While they
protected the people, and thereby encouraged the practice of commercial and
lucrative arts, they paved the way for despotism in the state; and with the
same policy by which they relieved the subject from many oppressions, they
increased the powers of the crown.
But where the people had, by the constitution, a representative in the
government, and a head, under which they could avail themselves of the
wealth they acquired, and of the sense of their personal importance, this
policy turned against the crown; it formed a new power to restrain the
prerogative, to establish the government of law, and to exhibit a spectacle
new in the history of mankind; monarchy mixed with republic, and extensive
territory governed, during some ages, without military force.
Such were the steps by which the nations of Europe have arrived at their
present establishments: in some instances they have come to the possession
of legal constitutions; in others, to the exercise of a mitigated
despotism; or they continue to struggle with the tendency which they
severally have to these different extremes.
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