Book Description

Excerpt from The Last Hundred Years: A Lecture Delivered in the Hall of the Western University of Pennsylvania, on Tuesday Evening, Feb; 4, 1845, at the Request of the Philomathean Literary Institute, and Published in Aid of the Library Fund of That Association Europe, not excepting the cabinets of Russm and Turkey, both of which have been greatly'modified'of late years, and more liberal principles imperceptibly but surely insinuated into their public councils. The spirit of liberty thus gene rally diffused among the mass, and finding its way also into the bosoms of rulers, has produced a decided improvement in the condition of the governed, and created an universal sentiment, to which sovereigns and their advisers, though many of them with a bad grace, have been obliged to yield. Hence, the political constitutions granted, or rather extorted, in several European kingdoms, in which, previously, the will of the monarch was very much the supreme law, and the ruled were subjected to the capricious tyranny and oppressive exactions of their rulers, with no settled standard of rights to appeal to in defence, or fall back upon in just resistance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.