Manchurian Books

A change so important and so similar to that to which of late
years public opinion has again leaned, will justify a few remarks on its
causes, before I describe its effects.
The coercive system of government, which, during the arbitrary reigns of
the Tudor family, wore the dignified aspect of prescriptive authority,
was submitted to by a people grateful to that popular house, whose
accession healed the wounds of a long protracted civil war; but when
continued by what England esteemed a race of foreign Kings, it was
stigmatized by the name of tyranny. The favours and privileges which
Henry the Seventh bestowed on the commons, and the stratagems he
employed to reduce the power of those barons who had been the makers and
unmakers of Kings, had, during the course of five reigns, created a new
order of men, whose power and influence in the commonwealth were yet
unknown to the advisers of the crown. The long internal peace of a
century and a half, added to the stimulus which commerce had received
during the reign of Elizabeth, introduced a vast influx of wealth.


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