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tice , but as not free even in theory . That character may be said to be summed up in the comparison which the historian institutes between the government of England and that of-Turkey . The fallacy and incorrectness of this theory are most fully demonstrated by Mr . Hallarn , who has incon-J ^ rovertibl y shewn , that ,, notwithstanding all the irregular and oppressive proceedings of the Court during the reign of Elizabeth , the government differed in all essential points from a despotism , and that not even at the
worst periods of our history could the Constitution of England be compared with the absolute governments of the rest , of Europe , and much less with the lawless despotisms of the East . The grand maxims of all free governments , that the king is under the law , though seldom heard from the lips of our monarchs , has never been forgotten at any period of our history , and in the very plenitude of Elizabeth's power was openly and intrepidly argued upon in Parliament by Mr . Wentworth , the Member for Tregony . We should
be glad to hear such a position advanced at the next Divan by the honourable member for Constantinople . The reign of Elizabeth is , indeed , treated by Mr . Hallam with singular judgment . Without attempting , as Mr . Brodie has in some degree done , to deny the acts of oppression and misgovernment , of which the Crown at this period was guilty , Mr , Hallam has clearly distinguished these from the lawful exercise of the prerogative , as then , and before then , defined by the Constitution .
Mr . Hallam concludes his chapter on the Government of Elizabeth with the following observations : " There must be few of my readers who are unacquainted with the animated sketch that Hume has delineated of the English Constitution under Elizabeth . It has been partly the object of the present chapter to correct his exaggerated outline , and nothing would be more easy than to point at other mistakes into which he has fallen through prejudice , tnrough carelessness , or through want of acquaintance with law . His capital and inexcusable fault in
every thing he has written on our constitution , is , to have sought for evidence on one side onl y of the question . Thus the remonstrance by the judges against arbitrary imprisonment b y the council is infinitely more conclusive to prove that the right of personal liberty existed , than the fact of its infringement can be to prove that it did not . There is something fallacious in the negative argument which lie perpetually uses , that because we find no mention of any umbrage having been taken at certain strains of prerogative , they must have been perfectly consonant to law . For even if nothing of this could be traced , which is not so often the case as he represents it , we should remember , that even when a constant watchfulness is exercised by means of political parties and a free press , a nation is seldom alive to the transgressions of a prudent and successful government . The character which on a former occasion I have given of the English Constitution under the House of Plantagenet , may still be applied to it under the line of Tudor ,- that it was a monarchy greatly limited by law , but retaining much power that was ill calculated to promote the public good , and swerving occasionally into an irregular
course which there was no restraint strong enough to correct . It may be added , that the practical exercise of authority seems to have been less frequently violent and oppressive , and its legal limitations better understood , in the reign of Elizabeth than for some preceding ages , and that sufficient indications had become distinguishable before its close , from which it might be gathered that the seventeenth century had arisen upon a race of men in whom the spirit of those who stood against John and Edward was rekindled with a less partial and a steadier warmth . " In his History of- the Reign of James I ., the great object of Mr . Hume is to shew that the proceedings of Parliament , in attempting to curb the
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168 Review . —Hallam ' s Constitutional History of England .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1828, page 168, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2558/page/24/
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