sufferers. The earl's family, and his own "large father-like heart,"
had ever been opposed to religious persecution; and timely toleration
to the Lollards might have prevented the long-delayed revenge of their
posterity, the Puritans. Gradually, perhaps, might the system he
represented (of the whole consequences of which he was unconscious)
have changed monarchic into aristocratic government, resting, however,
upon broad and popular institutions; but no doubt, also, the middle,
or rather the commercial class, with all the blessings that attend
their power, would have risen much more slowly than when made as they
were already, partially under Edward IV., and more systematically
under Henry VIL, the instrument for destroying feudal aristocracy, and
thereby establishing for a long and fearful interval the arbitrary
rule of the single tyrant. Warwick's dislike to the commercial biases
of Edward was, in fact, not a patrician prejudice alone. It required
no great sagacity to perceive that Edward had designed to raise up a
class that, though powerful when employed against the barons, would
long be impotent against the encroachments of the crown; and the earl
viewed that class not only as foes to his own order, but as tools for
the destruction of the ancient liberties.

Without presuming to decide which policy, upon the whole, would have
been the happier for England,--the one that based a despotism on the
middle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popular
affection,--it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of the
great towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a
vast principle was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a
more natural ally than the feudal baron; and equally clear it is to
us, now, that the true spirit of the age fought for the false Edward,
and against the honest earl.