The Constitution of England was only one of a large family. In
all the monarchies of Western Europe, during the middle ages,
there existed restraints on the royal authority, fundamental
laws, and representative assemblies. In the fifteenth century,
the government of Castile seems to have been as free as that of
our own country. That of Arragon was beyond all question more so.
In France, the sovereign was more absolute. Yet even in France,
the States-General alone could constitutionally impose taxes;
and, at the very time when the authority of those assemblies was
beginning to languish, the Parliament of Paris received such an
accession of strength as enabled it, in some measure, to perform
the functions of a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark had
constitutions of a similar description.

Let us overleap two or three hundred years, and contemplate
Europe at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Every free
constitution, save one, had gone down. That of England had
weathered the danger, and was riding in full security. In Denmark
and Sweden, the kings had availed themselves of the disputes
which raged between the nobles and the commons, to unite all the
powers of government in their own hands. In France the
institution of the States was only mentioned by lawyers as a part
of the ancient theory of their government. It slept a deep sleep,
destined to be broken by a tremendous waking. No person
remembered the sittings of the three orders, or expected ever to
see them renewed. Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on his
parliament a patient silence of sixty years. His grandson, after
the War of the Spanish Succession, assimilated the constitution
of Arragon to that of Castile, and extinguished the last feeble