subsequently had in the abolition of villenage we learn from the
unexceptionable testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest
Protestant counsellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder
asked for the last sacraments, his spiritual attendants regularly
adjured him, as he loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for
whom Christ had died. So successfully had the Church used her
formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had
enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her
own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly
treated.

There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had
been effected, our forefathers were by far the best governed
people in Europe. During three hundred years the social system
had been in a constant course of improvement. Under the first
Plantagenets there had been barons able to bid defiance to the
sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of the swine and
oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power of the baron had
been gradually reduced. The condition of the peasant had been
gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy and the working
people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural and commercial.
There was still, it may be, more inequality than is favourable to
the happiness and virtue of our species: but no man was
altogether above the restraints of law; and no man was altogether
below its protection.

That the political institutions of England were, at this early
period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by
the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration
and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the