should master new political principles, to which on the Continent there was nothing analogous?[7] This, it may be alleged, was not looked for.  Salmasius was in the hands of a party; and his prejudices, it may be thought, were confluent with theirs.  Not altogether.  The most enlightened of the English royalists were sensible of some call for a balance to the regal authority; it cannot be pretended that Hyde, Ormond, or Southampton, wished their king to be the fierce “Io el rey” (so pointedly disowning his council) of Castile, or the “L’etat?  C’est moi” of France, some few years later.  Even for a royalist, it was requisite in England to profess some popular doctrines; and thus far Salmasius fell below his clients.  But his capital disqualification lay in his defect of familiarity with the English people, habits, laws, and history.

[Footnote 7:  It may be thought, indeed, that as a resident in Holland, Salmasius should have had a glimpse of the new truth; and certainly it is singular that he did not perceive the rebound, upon his Dutch protectors, of many amongst his own virulent passages against the English; unless he fancied some special privilege for Dutch rebellion.  But in fact he did so.  There was a notion in great currency at the time—­that any state whatever was eternally pledged and committed to the original holdings of its settlement.  Whatever had been its earliest tenure, that tenure continued to be binding through all ages.  An elective kingdom had thus some indirect means for controlling its sovereign.  A republic was a nuisance, perhaps, but protected by prescription.  And in this way even France had authorized means, through old usages of courts or incorporations, for limiting the royal authority as to certain known trifles.  With respect to the Netherlands, the king of Spain had never held absolute power in those provinces.  All these were privileged cases for resistance.  But England was held to be a regal despotism.]

The English aristocracy furnished a question for drawing all these large varieties of ignorance to a focus.  In coming upon the ground of English institutions, Salmasius necessarily began “verba nostra conari,” and became the garrulous parrot that Milton represents him.  Yet, strange it is, that the capital blunder which he makes upon this subject, was not perceived by Milton.  And this reciprocal misunderstanding equally arose in the pre-occupation of their minds by the separate principles on which, for each side, were founded their separate aristocracies.  The confusion between the parties arose in connexion with the House of Commons.  What was the House of Commons?  Salmasius saw that it was contrasted with the House of Lords.  But then, again, what were the Lords?  The explanation given to him was, that they were the “noblesse” of the land. That he could understand; and, of course, if the other house were antithetically opposed to the Lords, it followed that the House of