Chapter XIV: The Reign of James II (2)

The latter continued to receive strong assurances of attachment from men of rank in England; but wanted that direct invitation to enter the kingdom with force, which he required both for his security and his justification. No men who thought much about their country's interests or their own would be hasty in venturing on so awful an enterprise. The punishment and ignominy of treason, the reproach of history, too often the sworn slave of fortune, awaited its failure. Thus Halifax and Nottingham found their conscience or their courage unequal to the crisis, and drew back from the hardy conspiracy that produced the revolution.[135] Nor, perhaps, would the seven eminent persons, whose names are subscribed to the invitation addressed on the 30th of June 1688, to the Prince of Orange, the Earls of Danby, Shrewsbury, and Devonshire, Lords Delamere and Lumley, the Bishop of London, and Admiral Russell, have committed themselves so far, if the recent birth of a Prince of Wales had not made some measures of force absolutely necessary for the common interests of the nation and the Prince of Orange.[136] It cannot be said without absurdity, that James was guilty of any offence in becoming father of this child; yet it was evidently that which rendered his other offence inexpiable. He was now considerably advanced in life; and the decided resistance of his subjects made it improbable that he could do much essential injury to the established constitution during the remainder of it. The mere certainty of all reverting to a protestant heir would be an effectual guarantee of the Anglican church. But the birth of a son to be nursed in the obnoxious bigotry of Rome, the prospect of a regency under the queen, so deeply implicated, according to common report, in the schemes of this reign, made every danger appear more terrible. From the moment that the queen's pregnancy was announced, the catholics gave way to enthusiastic unrepressed exultation; and by the confidence with which they prophesied the birth of an heir, furnished a pretext for the suspicions which a disappointed people began to entertain.[137] These suspicions were very general; they extended to the highest ranks, and are a conspicuous instance of that prejudice which is chiefly founded on our wishes. Lord Danby, in a letter to William, of March 27, insinuates his doubt of the queen's pregnancy. After the child's birth, the seven subscribers to the association inviting the prince to come over, and pledging themselves to join him, say that not one in a thousand believe it to be the queen's; Lord Devonshire separately held language to the same effect.[138] The Princess Anne talked with little restraint of her suspicions, and made no scruple of imparting them to her sister.[139] Though no one can hesitate at present to acknowledge that the Prince of Wales's legitimacy is out of all question, there was enough to raise a reasonable apprehension in the presumptive heir, that a party not really very scrupulous, and through religious animosity supposed to be still less so, had been induced by the undoubted prospect of advantage to draw the king, who had been wholly their slave, into one of those frauds which bigotry might call pious.[140]

_Justice and necessity of the Revolution._--The great event however of what has been emphatically denominated in the language of our public acts the Glorious Revolution stands in need of no vulgar credulity, no mistaken prejudice, for its support. It can only rest on the basis of a liberal theory of government, which looks to the public good as the great end for which positive laws and the constitutional order of states have been instituted. It cannot be defended without rejecting the slavish principles of absolute obedience, or even that pretended modification of them which imagines some extreme cases of intolerable tyranny, some, as it were, lunacy of despotism, as the only plea and palliation of resistance. Doubtless the administration of James II. was not of this nature. Doubtless he was not a Caligula, or a Commodus, or an Ezzelin, or a Galeazzo Sforza, or a Christiern II. of Denmark, or a Charles IX. of France, or one of those almost innumerable tyrants whom men have endured in the wantonness of unlimited power. No man had been deprived of his liberty by any illegal warrant. No man, except in the single though very important instance of Magdalen College, had been despoiled of his property. I must also add that the government of James II. will lose little by comparison with that of his father. The judgment in favour of his prerogative to dispense with the test, was far more according to received notions of law, far less injurious and unconstitutional, than that which gave a sanction to ship-money. The injunction to read the declaration of indulgence in churches was less offensive to scrupulous men than the similar command to read the declaration of Sunday sports in the time of Charles I. Nor was any one punished for a refusal to comply with the one; while the prisons had been filled with those who had disobeyed the other. Nay, what is more, there are much stronger presumptions of the father's than of the son's intention to lay aside parliaments, and set up an avowed despotism. It is indeed amusing to observe that many, who scarcely put bounds to their eulogies of Charles I., have been content to abandon the cause of one who had no faults in his public conduct but such as seemed to have come by inheritance. The characters of the father and son were very closely similar: both proud of their judgment as well as their station, and still more obstinate in their understanding than in their purpose; both scrupulously conscientious in certain great points of conduct, to the sacrifice of that power which they had preferred to everything else; the one far superior in relish for the arts and for polite letters, the other more diligent and indefatigable in business; the father exempt from those vices of a court to which the son was too long addicted; not so harsh perhaps or prone to severity in his temper, but inferior in general sincerity and adherence to his word. They were both equally unfitted for the condition in which they were meant to stand--the limited kings of a wise and free people, the chiefs of the English commonwealth.

The most plausible argument against the necessity of so violent a remedy for public grievances as the abjuration of allegiance to a reigning sovereign, was one that misled half the nation in that age, and is still sometimes insinuated by those whose pity for the misfortunes of the house of Stuart appears to predominate over every other sentiment which the history of the revolution should excite. It was alleged that the constitutional mode of redress by parliament was not taken away; that the king's attempts to obtain promises of support from the electors and probable representatives showed his intention of calling one; that the writs were in fact ordered before the Prince of Orange's expedition; that after the invader had reached London, James still offered to refer the terms of reconciliation with his people to a free parliament, though he could have no hope of evading any that might be proposed; that by reversing illegal judgments, by annulling unconstitutional dispensations, by reinstating those who had been unjustly dispossessed, by punishing wicked advisers, above all, by passing statutes to restrain the excesses and cut off the dangerous prerogatives of the monarchy (as efficacious, or more so, than the bill of rights and other measures that followed the revolution), all risk of arbitrary power, or of injury to the established religion, might have been prevented without a violation of that hereditary right which was as fundamental in the constitution as any of the subject's privileges. It was not necessary to enter upon the delicate problem of absolute non-resistance, or to deny that the conservation of the whole was paramount to all positive laws. The question to be proved was, that a regard to this general safety exacted the means employed in the revolution, and constituted that extremity which could alone justify such a deviation from the standard rules of law and religion.

It is evidently true that James had made very little progress, or rather experienced a signal defeat, in his endeavour to place the professors of his own religion on a firm and honourable basis. There seems the strongest reason to believe that far from reaching his end through the new parliament, he would have experienced those warm assaults on the administration, which generally distinguished the House of Commons under his father and brother. But, as he was in no want of money, and had not the temper to endure what he thought the language of republican faction, we may be equally sure that a short and angry session would have ended with a more decided resolution on his side to govern in future without such impracticable counsellors. The doctrine imputed of old to Lord Strafford, that, after trying the good-will of parliament in vain, a king was absolved from the legal maxims of government, was always at the heart of the Stuarts. His army was numerous, according at least to English notions; he had already begun to fill it with popish officers and soldiers; the militia, though less to be depended on, was under the command of lord and deputy lieutenants carefully selected; above all, he would at the last have recourse to France; and though the experiment of bringing over French troops was very hazardous, it is difficult to say that he might not have succeeded, with all these means, in preventing or putting down any concerted insurrection. But at least the renewal of civil bloodshed and the anarchy of rebellion seemed to be the alternative of slavery, if William had never earned the just title of our deliverer. It is still more evident that, after the invasion had taken place, and a general defection had exhibited the king's inability to resist, there could have been no such compromise as the Tories fondly expected, no legal and peaceable settlement in what they called a free parliament, leaving James in the real and recognised possession of his constitutional prerogatives. Those who have grudged William III. the laurels that he won for our service are ever prone to insinuate, that his unnatural ambition would be content with nothing less than the Crown, instead of returning to his country after he had convinced the king of the error of his counsels, and obtained securities for the religion and liberties of England. The hazard of the enterprise, and most hazardous it truly was, was to have been his; the profit and advantage our own. I do not know that William absolutely expected to place himself on the throne; because he could hardly anticipate that James would so precipitately abandon a kingdom wherein he was acknowledged, and had still many adherents. But undoubtedly he must, in consistency with his magnanimous designs, have determined to place England in its natural station, as a party in the great alliance against the power of Louis XIV. To this one object of securing the liberties of Europe, and chiefly of his own country, the whole of his heroic life was directed with undeviating, undisheartened firmness. He had in view no distant prospect, when the entire succession of the Spanish monarchy would be claimed by that insatiable prince, whose renunciation at the treaty of the Pyrenees was already maintained to be invalid. Against the present aggressions and future schemes of this neighbour the league of Augsburg had just been concluded. England, a free, a protestant, a maritime kingdom, would, in her natural position, as a rival of France, and deeply concerned in the independence of the Netherlands, become a leading member of this confederacy. But the sinister attachments of the house of Stuarts had long diverted her from her true interests, and rendered her councils disgracefully and treacherously subservient to those of Louis. It was therefore the main object of the Prince of Orange to strengthen the alliance by the vigorous co-operation of this kingdom; and with no other view, the emperor, and even the pope, had abetted his undertaking. But it was impossible to imagine that James would have come with sincerity into measures so repugnant to his predilections and interests. What better could be expected than a recurrence of that false and hollow system which had betrayed Europe and dishonoured England under Charles II.; or rather, would not the sense of injury and thraldom have inspired still more deadly aversion to the cause of those to whom he must have ascribed his humiliation? There was as little reason to hope that he would abandon the long-cherished schemes of arbitrary power, and the sacred interests of his own faith. We must remember that, when the adherents or apologists of James II. have spoken of him as an unfortunately misguided prince, they have insinuated what neither the notorious history of those times, nor the more secret information since brought to light, will in any degree confirm. It was indeed a strange excuse for a king of such mature years, and so trained in the most diligent attention to business. That in some particular instances he acted under the influence of his confessor, Petre, is not unlikely; but the general temper of his administration, his notions of government, the objects he had in view, were perfectly his own, and were pursued rather in spite of much dissuasion and many warnings, than through the suggestions of any treacherous counsellors.

Both with respect therefore to the Prince of Orange and to the English nation, James II. was to be considered as an enemy whose resentment could never be appeased, and whose power consequently must be wholly taken away. It is true that, if he had remained in England, it would have been extremely difficult to deprive him of the nominal sovereignty. But in this case, the Prince of Orange must have been invested, by some course or other, with all its real attributes. He undoubtedly intended to remain in this country; and could not otherwise have preserved that entire ascendancy which was necessary for his ultimate purposes. The king could not have been permitted, with any common prudence, to retain the choice of his ministers, or the command of his army, or his negative voice in laws, or even his personal liberty; by which I mean, that his guards must have been either Dutch, or at least appointed by the prince and parliament. Less than this it would have been childish to require; and this would not have been endured by any man even of James's spirit, or by the nation, when the re-action of loyalty should return, without continued efforts to get rid of an arrangement far more revolutionary and subversive of the established monarchy than the king's deposition.

_Favourable circumstances attending the revolution._--In the revolution of 1688 there was an unusual combination of favouring circumstances, and some of the most important, such as the king's sudden flight, not within prior calculation, which render it no precedent for other times and occasions in point of expediency, whatever it may be in point of justice. Resistance to tyranny by overt rebellion incurs not only the risks of failure, but those of national impoverishment and confusion, of vindictive retaliation, and such aggressions (perhaps inevitable) on private right and liberty as render the name of revolution and its adherents odious. Those, on the other hand, who call in a powerful neighbour to protect them from domestic oppression, may too often expect to realise the horse of the fable, and endure a subjection more severe, permanent, and ignominious, than what they shake off. But the revolution effected by William III. united the independent character of a national act with the regularity and the coercion of anarchy which belong to a military invasion. The United Provinces were not such a foreign potentate as could put in jeopardy the independence of England; nor could his army have maintained itself against the inclinations of the kingdom, though it was sufficient to repress any turbulence that would naturally attend so extraordinary a crisis. Nothing was done by the multitude; no new men, soldiers, or demagogues, had their talents brought forward by this rapid and pacific revolution; it cost no blood, it violated no right, it was hardly to be traced in the course of justice; the formal and exterior character of the monarchy remained nearly the same in so complete a regeneration of its spirit. Few nations can hope to ascend up to the sphere of a just and honourable liberty, especially when long use has made the track of obedience familiar, and they have learned to move as it were only by the clank of the chain, with so little toil and hardship. We reason too exclusively from this peculiar instance of 1688, when we hail the fearful struggles of other revolutions with a sanguine and confident sympathy. Nor is the only error upon this side. For, as if the inveterate and cankerous ills of a commonwealth could be extirpated with no loss and suffering, we are often prone to abandon the popular cause in agitated nations with as much fickleness as we embraced it, when we find that intemperance, irregularity, and confusion, from which great revolutions are very seldom exempt. These are indeed so much their usual attendants, the re-action of a self-deceived multitude is so probable a consequence, the general prospect of success in most cases so precarious, that wise and good men are more likely to hesitate too long, than to rush forward too eagerly. Yet, "whatever be the cost of this noble liberty, we must be content to pay it to Heaven."[141]

It is unnecessary even to mention those circumstances of this great event, which are minutely known to almost all my readers. They were all eminently favourable in their effect to the regeneration of our constitution; even one of temporary inconvenience, namely, the return of James to London, after his detention by the fishermen near Feversham. This, as Burnet has observed, and as is easily demonstrated by the writings of that time, gave a different colour to the state of affairs, and raised up a party which did not before exist, or at least was too disheartened to show itself.[142] His first desertion of the kingdom had disgusted every one, and might be construed into a voluntary cession. But his return to assume again the government put William under the necessity of using that intimidation which awakened the mistaken sympathy of a generous people. It made his subsequent flight, though certainly not what a man of courage enough to give his better judgment free play would have chosen, appear excusable and defensive. It brought out too glaringly, I mean for the satisfaction of prejudiced minds, the undeniable fact, that the two houses of convention deposed and expelled their sovereign. Thus the great schism of the Jacobites, though it must otherwise have existed, gained its chief strength; and the revolution, to which at the outset a coalition of whigs and tories had conspired, became in its final result, in the settlement of the Crown upon William and Mary, almost entirely the work of the former party.

But while the position of the new government was thus rendered less secure, by narrowing the basis of public opinion whereon it stood, the liberal principles of policy which the whigs had espoused became incomparably more powerful, and were necessarily involved in the continuance of the revolution settlement. The ministers of William III. and of the house of Brunswick had no choice but to respect and countenance the doctrines of Locke, Hoadley, and Molesworth. The assertion of passive obedience to the Crown grew obnoxious to the Crown itself. Our new line of sovereigns scarcely ventured to hear of their hereditary right, and dreaded the cup of flattery that was drugged with poison. This was the greatest change that affected our monarchy by the fall of the house of Stuart. The laws were not so materially altered as the spirit and sentiments of the people. Hence those who look only at the former have been prone to underrate the magnitude of this revolution. The fundamental maxims of the constitution, both as they regard the king and the subject, may seem nearly the same; but the disposition with which they were received and interpreted was entirely different.

_Its salutary consequences._--It was in this turn of feeling, in this change, if I may so say, of the heart, far more than in any positive statutes and improvements of the law, that I consider the revolution to have been eminently conducive to our freedom and prosperity. Laws and statutes as remedial, nay more closely limiting the prerogative than the bill of rights and act of settlement, might possibly have been obtained from James himself, as the price of his continuance on the throne, or from his family as that of their restoration to it. But what the revolution did for us was this; it broke the spell that had charmed the nation. It cut up by the roots all that theory of indefeasible right, of paramount prerogative, which had put the Crown in continual opposition to the people. A contention had now subsisted for five hundred years, but particularly during the four last reigns, against the aggressions of arbitrary power. The sovereigns of this country had never patiently endured the control of parliament; nor was it natural for them to do so, while the two houses of parliament appeared historically, and in legal language, to derive their existence as well as privileges from the Crown itself. They had at their side the pliant lawyers, who held the prerogative to be uncontrollable by statutes, a doctrine of itself destructive to any scheme of reconciliation and compromise between a king and his subjects; they had the churchmen, whose casuistry denied that the most intolerable tyranny could excuse resistance to a lawful government. These two propositions could not obtain general acceptation without rendering all national liberty precarious.

It has been always reckoned among the most difficult problems in the practical science of government, to combine an hereditary monarchy with security of freedom, so that neither the ambition of kings shall undermine the people's rights, nor the jealousy of the people overturn the throne. England had already experience of both these mischiefs. And there seemed no prospect before her, but either their alternate recurrence, or a final submission to absolute power, unless by one great effort she could put the monarchy for ever beneath the law, and reduce it to an integrant portion instead of the primary source and principle of the constitution. She must reverse the favoured maxim, "A Deo rex, à rege lex;" and make the Crown itself appear the creature of the law. But our ancient monarchy, strong in a possession of seven centuries, and in those high and paramount prerogatives which the consenting testimony of lawyers and the submission of parliaments had recognised, a monarchy from which the House of Commons and every existing peer, though not perhaps the aristocratic order itself, derived its participation in the legislature, could not be bent to the republican theories which have been not very successfully attempted in some modern codes of constitution. It could not be held, without breaking up all the foundations of our polity, that the monarchy emanated from the parliament, or even from the people. But by the revolution and by the act of settlement, the rights of the actual monarch, of the reigning family, were made to emanate from the parliament and the people. In technical language, in the grave and respectful theory of our constitution, the Crown is still the fountain from which law and justice spring forth. Its prerogatives are in the main the same as under the Tudors and the Stuarts; but the right of the house of Brunswick to exercise them can only be deduced from the convention of 1688.

The great advantage therefore of the revolution, as I would explicitly affirm, consists in that which was reckoned its reproach by many, and its misfortune by more; that it broke the line of succession. No other remedy could have been found, according to the temper and prejudices of those times, against the unceasing conspiracy of power. But when the very tenure of power was conditional, when the Crown, as we may say, gave recognisances for its good behaviour, when any violent and concerted aggressions on public liberty would have ruined those who could only resist an inveterate faction by the arms which liberty put in their hands, the several parts of the constitution were kept in cohesion by a tie far stronger than statutes, that of a common interest in its preservation. The attachment of James to popery, his infatuation, his obstinacy, his pusillanimity, nay even the death of the Duke of Gloucester, the life of the Prince of Wales, the extraordinary permanence and fidelity of his party, were all the destined means through which our present grandeur and liberty, our dignity of thinking on matters of government, have been perfected. Those liberal tenets, which at the æra of the revolution were maintained but by one denomination of English party, and rather perhaps on authority of not very good precedents in our history than of sound general reasoning, became in the course of the next generation almost equally the creed of the other, whose long exclusion from government taught them to solicit the people's favour; and by the time that Jacobitism was extinguished, had passed into received maxims of English politics. None at least would care to call them in question within the walls of parliament; nor have their opponents been of much credit in the paths of literature. Yet, as since the extinction of the house of Stuart's pretensions, and other events of the last half century, we have seen those exploded doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right revived under another name, and some have been willing to misrepresent the transactions of the revolution and the act of settlement as if they did not absolutely amount to a deposition of the reigning sovereign, and an election of a new dynasty by the representatives of the nation in parliament, it may be proper to state precisely the several votes, and to point out the impossibility of reconciling them to any gentler construction.

_Proceedings of the convention._--The Lords spiritual and temporal, to the number of about ninety, and an assembly of all who had sat in any of King Charles's parliaments, with the lord mayor and fifty of the common council, requested the Prince of Orange to take upon him the administration after the king's second flight, and to issue writs for a convention in the usual manner.[143] This was on the 26th of December; and the convention met on the 22nd of January. Their first care was to address the prince to take the administration of affairs and disposal of the revenue into his hands, in order to give a kind of parliamentary sanction to the power he already exercised. On the 28th of January the Commons, after a debate in which the friends of the late king made but a faint opposition, came to their great vote: That King James II., having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant. They resolved unanimously the next day, that it hath been found by experience inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince.[144] This vote was a remarkable triumph of the whig party, who had contended for the exclusion bill; and, on account of that endeavour to establish a principle which no one was now found to controvert, had been subjected to all the insults and reproaches of the opposite faction. The Lords agreed with equal unanimity to this vote; which, though it was expressed only as an abstract proposition, led by a practical inference to the whole change that the whigs had in view. But upon the former resolution several important divisions took place. The first question put, in order to save a nominal allegiance to the late king, was, whether a regency with the administration of regal power under the style of King James II. during the life of the said King James, be the best and safest way to preserve the protestant religion and the laws of this kingdom? This was supported both by those peers who really meant to exclude the king from the enjoyment of power, such as Nottingham, its great promoter, and by those who, like Clarendon, were anxious for his return upon terms of security for their religion and liberty. The motion was lost by fifty-one to forty-nine; and this seems to have virtually decided, in the judgment of the house, that James had lost the throne.[145] The Lords then resolved that there was an original contract between the king and people, by fifty-five to forty-six; a position that seems rather too theoretical, yet necessary at that time, as denying the divine origin of monarchy, from which its absolute and indefeasible authority had been plausibly derived. They concurred, without much debate, in the rest of the Commons' vote; till they came to the clause that he had abdicated the government, for which they substituted the word "deserted." They next omitted the final and most important clause, that the throne was thereby vacant, by a majority of fifty-five to forty-one. This was owing to the party of Lord Danby, who asserted a devolution of the Crown on the Princess of Orange. It seemed to be tacitly understood by both sides that the infant child was to be presumed spurious. This at least was a necessary supposition for the tories, who sought in the idle rumours of the time an excuse for abandoning his right. As to the whigs, though they were active in discrediting this unfortunate boy's legitimacy, their own broad principles of changing the line of succession rendered it, in point of argument, a superfluous enquiry. The tories, who had made little resistance to the vote of abdication, when it was proposed in the Commons, recovered courage by this difference between the two houses; and perhaps by observing the king's party to be stronger out of doors than it had appeared to be, were able to muster 151 voices against 282 in favour of agreeing with the Lords in leaving out the clause about the vacancy of the throne.[146] There was still, however, a far greater preponderance of the whigs in one part of the convention, than of the tories in the other. In the famous conference that ensued between committees of the two houses upon these amendments, it was never pretended that the word "abdication" was used in its ordinary sense, for a voluntary resignation of the Crown. The Commons did not practise so pitiful a subterfuge. Nor could the Lords explicitly maintain, whatever might be the wishes of their managers, that the king was not expelled and excluded as much by their own word "desertion" as by that which the lower house had employed. Their own previous vote against a regency was decisive upon this point.[147] But as abdication was a gentler term than forfeiture, so desertion appeared a still softer method of expressing the same idea. Their chief objection, however, to the former word was that it led, or might seem to lead, to the vacancy of the throne, against which their principal arguments were directed. They contended that in our government there could be no interval or vacancy, the heir's right being complete by a demise of the Crown; so that it would at once render the monarchy elective, if any other person were designated to the succession. The Commons did not deny that the present case was one of election, though they refused to allow that the monarchy was thus rendered perpetually elective. They asked, supposing a right to descend upon the next heir, who was that heir to inherit it; and gained one of their chief advantages by the difficulty of evading this question. It was indeed evident that, if the Lords should carry their amendments, an enquiry into the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales could by no means be dispensed with. Unless that could be disproved more satisfactorily than they had reason to hope, they must come back to the inconveniences of a regency, with the prospect of bequeathing interminable confusion to their posterity. For, if the descendants of James should continue in the Roman catholic religion, the nation might be placed in the ridiculous situation of acknowledging a dynasty of exiled kings, whose lawful prerogative would be withheld by another race of protestant regents. It was indeed strange to apply the provisional substitution of a regent in cases of infancy or imbecility of mind to a prince of mature age, and full capacity for the exercise of power. Upon the king's return to England, this delegated authority must cease of itself; unless supported by votes of parliament as violent and incompatible with the regular constitution as his deprivation of the royal title, but far less secure for the subject, whom the statute of Henry VII. would shelter in paying obedience to a king de facto; while the fate of Sir Henry Vane was an awful proof that no other name could give countenance to usurpation. A great part of the nation not thirty years before had been compelled by acts of parliament[148] to declare upon oath their abhorrence of that traitorous position, that arms might be taken up by the king's authority against his person or those commissioned by him, through the influence of those very tories or loyalists who had now recourse to the identical distinction between the king's natural and political capacity, for which the presbyterians had incurred so many reproaches.

In this conference, however, if the whigs had every advantage on the solid grounds of expediency, or rather political necessity, the tories were as much superior in the mere argument, either as it regarded the common sense of words, or the principles of our constitutional law. Even should we admit that an hereditary king is competent to abdicate the throne in the name of all his posterity, this could only be intended of a voluntary and formal cession, not such a constructive abandonment of his right by misconduct as the Commons had imagined. The word "forfeiture" might better have answered this purpose; but it had seemed too great a violence on principles which it was more convenient to undermine than to assault. Nor would even forfeiture bear out by analogy the exclusion of an heir, whose right was not liable to be set aside at the ancestor's pleasure. It was only by recurring to a kind of paramount, and what I may call hyper-constitutional law, a mixture of force and regard to the national good, which is the best sanction of what is done in revolutions, that the vote of the Commons could be defended. They proceeded not by the stated rules of the English government, but the general rights of mankind. They looked not so much to Magna Charta as the original compact of society, and rejected Coke and Hale for Hooker and Harrington.

The House of Lords, after this struggle against principles undoubtedly very novel in the discussions of parliament, gave way to the strength of circumstance and the steadiness of the Commons. They resolved not to insist on their amendments to the original vote; and followed this up by a resolution, that the Prince and Princess of Orange shall be declared King and Queen of England, and all the dominions thereunto belonging.[149] But the Commons with a noble patriotism delayed to concur in this hasty settlement of the Crown, till they should have completed the declaration of those fundamental rights and liberties for the sake of which alone they had gone forward with this great revolution.[150] That declaration, being at once an exposition of the misgovernment which had compelled them to dethrone the late king, and of the conditions upon which they elected his successors, was incorporated in the final resolution to which both houses came on the 13th of February, extending the limitation of the Crown as far as the state of affairs required: "That William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them, the said prince and princess, during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them; and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in, and executed by, the said Prince of Orange, in the names of the said prince and princess, during their joint lives; and after their decease the said crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said princess; for default of such issue, to the Princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue, to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange."

Thus, to sum up the account of this extraordinary change in our established monarchy, the convention pronounced, under the slight disguise of a word unusual in the language of English law, that the actual sovereign had forfeited his right to the nation's allegiance. It swept away by the same vote the reversion of his posterity, and of those who could claim the inheritance of the Crown. It declared that, during an interval of nearly two months, there was no king of England; the monarchy lying, as it were, in abeyance from the 23rd of December to the 13th of February. It bestowed the Crown on William jointly with his wife indeed, but so that her participation of the sovereignty should be only in name.[151] It postponed the succession of the Princess Anne during his life. Lastly, it made no provision for any future devolution of the Crown in failure of issue from those to whom it was thus limited, leaving that to the wisdom of future parliaments. Yet only eight years before, nay much less, a large part of the nation had loudly proclaimed the incompetency of a full parliament, with a lawful king at its head, to alter the lineal course of succession. No whig had then openly professed the doctrine, that not only a king, but an entire royal family, might be set aside for public convenience. The notion of an original contract was denounced as a republican chimera. The deposing of kings was branded as the worst birth of popery and fanaticism. If other revolutions have been more extensive in their effect on the established government, few perhaps have displayed a more rapid transition of public opinion. For it cannot be reasonably doubted that the majority of the nation went along with the vote of their representatives. Such was the termination of that contest, which the house of Stuart had obstinately maintained against the liberties, and of late, against the religion of England; or rather, of that far more ancient controversy between the Crown and the people which had never been wholly at rest since the reign of John. During this long period, the balance, except in a few irregular intervals, had been swayed in favour of the Crown; and, though the government of England was always a monarchy limited by law, though it always, or at least since the admission of the commons into the legislature, partook of the three simple forms, yet the character of a monarchy was evidently prevalent over the other parts of the constitution. But, since the revolution of 1688, and particularly from thence to the death of George II., it seems equally just to say, that the predominating character has been aristocratical; the prerogative being in some respects too limited, and in others too little capable of effectual exercise, to counterbalance the hereditary peerage, and that class of great territorial proprietors, who, in a political division, are to be reckoned among the proper aristocracy of the kingdom. This, however, will be more fully explained in the two succeeding chapters, which are to terminate the present work.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Fox, Appendix, p. 8.

[76] "The legal method," says Burnet, "was to have made entries, and to have taken bonds for those duties to be paid when the parliament should meet and renew the grant." Mr. Onslow remarks on this, that he should have said, the least illegal and the only justifiable method. To which the Oxford editor subjoins that it was the proposal of Lord-Keeper North, while the other, which was adopted, was suggested by Jefferies. This is a mistake. North's proposal was to collect the duties under the proclamation, but to keep them apart from the other revenues in the exchequer until the next session of parliament. There was surely little difference in point of illegality between this and the course adopted. It was alleged that the merchants, who had paid duty, would be injured by a temporary importation duty free; and certainly it was inconvenient to make the revenue dependent on such a contingency as the demise of the Crown. But this neither justifies the proclamation, nor the disgraceful acquiescence of the next parliament in it.

The king was thanked in several addresses for directing the customs to be levied, particularly in one from the benchers and barristers of the Middle Temple. _London Gazette_, March 11. This was drawn by Sir Bartholomew Shower, and presented by Sir Humphrey Mackworth. _Life of James_, vol. ii. p. 17. The former was active as a lawyer in all the worst measures of these two reigns. Yet, after the revolution, they both became tory patriots, and jealous assertors of freedom against the government of William III. Barillon, however, takes notice that this illegal continuance of the revenue produced much discontent. Fox's Appendix, 39; and Rochester told him that North and Halifax would have urged the king to call a parliament, in order to settle the revenue on a lawful basis, if that resolution had not been taken by himself. _Id._ p. 20. The king thought it necessary to apologise to Barillon for convoking parliament. _Id._ p. 18; Dalrymple, p. 100.

[77] Dalrymple, p. 142. The king alludes to this possibility of a limited grant with much resentment and threatening, in his speech on opening the session.

[78] Fox, Appendix, p. 93; Lonsdale, p. 5.

[79] For this curious piece of parliamentary inconsistency, see Reresby's _Memoirs_, p. 113, and Barillon in the Appendix to Fox, p. 95. "Il s'est passé avant hier une chose de grande conséquence dans la chambre basse: il fut proposé le matin que la chambre se mettoit en comité l'après diner pour considérer la harangue du roy sur l'affaire de la religion, et savoir ce qui devoit être entendu par le terme _de religion protestante_. La résolution fut prise unanimement, et sans contradiction, de faire une adresse au roy pour le prier de faire une proclamation pour l'exécution des loix contre tous les nonconformistes généralement, c'est-à-dire, contre tous ceux qui ne sont pas ouvertement de l'église Anglicane; cela enferme les presbitériens et tous les sectaires, aussi bien que les catholiques Romains. La malice de cette résolution fut aussitôt reconnu du roy d'Angleterre, et de ses ministres; les principaux de la chambre basse furent mandés, et ceux que sa majesté Britannique croit être dans ses intérêts; il leur fit une réprimande sévère de s'être laissés séduire et entraîner à une résolution si dangereuse et si peu admissible. Il leur déclara que, si l'on persistoit à lui faire une pareille adresse, il répondroit à la chambre basse en termes si décisifs et si fermes qu'on ne retourneroit pas à lui faire une pareille adresse. La manière dont sa majesté Britannique s'explique produisit son effet hier matin; et la chambre basse rejeta tout d'une voix ce que avoit été résolu en comité le jour auparavant."

The only man who behaved with distinguished spirit in this wretched parliament was one in whose political life there is little else to praise, Sir Edward Seymour. He opposed the grant of the revenues for life, and spoke strongly against the illegal practices in the elections. Fox, 90, 93.

[80] Fox, Appendix, p. 156. "Provided always, and be it further enacted, that if any peer of this realm, or member of the House of Commons, shall move or propose in either house of parliament the disherison of the rightful and true heir of the Crown, or to alter or change the descent or succession of the Crown in the right line; such offence shall be deemed and adjudged high treason, and every person being indicted and convicted of such treason, shall be proceeded against, and shall suffer and forfeit as in other cases of high treason mentioned in this act."

See what Lord Lonsdale says (p. 8) of this bill, which he, among others, contrived to weaken by provisoes, so that it was given up.

[81] _Parl. Hist._ 1372. The king's speech had evidently shown that the supply was only demanded for this purpose. The speaker, on presenting the bill for settling the revenue in the former session, claimed it as a merit that they had not inserted any appropriating clauses. _Parl. Hist._ 1359.

[82] Reresby, p. 110; Barillon, in Fox's Appendix, pp. 93, 127, etc. Le feu roi d'Angleterre et celui-ci m'ont souvent dit, qu'un gouvernement ne peut subsister avec une telle loi. Dalrymple, p. 171.

[83] This opinion has been well supported by Mr. Serjeant Heywood (_Vindication of Mr. Fox's History_, p. 154). In some few of Barillon's letters to the King of France, he speaks of James's intention établir la religion catholique; but these perhaps might be explained by a far greater number of passages, where he says only établir le libre exercice de la religion catholique, and by the general tenor of his correspondence. But though the primary object was toleration, I have no doubt but that they conceived this was to end in establishment. See what Barillon says (p. 84); though the legal reasoning is false, as might be expected from a foreigner. It must at all events be admitted that the conduct of the king after the formation of the catholic junto in 1686, demonstrates an intention of overthrowing the Anglican establishment.

[84] "Il [le roy] me répondit à ce que je venois de dire, que je connoissois le fond de ses intentions pour l'établissement de la religion catholique; qu'il n'esperoit en venir à bout que par l'assistance de V. M.; que je voyois qu'il venoit de donner des emplois dans ses troupes aux catholiques aussi bien qu'aux protestans; que cette égalité fâchoit beaucoup de gens, mais qu'il n'avoit pas laissé passer une occasion si importante sans s'en prévaloir; qu'il feroit de même à l'égard des choses practicables, et que je voyois plus clair sur cela dans ses desseins que ses propres ministres, s'en étant souvent ouvert avec moi sans reserve."--P. 104. In a second conversation immediately afterwards, the king repeated, "que je connoissois le fond de ses desseins, et que je pouvois répondre que tout son but étoit d'établir la religion catholique; qu'il ne perdroit aucune occasion de la faire ... que peu à peu il va à son but, et que ce qu'il fait presentement emporte nécessairement l'exercice libre de la religion catholique, qui se trouvera établi avant qu'un acte de parlement l'autorise; que je connoissois assez l'Angleterre pour savoir que la possibilité d'avoir des emplois et des charges fera plus de catholiques que la permission de dire des messes publiques; que cependant il s'attendoit que V. M. ne l'abandonneroit pas," etc. P. 106. Sunderland entered on the same subject, saying, "Je ne sais pas si l'on voit en France les choses comme elles sont ici; mais je défie ceux qui les voyent de près de ne pas connoître que le roy mon maître n'a rien dans le cœur si avant que l'envie d'établir la religion catholique; qu'il ne peut même, selon le bon sens et la droite raison, avoir d'autre but; que sans cela il ne sera jamais en sûreté, et sera toujours exposé au zèle indiscret de ceux qui échaufferont les peuples contre la catholicité, tant qu'elle ne sera pas _plus_ pleinement établie; il y a une autre chose certaine, c'est que ce plan là ne peut réussir que par un concert et une liaison étroite avec le roi votre maître; c'est un projet qui ne peut convenir qu'à lui, ni réussir que par lui. Toutes les autres puissances s'y opposeront ouvertement, ou le traverseront sous main. On sait bien que cela ne convient point au Prince d'Orange; mais s'il ne sera pas en état de l'empêcher si on veut se conduire en France comme il est nécessaire, c'est-à-dire ménager l'amitié du roy d'Angleterre, et le contenir dans son projet. Je vois clairement l'appréhension que beaucoup de gens ont d'une liaison avec la France, et les efforts qu'on fait pour l'affoiblir; mais cela ne sera au pouvoir de personne, si on n'en a pas envie ce France; c'est sur quoi il faut que vous vouz expliquiez nettement, que vous fassiez connoître que le roi votre maître veut aider de bonne foi le roi d'Angleterre à établir fermement la religion catholique."

The word _plus_ in the above passage is not in Dalrymple's extract from this letter. Vol. ii. part ii. pp. 174, 187. Yet for omitting this word Serjeant Heywood (not having attended to Dalrymple), censures Mr. Rose as if it had been done purposely. _Vindic. of Fox_, p. 154. But this is not quite judicious or equitable, since another critic might suggest that it was purposely interpolated. No one of common candour would suspect this of Mr. Fox; but his copyist, I presume, was not infallible. The word _plus_ is evidently incorrect. The catholic religion was not established at all in any possible sense; what room could there be for the comparative? M. Mazure, who has more lately perused the letters of Barillon at Paris, prints the passage without _plus_. _Hist. de la Révol._ ii. 36. Certainly the whole conversation here ascribed to Sunderland points at something far beyond the free exercise of the Roman catholic religion.

[85] It is curious to remark that both James and Louis considered the re-establishment of the catholic religion and of the royal authority as closely connected, and parts of one great system. Barillon in Fox, Append. 19, 57; Mazure, i. 346. Mr. Fox maintains (_Hist._ p. 102) that the great object of the former was absolute power rather than the interests of popery. Doubtless if James had been a protestant, his encroachments on the rights of his subjects would not have been less than they were, though not exactly of the same nature; but the main object of his reign can hardly be denied to have been either the full toleration, or the national establishment of the church of Rome. Mr. Fox's remark must, at all events, be limited to the year 1685.

[86] Fox, Appendix, p. 33; Ralph, 869. The prosecution of Baxter for what was called reflecting on the bishops, is an instance of this. _State Trials_, ii. 494. Notwithstanding James's affected zeal for toleration, he did not scruple to congratulate Louis on the success of his very different mode of converting heretics. Yet I rather believe him to have been really averse to persecution; though with true Stuart insincerity he chose to flatter his patron. Dalrymple, p. 177. A book by Claude, published in Holland, entitled _Plaintes des Protestans cruellement opprimés dans le royaume de France_, was ordered to be burned by the hangman, on the complaint of the French ambassador, and the translator and printer to be enquired after and prosecuted. _Lond. Gazette_, May 8, 1686. Jefferies objected to this in council as unusual; but the king was determined to gratify his most christian brother. Mazure, ii. 122. It is said also that one of the reasons for the disgrace of Lord Halifax was his speaking warmly about the revocation of the edict of Nantes. _Id._ p. 55. Yet James sometimes blamed this himself, so as to displease Louis. _Id._ p. 56. In fact, it very much tended to obstruct his own views for the establishment of a religion which had just shown itself in so odious a form. For this reason, though a brief was read in churches for the sufferers, special directions were given that there should be no sermon. It is even said that he took on himself the distribution of the money collected for the refugees, in order to stop the subscription; or at least that his interference had that effect. The enthusiasm for the French protestants was such that single persons subscribed 500 or 1000 pounds; which, relatively to the opulence of the kingdom, almost equals any munificence of this age. _Id._ p. 123.