Is it possible to imagine that considerations so grave and so obvious should have altogether escaped the notice of a man of Temple’s sagacity and experience?  One of two things appears to us to be certain, either that his project has been misunderstood, or that his talents for public affairs have been overrated.

We lean to the opinion that his project has been misunderstood.  His new Council, as we have shown, would have been an exceedingly bad Cabinet.  The inference which we are inclined to draw is this, that he meant his Council to serve some other purpose than that of a mere Cabinet.  Barillon used four or five words which contain, we think, the key of the whole mystery.  Mr. Courtenay calls them pithy words; but he does not, if we are right, apprehend their whole force.  “Ce sont,” said Barillon, “des Etats, non des conseils.”

In order clearly to understand what we imagine to have been Temple’s views, the reader must remember that the Government of England was at that moment, and had been during nearly eighty years, in a state of transition.  A change, not the less real or the less extensive because disguised under ancient names and forms, was in constant progress.  The theory of the Constitution, the fundamental laws which fix the powers of the three branches of the legislature, underwent no material change between the time of Elizabeth and the time of William the Third.  The most celebrated laws of the seventeenth century on those subjects, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, are purely declaratory.  They purport to be merely recitals of the old polity of England.  They do not establish free government as a salutary improvement, but claim it as an undoubted and immemorial inheritance.  Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that, during the period of which we speak, all the mutual relations of all the orders of the State did practically undergo an entire change.  The letter of the law might be unaltered; but, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the power of the Crown was, in fact, decidedly predominant in the State; and at the end of that century the power of Parliament, and especially of the Lower House, had become, in fact, decidedly predominant.  At the beginning of the century, the sovereign perpetually violated, with little or no opposition, the clear privileges of Parliament.  At the close of the century, the Parliament had virtually drawn to itself just as much as it chose of the prerogative of the Crown.  The sovereign retained the shadow of that authority of which the Tudors had held the substance.  He had a legislative veto which he never ventured to exercise, a power of appointing Ministers, whom an address of the Commons could at any moment force him to discard, a power of declaring war which, without Parliamentary support, could not be carried on for a single day.  The Houses of Parliament were now not merely legislative assemblies, not merely checking assemblies; they were great Councils of State, whose