important security which we want, they might safely dispense with
some securities to which we justly attach the highest importance.
As we cannot, without the risk of evils from which the
imagination recoils, employ physical force as a check on
misgovernment, it is evidently our wisdom to keep all the
constitutional checks on misgovernment in the highest state of
efficiency, to watch with jealousy the first beginnings of
encroachment, and never to suffer irregularities, even when
harmless in themselves, to pass unchallenged, lest they acquire
the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago such minute
vigilance might well seem unnecessary. A nation of hardy archers
and spearmen might, with small risk to its liberties, connive at
some illegal acts on the part of a prince whose general
administration was good, and whose throne was not defended by a
single company of regular soldiers.

Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared with those
elaborate constitutions of which the last seventy years have been
fruitful, the English long enjoyed a large measure of freedom and
happiness. Though, during the feeble reign of Henry the Sixth,
the state was torn, first by factions, and at length by civil
war; though Edward the Fourth was a prince of dissolute and
imperious character; though Richard the Third has generally been
represented as a monster of depravity; though the exactions of
Henry the Seventh caused great repining; it is certain that our
ancestors, under those Kings, were far better governed than the
Belgians under Philip, surnamed the Good, or the French under
that Lewis who was styled the Father of his people. Even while
the wars of the Roses were actually raging, our country appears
to have been in a happier condition than the neighbouring realms