tions, the
Huguenot exclaimed: 'It appears to me that this great society can only
be dissolved by the violence of its political parties.' What are these
parties? Why are they violent? Why should they exist? In resolving
these questions, we may obtain an accurate idea of our present political
position, and by pondering over the past we may make that past not a
prophecy, as the disaffected intend, but a salutary lesson by which the
loyal may profit.

The two great parties into which England has during the last century and
a half been divided originated in the ancient struggle between the
Crown and the aristocracy. As long as the Crown possessed or aspired to
despotic power, the feeling of the nation supported the aristocracy
in their struggles to establish a free government. The aristocracy of
England formed the constitution of the Plantagenets; the Wars of the
Roses destroyed that aristocracy, and the despotism of the Tudors
succeeded. Renovated by more than a century of peace and the spoils of
the Papacy, the aristocracy of England attacked the first Stuarts, who
succeeded to a despotism which they did not create. When Charles the
First, after a series of great concessions which ultimately obtained for
him the support of the most illustrious of his early opponents, raised
the royal standard, the constitution of the Plantagenets, and more than
the constitution of the Plantagenets, had been restored and secured. But
a portion of the able party which had succeeded in effecting such a vast
and beneficial revolution was not content to part with the extraordinary
powers which they had obtained in this memorable struggle. This section
of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though
that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive
Whigs-'Parliament-men,' as they liked to call themselves, 'Roundheads,'
as they were in time dubbed--aspired to an oligarchy. For a moment they
obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the
returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people,
they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists
in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. These were the
English Radicals, or Root-and-Branch men, and the Scotch Covenanters. To
conciliate the first they sacrificed the Crown; to secure the second
they abolished the Church. The constitution of England in Church
and State was destroyed, and the Whig oligar