The English Cation. XII Autographs of Illustrious Personages of the Sixth Peid. 2D. STATESMEN AND AMBASSADORS. 1. Hichard Cromwell, Lord Protector. Juchard Lansdowne MSS., 1236, folio 112. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH PERIOD. The Revolution-Affairs of Scotland-Treasonable plots-Partition-treaty-William's campaigns-Struggles betwixt the whig and tory parties-Marlborough appointed to the command in Holland-Death of William and accession of Anne-War with France Affairs of Scotland-The Union-Meeting of the first United ParliamentStruggles of parties at home-Fears entertained for the protestant succession-Death of Anne-Literary character of the age. THE Revolution, the Glorious Revolution, as it has been termed, gave an entirely new aspect to the affairs of Great Britain, and exerted a salutary influence over all the protestant nations of Europe. It was a stride in social advancement and enlightened legislation which has not only continued to operate in our own government to the present times, but which has proved the seed of similar ameliorations in other states. It involved an innovation upon long-established usages and hereditary rights, which was viewed with suspicion even by many liberal minus, and condemned as sacrilegious by all the powerful and numerous friends of monarchy. It presented to the nations of Europe the strange, and, as most thought, the perilous, example of a free and enlightened parliament renouncing the maxim of indefeasible, divine, and hereditary right, and placing the basis of their monarchy upon the rational and intelligible principle of a solemn compact, involving allegiance on the one hand and legal rule on the other. Prior to this bold transition, the prospects of the nation had been any thing but flattering; and the memory of the past reigns of the hereditary monarchs, any thing but grateful. All the fruits of a protracted struggle against ecclesiastical domination had been nearly lost, and a general depression, if not a total overthrow of the protestant cause, had been anticipated, as the inevitable effect of the measures which had long been pursued by the British But the accession of William III. at the present juncture, had the happy effect of relieving the nation from the alarming dangers which threatened them, and of imparting a spirit of confidence and of hope to all the other protestant nations of Europe, which had been accustomed to look up to England as their chief bulwark in times of general or cominon peril. It was indeed true that the semblance of respect for the hereditary and indefeasible principle was not wholly over court. |