over various counties from Cumberland to Sussex.

It seems, therefore, clear that our princes were, by the law of
the land, competent to do what they would with their hereditary
estates. It is perfectly true that the law was defective, and
that the profusion with which mansions, abbeys, chaces, warrens,
beds of ore, whole streets, whole market towns, had been bestowed
on courtiers was greatly to be lamented. Nothing could have been
more proper than to pass a prospective statute tying up in strict
entail the little which still remained of the Crown property. But
to annul by a retrospective statute patents, which in Westminster
Hall were held to be legally valid, would have been simply
robbery. Such robbery must necessarily have made all property
insecure; and a statesman must be short-sighted indeed who
imagines that what makes property insecure can really make
society prosperous.

But it is vain to expect that men who are inflamed by anger, who
are suffering distress, and who fancy that it is in their power
to obtain immediate relief from their distresses at the expense
of those who have excited their anger, will reason as calmly as
the historian who, biassed neither by interest nor passion,
reviews the events of a past age. The public burdens were heavy.
To whatever extent the grants of royal domains were revoked,
those burdens would be lightened. Some of the recent grants had
undoubtedly been profuse. Some of the living grantees were
unpopular. A cry was raised which soon became formidably loud.
All the Tories, all the malecontent Whigs, and multitudes who,
without being either Tories or malecontent Whigs, disliked taxes
and disliked Dutchmen, called for a resumption of all the Crown