HKB
constitutional form, or of the right of the people to arrange and distribute the different powers of government, or the best mode of doing it, did not arise at all.
In England, from the time of the Conquest, until Magna Charta had gone far towards destroying the system, a feudal monarchy had precluded all questions touching the form or the spirit of government. The chief traits of the present constitution, which arose in a great measure from the circumstance that the lower orders of the nobility became gradually so much amalgamated with the people as to give rise to the distinct power of the commons, have all along been inconsistent with the enactment of new forms of civil polity; although from the time of the Reformation to the Revolution of 1688, the active principles of English freedom have, at different junctures, made advances of the utmost importance. The foundations on which the Stuarts sought to establish their throne were directly at variance with the spirit and principles of the Reformation, which totally denied the doctrine of passive and unlimited obedience, and which led to the struggles that gave birth to the Puritans. Those severe reformers, whose church constitution was purely republican, naturally sought to carry its principles into the state. The result was the Parliamentary troubles of James the First, the execution of Charles the First under the forms of judicial proceeding, and the despotism of Cromwell under the forms of a commonwealth. Charles the Second returned, untaught by all that had happened, to attempt the reëstablishment of the Stuart principles of unlimited obedience; and James the Second, who naturally united to them the Catholic religion, being driven from his kingdom, the question arose of a vacant throne, and how it should be filled. In all these events, however, from the death of Elizabeth to the great discussions which followed the abdication of James the Second, the idea of calling upon the people of England to frame a government of their own choice, and to define the limits and powers of its various departments, never arose. The Convention Parliament discussed, and were summoned to discuss, but a single fundamental question,--that involving the disposal of the crown.
Still, the political troubles of England gave rise to many theoretical discussions of natural right, and of the origin and structure of society. As soon as Charles the First was executed, this discussion arose abroad, from his friends, who wrote, or influenced others to write, in defence of the divine right of kings. Hobbes and Filmer followed, in England, on the same side, and Milton, Locke, and Algernon Sidney vindicated the natural and inalienable rights of the subject and the citizen. In the works of these great writers, the foundations of society are examined with an acuteness which has left little to be done in the merely speculative part of political inquiry. But the practical effect of their theories never went farther than the promotion, to a greater or less extent, of the particular views which they desired to inculcate concerning the existing constitution, or the particular events out of which the discussions arose.