strange result that the same free thought upon
which, according to M. Guizot, the French Revolution came to grief was
one of the most essential products of the religious English
Revolution.

With respect to the second point, M. Guizot forgets that at the outset
the French Revolution was just as conservative as the English, if not
more so. Absolutism, especially in the guise which it had latterly
assumed in France, was an innovation even there, and against this
innovation the parliaments arose and defended the old laws, the _us et
coutumes_ of the old estates-of-the-realm monarchy. And whereas the
first step of the French Revolution was the revival of the Estates
General which had been extinct since Henry IV and Louis XIII, the
English Revolution has no feature of an equally classical conservative
nature to exhibit.

According to M. Guizot, the chief result of the English Revolution was
this, that it was made impossible for the king to govern against the
will of Parliament and of the House of Commons in Parliament. The
entire revolution may be summed up by saying that at the commencement
both sides, the Crown and Parliament, overstepped their limits and
went too far until under William III they reached the proper
equilibrium and neutralized each other. That the subjection of the
monarchy was its subjection to the rule of a class M. Guizot deems it
superfluous to mention.

Consequently, he does not feel it incumbent on him to ascertain how
this class acquired the power necessary to make the Crown its servant.
He appears to think that the whole struggle between Charles I and
Parliament related to purely political privileges. For what purpose
Parliament and the class represented therein needed these privileges
we are not told. Neither does M. Guizot refer to the direct
interferences of Charles I with free competition, which rendered the
commerce and the trade of England increasingly impossible; or the
dependence upon Parliament into which Charles fell ever more
hopelessly, through his continuous financial distress, the more he
tried to defy Parliament. According to M. Guizot, therefore, the whole
Revolution is to be explained by the evil intent and religious
fanaticism of a few disturbers of the peace who could not content
themselves with a moderate freedom. M. Guizot has just as little
enlightenment to furnish with regard to the connection of the
religious movement with the development of middle-class society. Of
cou