next to impassable, and the country answers no purpose of utility or pleasure. I have often thought that most of the Governments in Europe are precisely in this situation. We have no modern instance of any country undergoing a complete, intentional, and systematical change. In most countries the changes are unintentional, without system and insensible. A form of Government which may suit a people in one century becomes totally unadapted to another. Government and people are perpetually changing, without either being aware of it, which of itself must produce confusion. Government becomes weaker and the people stronger insensibly. Consider the progress of the Government of England.
"I copied out of the oldest of the Privy Council Books the first page, which gives a more just idea of the mode of Government than a thousand histories.[1] The Feudal Government under the Tudors had already resolved itself into positive despotism. I have always wished to have time to examine into the sources and origin of Magna Charta and several laws about that time, and to compare the compass and liberal spirit of those laws with the extracts above mentioned. There is another point of which I have long wished to investigate the reason, viz.: that the Feudal Government was so universal; whether it came from any natural cause, or from some country whose history is lost in antiquity. Our Government continued a despotism administered with admirable wisdom by Queen Elizabeth, whose reign was the only example of regular Government which I can trace in our History. A democratical spirit or rather a spirit of freedom, began even then to show itself, but her resolution and sagacity knew how to keep it down without losing the affection of her subjects. See her speeches to her Army and her Parliament. At her death the two Governments of France and England were as nearly as possible the same. It is curious to observe how they came to take different courses, which I attribute to the different character of the sovereigns, at least as the
- ↑ It is not clear to what Lord Shelburne refers. The first page of the oldest of the Privy Council Books (32 Henry VIII.) does not contain any entries which can be identified with the above passage.
