Hume and many other writers have hastily concluded, that, in the fifteenth century, the English Parliament was altogether servile, because it recognised, without opposition, every successful usurper.  That it was not servile its conduct on many occasions of inferior importance is sufficient to prove.  But surely it was not strange that the majority of the nobles, and of the deputies chosen by the commons, should approve of revolutions which the nobles and commons had effected.  The Parliament did not blindly follow the event of war, but participated in those changes of public sentiment on which the event of war depended.  The legal check was secondary and auxiliary to that which the nation held in its own hands.

There have always been monarchies in Asia, in which the royal authority has been tempered by fundamental laws, though no legislative body exists to watch over them.  The guarantee is the opinion of a community of which every individual is a soldier.  Thus, the king of Cabul, as Mr. Elphinstone informs us, cannot augment the land revenue, or interfere with the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals.

In the European kingdoms of this description there were representative assemblies.  But it was not necessary that those assemblies should meet very frequently, that they should interfere with all the operations of the executive government, that they should watch with jealousy, and resent with prompt indignation, every violation of the laws which the sovereign might commit.  They were so strong that they might safely be careless.  He was so feeble that he might safely be suffered to encroach.  If he ventured too far, chastisement and ruin were at hand.  In fact, the people generally suffered more from his weakness than from his authority.  The tyranny of wealthy and powerful subjects was the characteristic evil of the times.  The royal prerogatives were not even sufficient for the defence of property and the maintenance of police.

The progress of civilisation introduced a great change.  War became a science, and, as a necessary consequence, a trade.  The great body of the people grew every day more reluctant to undergo the inconveniences of military service, and better able to pay others for undergoing them.  A new class of men, therefore, dependent on the Crown alone, natural enemies of those popular rights which are to them as the dew to the fleece of Gideon, slaves among freemen, freemen among slaves, grew into importance.  That physical force which in the dark ages had belonged to the nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any charter, or any assembly, been the safeguard of their privileges, was transferred entire to the King.  Monarchy gained in two ways.  The sovereign was strengthened, the subjects weakened.  The great mass of the population, destitute of all military discipline and organisation, ceased to exercise any influence by force on political transactions.  There have, indeed, during the last hundred and fifty years, been many popular insurrections in Europe:  but all have failed except those in which the regular army has been induced to join the disaffected.