state in which
England was at the time when the crown passed from Charles the Second
to his brother. Such a description, composed from scanty and dispersed
materials, must necessarily be very imperfect. Yet it may perhaps
correct some false notions which would make the subsequent narrative
unintelligible or uninstructive.

If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we must be
constantly on our guard against that delusion which the well known
names of families, places, and offices naturally produce, and must never
forget that the country of which we read was a very different country
from that in which we live. In every experimental science there is a
tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to
ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often
sufficed, even when counteracted by great public calamities and by
bad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary
misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a
nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the
constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nation
prosperous. It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy
taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous
wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have
not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private
citizens have been able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in
our own land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries,
been almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater under
the Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the
Stuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and
confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on the
day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration,
of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessful
wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greater on the day of
the death of Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration. This
progress, having continued during many ages, became at length, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded,
during the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly
of our geographical and partly of our moral position, we have, during
several generations, been exempt from evils whi