the obstinacy of an arbitrary government." "If the French
nobles," says the first, "had refused to sit with the Third
Estate, they would never have been driven from their country."
"They would never have been driven from their country," answers
the other, "if they had agreed to the reforms proposed by M.
Turgot." These controversies can never be brought to any
decisive test, or to any satisfactory conclusion. But, as I
believe that history, when we look at it in small fragments,
proves anything, or nothing, so I believe that it is full of
useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it in large
portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole lifetime of
great societies. I believe that it is possible to obtain some
insight into the law which regulates the growth of communities,
and some knowledge of the effects which that growth produces.
They history of England, in particular, is the history of a
government constantly giving way, sometimes peaceably, sometimes
after a violent struggle, but constantly giving way before a
nation which has been constantly advancing. The forest laws, the
laws of villenage, the oppressive power of the Roman Catholic
Church, the power, scarcely less oppressive, which, during some
time after the Reformation, was exercised by the Protestant
Establishment, the prerogatives of the Crown, the censorship of
the Press, successively yielded. The abuses of the
representative system are now yielding to the same irresistible
force. It was impossible for the Stuarts, and it would have been
impossible for them if they had possessed all the energy of
Richelieu, and all the craft of Mazarin, to govern England as
England had been governed by the Tudors. It was impossible for
the princes of the House of Hanover to govern England as England
had been governed by the Stuarts. And so it is impossible that