PREFACE.
The following pages contain an account of the
principles upon which the public and political life
of our Anglosaxon forefathers was based, and of
the institutions in which those principles were most
clearly manifested. The subject is a grave and
solemn one : it is the history of the childhood of
our own age,—the explanation of its manhood.
On every side of us thrones totter, and the deep
foundations of society are convulsed. Shot and
shell sweep the streets of capitals which have long
been pointed out as the chosen abodes of order:
cavalry and bayonets cannot control populations
whose loyalty has become a proverb here, whose
peace has been made a reproach to our own mis-
called disquiet. Yet the exalted Lady who wields
the sceptre of these realms, sits safe upon her
throne, and fearless in the holy circle of her do-
mestic happiness, secure in the affections of a peo-
ple whose institutions have given to them all the
blessings of an equal law.
Those institutions they have inherited from a
period so distant as to excite our admiration, and
have preserved amidst all vicissitudes with an en-