Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/116

104 of the Moors, whose neighbourhood was a perpetual alarm.

However, as the common people of England were generally villains or slaves to their lords, these lords became, by the importance of their vassalages, an hereditary council of state, upon extraordinary occasions, when it was thought convenient to gain their assistance, by the compliment of asking their advice, or their concurrence in taxing their vassals for the publick good. The weak princes of the Plantagenet family (which has produced the greatest in Europe) were strangely given over to favourites and minions; as weak princes generally are, because they have not their glory and real power so much at heart as their private satisfaction. The barons, as counsellors by their birth and fortune, were so disgusted at this humour, and at subsidies and other vexations that had their rise in the king's closet, and not in his council, that they made frequent confederacies of rebellion, on pretence of grievances; and as they were supported by the people, obtained great concessions in their favour from the crown. The kings found no way of supporting themselves against the barons, but by disengaging the people from them. This they effected by admitting them who had no manner of pretence to it before, to appear by their representatives in the great council of the nation, which obtained the name of parliament, whenever they had any occasion for subsidies against the barons, or the foreign enemies of the state. The people, in return of their liberalities, obtained frequent enlargements of their privileges. But the Plantagenets and Tudors had still an ample share of their absolute dominion left,