ABSTRACT
the mixed character of the English constitution was a fundamental assumption of eighteenth-century England. Although the theory of mixed government received its classical form in the writings of Blackstone and De Lolme, perhaps the keynote of the eighteenth century was equally well expressed in a sermon preached before the House of Commons in 1701 by Francis Atterbury, later Bishop of Rochester and leader of the English Jacobites. “Tis natural for Men to think that Government the Best, under which they drew their first breath,’ he explained, ‘and to propose it as a Model and Standard for all Others. But if any People upon Earth have a just Title thus to boast, ‘tis We of this Island; who enjoy a Constitution, wisely moulded, out of all the different Forms and Kinds of Civil Government.’ It was a ‘Constitution, nicely poiz’d between the Extremes of too much Liberty, and too much Power ; the several Parts of it having a Proper Check upon each other….’ 1
