nce for the past. The
Estates of the Realm deliberated in the old halls and according to the
old rules. Powle was conducted to his chair between his mover and his
seconder with the accustomed forms. The Serjeant with his mace brought
up the messengers of the Lords to the table of the Commons; and the
three obeisances were duly made. The conference was held with all the
antique ceremonial. On one side of the table, in the Painted Chamber,
the managers of the Lords sate covered and robed in ermine and gold. The
managers of the Commons stood bareheaded on the other side. The speeches
present an almost ludicrous contrast to the revolutionary oratory of
every other country. Both the English parties agreed in treating with
solemn respect the ancient constitutional traditions of the state. The
only question was, in what sense those traditions were to be understood.
The assertors of liberty said not a word about the natural equality of
men and the inalienable sovereignty of the people, about Harmodius or
Timoleon, Brutus the elder or Brutus the younger. When they were told
that, by the English law, the crown, at the moment of a demise, must
descend to the next heir, they answered that, by the English law, a
living man could have no heir. When they were told that there was no
precedent for declaring the throne vacant, they produced from among the
records in the Tower a roll of parchment, near three hundred years old,
on which, in quaint characters and barbarous Latin, it was recorded that
the Estates of the Realm had declared vacant the throne of a perfidious
and tyrannical Plantagenet. When at length the dispute had been
accommodated, the new sovereigns were proclaimed with the old pageantry.
All the fantastic pomp of heraldry was there, Clarencieux and Norroy,
Portcullis and Rouge Dragon, the trumpets, the banners, the grotesque
coats embroidered with lions and lilies. The title of King of France,
assumed by the conqueror of Cressy, was not omitted in the royal style.
To us, who have lived in the year 1848, it may seem almost an abuse of
terms to call a proceeding, conducted with so much deliberation, with so
much sobriety, and with such minute attention to prescriptive etiquette,
by the terrible name of Revolution.

And yet this revolution, of all revolutions the least violent, has been
of all revolutions the most beneficent. It finally decided the great
question whether the popular element which had, ever since the age of
Fi