[1688 A.D.] dominant. The strife between the two principles had been long, fierce, and doubtful. It had lasted through four reigns. It had produced seditions, impeachments, rebellions, battles, sieges, proscriptions, judicial massacres. Sometimes liberty, sometimes royalty, had seemed to be on the point of perishing. During many years one half of the energy of England had been employed in counteracting the other half. The executive power and the legislative power had so effectually impeded each other that the state had been of no account in Europe. The king-at-arms, who proclaimed William and Mary before Whitehall Gate, did in truth announce that this great struggle was over; that there was entire union between the throne and the parliament; that England, long dependent and degraded, was again a power of the first rank; that the ancient laws by which the prerogative was bounded would thenceforth be held as sacred as the prerogative itself, and would be followed out to all their consequences; that the executive administration would be conducted in conformity with the sense of the representatives of the nation; and that no reform, which the two houses should, after mature deliberation, propose, would be obstinately withstood by the sovereign.

The Declaration of Right, though it made nothing law which had not been law before, contained the germ of the law which gave religious freedom to the dissenter, of the law which secured the independence of the judges, of the law which limited the duration of parliaments, of the law which placed the liberty of the press under the protection of juries, of the law which prohibited the slave trade, of the law which abolished the sacramental test, of the law which relieved the Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, of the law which reformed the representative system, of every good law which has been passed during a hundred and sixty years, of every good law which may hereafter, in the course of ages, be found necessary to promote the public weal, and to satisfy the demands of public opinion.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this, that it was our last revolution. Several generations have now passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman has meditated resistance to the established government. In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, daily strengthened by experience, that the means of effecting every improvement which the constitution requires may be found within the constitution itself.b

It is, indeed, difficult to conceive the full amount of the impetus given to English civilisation by the expulsion of the house of Stuart. Among the most immediate results, may be mentioned the limits that were set to the royal prerogative; the important steps that were taken towards religious toleration; the remarkable and permanent improvement in the administration of justice; the final abolition of a censorship over the press; and, what has not excited sufficient attention, the rapid growth of those great monetary interests by which, as we shall hereafter see, the prejudices of the superstitious classes have in no small degree been counterbalanced. These are the main characteristics of the reign of William III; a reign often aspersed, and little understood, but of which it may be truly said, that, taking its difficulties into due consideration, it is the most successful and the most splendid recorded in the history of any country.- BUCKLE.

PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS: THE BILL OF RIGHTS

THE new reign was commenced (February 14th) with a proclamation confirming all Protestants in the offices which they held. The king then nominated the privy-council and appointed to the offices of state; in both cases selecting from the ranks of whigs and tories, with a preponderance however of the former. Danby was made president of the council; Halifax, privy-seal; Nottingham and Shrewsbury, secretaries of state. The treasury, admiralty, and chancery, were put into commission.

Judging it inexpedient, under the present circumstances of the country, to risk the experiment of a new election, the king and council resolved to convert the convention into a parliament. This was effected by the simple expedient of the king's going in state to the house of peers on the 18th, and

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addressing both houses from the throne. A bill declaring the lords and commons assembled at Westminster to be the two houses of parliament was then passed, and the royal assent being given on the 23rd, the convention became a parliament. In this act a new oath to be taken on the first of March was substituted for the old ones of allegiance and supremacy. It was refused by the primate and seven of his suffragans; and among the temporal peers, by the duke of Newcastle, the earls of Litchfield, Exeter, Yarmouth, and Stafford, and the lords Griffin and Stawell. Hence the party of which they were the heads derived the name of nonjurors; their principle was a blind, stupid veneration for absolute power, and for the hereditary divine rights of princes a principle, if followed out, utterly subversive of every kind of liberty. The pernicious distinction between a king de jure and a king de facto, now first came into operation. It answers no purpose but to foster disloyalty and occasion rebellion. A Bill of Rights the same in substance with the Declaration of Right was passed. One of its provisions was, that all persons holding communion with the church of Rome, or marrying a papist, should be excluded from the crown and government, and that in such cases the people should be absolved from their allegiance, and the crown should descend to the next heir being a Protestant.

The settlement of the revenue was an important question. The courtiers maintained that the revenue settled on the late king for life came of course to the present king; but the commons could only be induced to grant it for one year. They readily granted a sum of £600,000 to remunerate the states for the expense they had been at; and on information of King James having landed in Ireland, they voted funds for an army and navy.9

William looked upon many unsettled questions with a wider range of view than his own council, or the grand council of the nation. He was confident in the justice and necessity of the objects for which he desired to have his hands strengthened. The parliament refused its confidence. The king desired to carry out the fullest principles of religious liberty that were consistent with the public safety. The parliament thought that there was a very strict limit even for toleration. And yet, out of these differences, resulted much practical good. The king wished to have ample means for maintaining the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, for the pacification of Scotland, for giving efficiency to the confederacy against the ambition of the French. The commons manifested a greater jealousy of entrusting the supplies to their deliverer than they had manifested towards their oppressor. There were immediate evil consequences. The Roman Catholic adherents of James devastated the Protestant settlements in Ireland; the standard of resistance was successfuly reared in Scotland; Louis threatened England with invasion, and was marching a great army upon Holland.

But the benefits of the jealousy of the commons are felt to this day. Those whigs who carried their confidence in the intentions of William to an extreme, were of opinion that the revenue which had been settled upon King James for life should revert to the sovereign who had taken his place. Some tories, who were adverse to the government, but were eager to secure power by a simulated confidence in the king, agreed in this view. The majority in parliament successfully resisted it. To abolish the hearth-money, or chimneytax, an especial tax upon the poor, was a duty to which William was called by the earnest solicitations of the crowds who followed his march from Tor Bay to London. But he frankly said to parliament, "as in this his majesty doth consider the ease of the subject, so he doth not doubt but you will be careful of the support of the crown." The official biographer of James II sneers at

[1689 A.D.] William's self-denial; "He wheedled them [the commons] with a remission of chimney-money, when he was well assured he should be no loser by his generosity, and that it would be only like throwing water into a dry pump to make it suck better below, and cast it out with more abundance above." This was not exactly the best mode of wheedling the rich country gentlemen by removing a tax from the cottage to put it in some shape upon the mansion. Yet the commons respected the motive of the king, and substituted less oppressive taxes. But they declined to grant the temporary revenue for the

lives of the king and queen. The hereditary revenue they did not touch. Moreover they

resolved that whatever sums they voted should be appropriated to particular services, according to estimates.

This principle, partially adhered to in the time of Charles II, but wholly disregarded by the parliament of his successor, has from the time of the revolution been the great security of the nation against the wanton and corrupt expenditure of the crown. Parliament may make lavish votes; but there must be a distinct vote in every case for the service of a particular department which renders the legislative power so really supreme in England; it is this which renders it impossible that an executive can subsist except in concord with the representatives of the people. England therefore owes a debt of gratitude to the parliament of the revolution, that they clung to a principle and established a practice which have never since been departed from. A tem

porary vote of credit is sometimes asked under extraordinary circumstances; but the constitutional right of appropriation, always secured in the express words of a grant of supply, is the general rule which no minister would dare to ask the representatives of the people to forego.

But if the parliament of William and Mary is to be commended for their jealousy of the king in the matter of revenue, we may doubt if they were equally wise in halting far short of his known wishes in the great questions of religious liberty and religious union. If the king's abstract sense of what was due to the consciences of men could have been carried out, England might have been saved from a century and a quarter of bitter animosities; and the Church of England might have been more secure and more influential, than during the long period when the Test Act remained in force against Protestants, and Roman Catholics were not only ineligible to civil offices, but

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had to undergo what we now justly regard as persecution. But in this, as in all other cases, no reform can be permanent which is premature.c

The coronation took place on the 11th of April; the bishop of London officiating in place of the nonjuring primate. Several titles and honours had previously been conferred. The marquis of Winchester was made duke of Bolton; lords Mordaunt and Churchill, earls of Monmouth and Marlborough; Henry Sidney, Viscount Sidney; the king's Dutch favourite Bentinck, earl of Portland, etc. Shortly after (24th), the earl of Danby was created marquis of Carmarthen. The celebrated Dr. Burnet was also rewarded for his exertions in the cause of civil and religious liberty by being raised to the see of Salisbury. The judicial bench was purified and filled with men of sound constitutional principles; Holt, Pollexfen, and Atkins being placed at the head of the three law-courts: Treby was made attorney- and Somers solicitorgeneral. Somers was the son of a highly respectable attorney at Worcester, and having graduated at Oxford he went to the bar. He distinguished himself as one of the counsel for the seven bishops, and he was one of the managers in the conference between the two houses at the time of the Revolution. He was henceforth regarded as a leader of the whig party.

THE ACT OF TOLERATION

It was the earnest wish of the king and of the more liberal statesmen, to reward the dissenters for their meritorious conduct during the late crisis by removing all disqualifications under which they laboured. It was first attempted to have the sacramental test omitted in the new oaths; but that failing, a bill was brought in to exempt them from the penalties of certain laws. This, named the Act of Toleration, was passed: though the Catholics were not included in it, they felt the benefit of it, and William always treated them with lenity. A bill of comprehension passed the lords, but miscarried in the commons. The attainders of Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, Alderman Cornish, and Mrs. Lisle, were reversed. Johnson's sentence was annulled, and he received 1,000l. and a pension. Among those rewarded at this time was the notorious Titus Oates.

William's main object, as we have seen, was to engage England in the great confederacy lately formed against the French king. As Louis was now openly assisting King James, the commons presented an address (April 26th) assuring the king of their support in case he should think fit to engage in the war with France. William required no more; he declared war without delay (May 7th).

We must now take a view of the state of affairs in Scotland and Ireland at this time [leaving the reader to find fuller details in the separate histories of those countries]. As Scotland had been the victim of a civil and religious despotism such as the Stuarts had never dared to exercise in England, the friends of William were necessarily the majority in that country. After the flight of James, such of the Scottish nobility and gentry as were in London presented an address to the prince, vesting in him the administration and the revenue, and requesting him to call a convention of the states of Scotland. With this request he of course complied; and when the convention met (March 14th), the whigs had a decided majority. It was voted, that King James "had forfaulted [forfeited] the right of the crown, and the throne was become vacant." On the 11th of April William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen of Scotland, and three deputies were sent to London to admin