perhaps its learning, its industry, commerce, and naval power. By them chiefly the English {p198} name is distinguished among the society of nations, and aspires to a rivalship with that of the freest and most illustrious commonwealths of antiquity. But as all these mighty consequences could not reasonably be foreseen at the time when the contest began, the royalists of that age wanted not specious arguments on their side, by which they could justify their defence of the then established prerogatives of the crown. We shall state the question, as it might appear to them at the assembling of that Parliament, which by their violent encroachments on the crown, began the civil wars.
The only rule of government, they might have said, known and acknowledged among men, is use and practice. Reason is so uncertain a guide that it will always be exposed to doubt and controversy. Could it ever render itself prevalent over the people, men had always retained it as their sole rule of conduct; they had still continued in the primitive, unconnected state of nature, without submitting to political government, whose sole basis is not