ainst those who seem indifferent in its cause, that the
character of the bravest and most virtuous among nations has not
depended upon the accidents of race or climate, but been gradually
wrought by the plastic influence of civil rights, transmitted as a
prescriptive inheritance through a long course of generations.

[Sidenote: Causes tending to form the constitution.]

By what means the English acquired and preserved this political liberty,
which, even in the fifteenth century, was the admiration of judicious
foreigners,[381] is a very rational and interesting inquiry. Their own
serious and steady attachment to the laws must always be reckoned among
the principal causes of this blessing. The civil equality of all freemen
below the rank of peerage, and the subjection of peers themselves to the
impartial arm of justice, and to a due share in contribution to public
burthens, advantages unknown to other countries, tended to identify the
interests and to assimilate the feelings of the aristocracy with those
of the people; classes whose dissension and jealousy has been in many
instances the surest hope of sovereigns aiming at arbitrary power. This
freedom from the oppressive superiority of a privileged order was
peculiar to England. In many kingdoms the royal prerogative was at least
equally limited. The statutes of Aragon are more full of remedial
provisions. The right of opposing a tyrannical government by arms was
more frequently asserted in Castile. But nowhere else did the people
possess by law, and I think, upon the whole, in effect, so much security
for their personal freedom and property. Accordingly, the middling
ranks flourished remarkably, not only in commercial towns, but among the
cultivators of the soil. "There is scarce a small village," says Sir J.
Fortescue, "in which you may not find a knight, an esquire, or some
substantial householder (paterfamilias), commonly called a
frankleyn,[382] possessed of considerable estate; besides others who are
called freeholders, and many yeomen of estates sufficient to make a
substantial jury." I would, however, point out more particularly two
causes which had a very leading efficacy in the gradual development of
our constitution; first, the schemes of continental ambition in which
our government was long engaged; secondly, the manner in which feudal
principles of insubordination and resistance were modified by the
prerogatives of the early Norman kings.

1. At the epoch