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382 ON THE RISE, PROGRESS, ETC.which had more particularlyobtained with the Presbyterianand Puritanic parties ;then rapidly spreading in England,and which from the form of their religious government wereinclined to carry republican, and even democratic, principlesinto the government of the state. Elizabeth had entertainedno less exalted an idea of her power than the two firstStuarts, in fact she had exercised it with more freedom thanthey but then she had avoided what the :pedantic folly ofJames L led him to indulge in, and had not brought h&rmaxims before the public, and thus made a common talk ofmatters, which the interest ofprinces should teach them toconceal as the mysteries of their craft, the" Arcana dominationis."These principles, and the collisions between the king andthe parliament, which resulted from them, formed the trainwhich lighted up England with the flames of civil war. Theybrought Charles to the scaffold, and overturned the throne.But even when the restoration had caused a seeming tranquillity,the fire still smouldered in its ashes. The restoration was rather the work of party spirit,and of a passingchange in public opinion, effected by the experience ofanarchy and the despotism of the sword, than of calm andwell-exercised reason.The opportunity which then presented itself of amendingthe defects of the constitution passed by unemployed. AndCharles II. received the crown on the same doubtful understanding of its authority, as that on which it had been heldbyhis ancestors. Would that he had been as worthy of ileven as his unfortunate father ! As itwas, he adopted thevery principles which cost the latter his life, while he enhanced their tendency to despotism byhis own dispositionto enforce them. The attempt of his brother to introducetyranny and priestcraft, and the consequences of hisneed hardly be alluded to.folly,Every circumstance of the time the continued disturbancesthe party distinction of Whigs and Tories in whichthey ended the rapid growth of literature under Charles IL,all conspired to advance political speculations to the utmost.But as these speculations proceeded immediately from thepractical affairs of life, it was unavoidable that they shouldcarry some traces of their origin along with them. The