and Bristol, was still the private possession of a privileged class. The
Revolution, in fact, meant less an abstract and general freedom, than a
special release from the arbitrary will of a stupid monarch who aroused
against himself every deep-seated prejudice of his generation. The
England which sent James II upon his travels may be, as Hume pointed
out, reduced to a pathetic fragment even of its electorate. The masses
were unknown and undiscovered, or, where they emerged, it was either to
protest against some wise reform like Walpole's Excise Scheme, or to
become, as in Goldsmith and Cowper and Crabbe, the object of
half-pitying poetic sentiment. How deep-rooted was the notion of
aristocratic control was to be shown when France turned into substantial
fact Rousseau's demand for freedom. The protest of Burke against its
supposed anarchy swept England like a flame; and only a courageous
handful could be found to protest against Pitt's prostitution of her
freedom.

Such an age could make but little pretence to discovery; and, indeed, it
is most largely absent from its speculation. In its political ideas this
is necessarily and especially the case. For the State is at no time an
unchanging organization; it reflects with singular exactness the
dominating ideas of its environment. That division into government and
subjects which is its main characteristic is here noteworthy for the
narrowness of the class from which the government is derived, and the
consistent inertia of those over whom it rules. There is curiously
little controversy over the seat of sovereign power. That is with most
men acknowledged to reside in the king in Parliament. What balance of
forces is necessary to its most perfect equilibrium may arouse
dissension when George III forgets the result of half a century's
evolution. Junius may have to explain in invective what Burke
magistrally demonstrated in terms of political philosophy. But the