If any other rule than established practice be followed, factions and dissensions must multiply without end: and though many constitutions, and none more than the British, have been improved even by violent innovations, the praise bestowed on those patriots to whom the nation has been indebted for its privileges, ought to be given with some reserve, and surely without the least rancor against those who adhered to the ancient constitution.[*] In order to understand the ancient constitution of England, there is not a period which deserves more to be studied than the reign of Elizabeth.
The prerogatives of this princess were scarcely ever disputed, and she therefore employed them without scruple: her imperious temper--a circumstance in which she went far beyond her successors--rendered her exertions of power violent and frequent, and discovered the full extent of her authority: the great popularity which she enjoyed, proves that she did not infringe any established liberties of the people: there remains evidence sufficient to ascertain the most noted acts of her administration: and though that evidence must be drawn from a source wide of the ordinary historians, it becomes only the more authentic on that account, and serves as a stronger proof, that her particular exertions of power were conceived to be nothing but the ordinary course of administration, since they were not thought remarkable enough to be recorded even by contemporary writers.

If there was any difference in this particular, the people in former reigns seem rather to have been more submissive than even during the age of Elizabeth;[**] it may not here be improper to recount some of the ancient prerogatives of the crown, and lay open the sources of that great power which the English monarchs formerly enjoyed.
* By the ancient constitution, is here meant that which prevailed before the settlement of our present plan of liberty.

There was a more ancient constitution, where, though the people had perhaps less liberty than under the Tudors, yet the king had also less authority: the power of the barons was a great check upon him, and exercised great tyranny over them.

But there was still a more ancient constitution, viz., that before the signing of the charters, when neither the people nor the barons had any regular privileges; and the power of the government during the reign of an able prince was almost wholly in the king.

The English constitution, like all others, has been in a state of continual fluctuation.
** In a memorial of the state of the realm, drawn by Secretary Cecil in 1569, there is this passage: "Then followeth the decay of obedience in civil policy, which being compared with the fearfulness and reverence of all inferior estates to their superiors in times past, will astonish any wise and considerate person, to behold the desperation of reformation," Haynes, p, 586.