resume as easilyas it had bestowed them."These principles, however, were in direct to theoppositionideas which the Reformation had rendered current, and1See the treatise On the Pdi&aloftfo ^/ormMwn.