All that had passed in the former reign served to humble the tories, and to enfeeble their principle. The revolution itself, and the votes upon which it was founded, the bill of recognition in 1690, the repeal of the non-resisting test, the act of settlement, the oath of abjuration, were solemn adjudications, as it were, against their creed. They took away the old argument, that the letter of the law was on their side. If this indeed were all usurpation, the answer was ready; but those who did not care to make it, or by their submission put it out of their power, were compelled to sacrifice not a little of that which had entered into the definition of a tory. Yet even this had not a greater effect than that systematic jealousy and dislike of the administration, which made them encroach, according to ancient notions, and certainly their own, on the prerogative of William. They learned in this no unpleasing lesson to popular assemblies, to magnify their own privileges and the rights of the people. This tone was often assumed by the friends of the exiled family, and in them it was without any dereliction of their object. It was natural that a jacobite should use popular topics in order to thwart and subvert an usurping government. His faith was to the crown, but to the crown on a right head. In a tory who voluntarily submitted to the reigning prince, such an opposition to the prerogative was repugnant to the maxims of his creed, and placed him, as I have said, in a false position. This is of course applicable to the reigns of George I and II, and in a greater degree, in proportion as the tory and jacobite were more separated than they had been perhaps under William.

The tories gave a striking proof how far they might be brought to abandon their theories, in supporting an address to the queen that she would invite the princess

Sophia to take up her residence in England; a measure so unnatural as well as imprudent, that some have ascribed it to a subtlety of politics which I do not comprehend. But we need not, perhaps, look farther than to the blind rage of a party just discarded, who, out of pique towards their sovereign, made her more irreconcileably their enemy, and while they hoped to brand their opponents with inconsistency, forgot that the imputation would redound with tenfold force on themselves. The whigs justly resisted a proposal so little called for at that time, but it led to an act for the security of the succession, designating a regency in the event of the queen's decease, and providing that the actual parliament, or the last, if none were in being, should meet immediately, and continue for six months, unless dissolved by the successor.'

In the conduct of this party, generally speaking, we do not, I think, find any abandonment of the cause of liberty. The whigs appear to have been zealous for bills excluding placemen from the house, or limiting their numbers in it; and the abolition of the Scots privycouncil, an odious and despotic tribunal, was owing in a great measure to the authority of lord Somers. In these measures, however, the tories generally co-operated,

4 Anne, c. 8. Parl. Hist. 457, et post.; Burnet, 429.

26 Anne, c. 6. Parl. Hist. 613. Somerville, 296. Hardw. Papers, ii. 473. Cunningham attests the zeal of the whigs for abolishing the Scots privy-council, though he is wrong in reckoning lord Cowper among them, whose name appears in the protest on the other side, ii. 135, etc. The distinction of old and modern whigs appeared again in this reign, the former professing, and in general feeling, a more steady attachment to the principles of civil liberty. Sir Peter King, sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Wortley, Mr. Hampden, and the historian himself, were of this description, and consequently did not always support Godolphin. P. 210, etc. Mr. Wortley brought in a bill,

and it is certainly difficult in the history of any nation, to separate the influence of sincere patriotism from that of animosity and thirst of power. But one memorable event in the reign of Anne gave an opportunity for bringing the two theories of government into collision, to the signal advantage of that which the whigs professed; I mean the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell. Though with a view to the interests of their ministry, this prosecution was very unadvised, and has been deservedly censured, it was of high importance in a constitutional light, and is not only the most authentic exposition, but the most authoritative ratification of the principles upon which the revolution is to be defended. '

The charge against Sacheverell was not for impugning what was done at the revolution, which he affected to vindicate, but for maintaining that it was not a case of resistance to the supreme power, and consequently no exception to his tenet of an unlimited passive obedience. The managers of the impeachment had therefore not only to prove that there was resistance in the revolution which could not of course be sincerely disputed, but to assert the lawfulness, in great emergencies, or what is called in politics necessity, of taking arms against the

which passed the commons in 1710, for voting by ballot. It was opposed by Wharton and Godolphin in the lords, as dangerous to the constitution, and thrown out. Wortley, he says, went the next year to Venice, on purpose to inquire into the effects of the ballot which prevailed universally in that republic. P. 285.

'Parl. Hist. vi. 805. Burnet, 537. State Trials, xv. 1. It is said in Coxe's Life of Marlborough, iii. 141, that Marlborough and Somers were against this prosecution. This writer goes out of his way to make a false and impertinent remark on the managers of the impeachment, as giving encouragement by their speeches to licentiousness and sedi

tion. Id. 166.

law a delicate matter to treat of at any time, and not least so by ministers of state and law officers of the crown, in the very presence, as they knew, of their sovereign'. We cannot praise too highly their speeches upon this charge; some shades, rather of discretion than discordance, may be perceptible; and we may distinguish the warmth of Lechmere, or the openness of Stanhope, from the caution of Walpole, who betrays more anxiety than his colleagues to give no offence in the highest quarter; but in every one the same fundamental principles of the whig creed, except on which indeed the impeachment could not rest, are unambiguously proclaimed. "Since we must give up our right

* "The managers appointed by the house of commons, says an ardent jacobite, “behaved with all the insolence imaginable. In their discourse they boldly asserted, even in her majesty's presence, that if the right to the crown was hereditary and indefeasible, the prince beyond seas, meaning the king, and not the queen, had the legal title to it, she having no claim thereto, but what she owed to the people; and that by the revolution principles, on which the constitution was founded and to which the laws of the land agreed, the people might turn out or lay aside their sovereigns as they saw cause. Though, no doubt of it, there was a great deal of truth in these assertions, it is easy to be believed that the queen was not well pleased to hear them maintained, even in her own presence and in so solemn a manner, before such a great concourse of her subjects. For though princes do cherish these and the like doctrines, whilst they serve as the means to advance themselves to a crown, yet being once possessed thereof, they have as little satisfaction in them ad those who succeed by an hereditary unquestionable title." Lockhart Papers, i. 312.

It is probable enough that the last remark had its weight, and that the queen did not wholly like the speeches of some of the managers ; and yet nothing can be more certain than that she owed her crown in the first instance, and the preservation of it at that very time, to those insolent doctrines which wounded her royal ear; and that the genuine loyalists would soon have lodged her in the Tower.

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to the laws and liberties of this kingdom," says sir Joseph Jekyll, or which is all one, be precarious in the enjoyment of them, and hold them only during pleasure, if this doctrine of unlimited non-resistance prevails, the commons have been content to undertake this prosecution." The doctrine of unlimited, unconditional passive obedience," says Mr. says Mr. Walpole, "was first invented to support arbitrary and despotic power, and was never promoted or countenanced by any government that had not designs some time or other of making use of it". "And thus general Stanhope still more vigorously: "As to the doctrine itself of absolute non-resistance, it should seem needless to prove by arguments, that it is inconsistent with the law of reason, with the law of nature, and with the practice of all ages and countries. Nor is it very material what the opinions of some particular divines, or even the doctrine generally preached in some particular reigns, may have been concerning it. It is sufficient for us to know what the practice of the church of England has been when it found itself oppressed. And indeed one may appeal to the practice of all churches, of all states, and of all nations in the world, how they behaved themselves when they found their civil and religious constitutions invaded and oppressed by tyranny. believe we may further venture to say, that there is not at this day subsisting any nation or government in the world, whose first original did not receive its foundation either from resistance or compact; and as to our purpose, it is equal if the latter be admitted. For wherever compact is admitted, there must be admitted likewise a right to defend the rights accruing by such compact. State Trials, xv. 95.

2 Id. 115.

I