Bearing in mind the prominence of the quarrel over the Ancient Constitution in the overthrow of James II and the fact that the Jacobite Rebellion forms the historical background to The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749), Henry Fielding's statement, in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), that "the Constitution of this Country is altered from its antient State" suggests that an important displacement has occurred in political argument. This is not at all to say that the Constitution had ceased to be an issue; indeed it is "a Word in the Mouth of every Man." The problem is that nothing is "so little understood in this Country." 1 In fact, in the wake of Montesquieu, Fielding is proposing a fundamental, and particularly modern, revision in the meaning of the word. "The Constitution" must be understood to embrace not only the body of laws and institutions so dear to English liberty, but also the "constitution" of the country understood as "the Customs, Manners, and Habits of the People"--what we would now call their "culture." 2 The current crisis derives from the fact that these two senses no longer coincide. Although the legal and institutional constitution had remained largely intact (barring the abolition of tyrannical feudal tenures), the cultural constitution had changed profoundly, with the result that key legal structures were no longer operative, particularly in the field of public order. In short, from Fielding's perspective, the freedoms for which Tom Jones had been so willing to fight in 1745 were now in danger not so much from absolutism and popery as from crime and moral decay. In his capacity as magistrate at Bow Street from 1748 to 1754, Fielding dedicated much of the last years of his life to reinvigorating the ancient institutions of English legal administration--the justice of the peace, the constable, the watch, and so on--in order to respond to the changed cultural climate. 3 [End Page 633]