His administration could not, without extreme peril, be blamed even in the mildest terms.
His subjects held their personal liberty by no other tenure than his pleasure.

Not a single institution was left which had, within the memory of the oldest man, afforded efficient protection to the subject against the utmost excess of tyranny.

Those great councils which had once curbed the regal power had sunk into oblivion.

Their composition and their privileges were known only to antiquaries.

We cannot wonder, therefore, that, when men who had been thus ruled succeeded in wresting supreme power from a government which they had long in secret hated, they should have been impatient to demolish and unable to construct, that they should have been fascinated by every specious novelty, that they should have proscribed every title, ceremony, and phrase associated with the old system, and that, turning away with disgust from their own national precedents and traditions, they should have sought for principles of government in the writings of theorists, or aped, with ignorant and ungraceful affectation, the patriots of Athens and Rome.