government. It was utterly impossible that, without a regular and
extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constant
efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which
the parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted was
to take their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give
or withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support
of armies, till ample securities had been provided against
despotism.

This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the
neighbouring kingdoms great military establishments were formed;
no new safeguards for public liberty were devised; and the
consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions
everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always been
feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weakness. In
Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part of Europe,
they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The
mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges
of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles
the Fifth. As vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of
Saragossa stand up against Philip the Second, for the old
constitution of Aragon. One after another, the great national
councils of the continental monarchies, councils once scarcely
less proud and powerful than those which sate at Westminster,
sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they met merely as
our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms.

In England events took a different course. This singular felicity
she owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the end of the
fifteenth century great military establishments were