ship. "While I am your highness's servant," said the brave and honest divine, "it would be unseemly in me to oppose any plan which may have your countenance. I therefore desire to he set free, that I may fight the princess's battle with every faculty that God has given me." "I think, doctor," said William, with characteristic coolness, "that you had better stay where you are. It will surely be time for you to quit me when I do something of which you disapprove." In a few hours the scheme which had excited Burnet's resentment was entirely given up; and all those who considered James as no longer king were agreed as to the way in which the throne must be filled. William and Mary must be king and queen. The heads of both must appear together on the coin; writs must run in the names of both; both must enjoy all the personal dignities and immunities of royalty; but the administration, which could not be safely divided, must belong to William alone.* And now the time arrived for the free conference between the Houses. The managers for the Lords, in their robes, took their seats along one side of the table in the Painted Chamber; but the crowd of members of the House of Commons on the other side was so great that the gentlemen who were to argue the question in vain tried to get through. It was not without much difficulty and long delay that the serjeant at arms was able to clear a passage.† At length the discussion began. A full report of the speeches ›n both sides has come down to us. There are few students of history who have not taken up that report with eager curiosity and laid it down with disappointment. The question between the Houses was argued on both sides as a question of law. The objections which the Lords made to the resolution of the Commons were verbal and technical, and were met by verbal and technical answers. Somers vindicated the use of the word abdication by quotations from Grotius and Brissonius, Spigelius and Bartolus. When he was challenged to show any authority for the proposition that England could be without a sovereign, he produced the parliament roll of the year 1399, in which it was expressly set forth that the kingly office was vacant during the interval between the resignation of Richard the Second and the enthroning of Henry the Fourth. The Lords * Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Burnet, i. 818. replied by producing the parliament roll of the first year of Edward the Fourth, from which it appeared that the record of 1399 had been solemnly annulled. They therefore maintained that the precedent on which Somers relied was no longer valid. Treby then came to Somers's assistance, and brought forth the parliament roll of the first year of Henry the Seventh, which repealed the act of Edward the Fourth, and consequently restored the validity of the record of 1399. After a colloquy of several hours the disputants separated.* The Lords assembled in their own house. It was well understood that they were about to yield, and that the conference had been a mere form. The friends of Mary had found that, by setting her up as her husband's rival, they had deeply displeased her. Some of the peers who had formerly voted for a regency had determined to absent themselves or to support the resolution of the Lower House. Their opinion, they said, was unchanged; but any government was better than no government, and the country could not bear a prolongation of this agony of suspense. Even Nottingham, who, in the Painted Chamber, had taken the lead against the Commons, declared that, though his own conscience would not suffer him to give way, he was glad that the consciences of other men were less squeamish. Several lords who had not yet voted in the Convention had been induced to attend; Lord Lexington, who had just hurried over from the Continent; the Earl of Lincoln, who was half mad; the Earl of Carlisle, who limped in on crutches; and the Bishop of Durham, who had been in hiding and had intended to fly beyond sea, but had received an intimation that, if he would vote for the settling of the government, his conduct ir the Ecclesiastical Commission should not be remembered against him. Danby, desirous to heal the schism which he had caused, exhorted the House, in a speech distinguished by even more than his usual ability, not to persevere in a contest which might be fatal to the state. He was strenuously supported by Halifax. The spirit of the opposite party was quelled. When the question was put whether King James had abdicated the government, only three lords said Not Content. On the question whether the throne was vacant, a division was demanded. The Contents were sixty-two; the Not Contents forty-seven. It was immediately proposed and carried, without a division * See the Lords' and Commons' Journals of Feb. 6, 168§, and the, Report of the Conference. that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared King and Queen of England.* Nottingham then moved that the wording of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy should be altered in such a way that they might be conscientiously taken by persons who, like himself, disapproved of what the Convention had done, and yet fully purposed to be loyal and dutiful subjects of the new sovereigns. To this proposition no objection was made. Indeed there can be little doubt that there was an understanding on the subject between the Whig leaders and those Tory lords whose votes had turned the scale on the last division. The new oaths were sent down to the Commons, together with the resolution that the prince and princess should be declared king and queen.t It was now known to whom the crown would be given. On what conditions it should be given, still remained to be decided. The Commons had appointed a committee to consider what steps it might be advisable to take, in order to secure law and liberty against the aggressions of future sovereigns; and the committee had made a report. This report recommended, first, that those great principles of the constitution which had been violated by the dethroned king should be solemnly asserted, and, secondly, that many new laws should be enacted for the purpose of curbing the prerogative, and of purifying the administration of justice. Many of the suggestions of the committee were、 excellent; but it was utterly impossible that the Houses could, in a month, or even in a year, deal properly with matters so numerous, so various, and so important. It was proposed, among other things, that the militia should be remodelled; that the power which the sovereign possessed of proroguing and dissolving parliaments should be restricted; that the duration of parliaments should be limited; that the royal pardon should no longer be pleadable to a parliamentary impeachment; that toleration should be granted to Protestant Dissenters; that the crime of high treason should be more precisely defined; that trials for high treason should be conducted in a manner more favorable 8 * Lords' Journals, Feb. 6, 1688; Clarendon's Diary; Burnet, i. 822, and Dartmouth's note; Citters, Feb. 18. I have followed Clarendon as to the numbers. Some writers make the majority smaller and some larger. † Lords' Journals, Feb. 6, 7, 1689; Clarendon's Diary. Commons' Journals, Jan. 29, Feb. 2, 168§. to innocence; that the judges should hold their places for life; that the mode of appointing sheriffs should be altered; that juries should be nominated in such a way as might exclude partiality and corruption; that the practice of filing criminal informations in the King's Bench should be abolished; that the Court of Chancery should be reformed; that the fees of public functionaries should be regulated; and that the law of Quo Warranto should be amended. It was evident that cautious and deliberate legislation on these subjects must be the work of more than one laborious session; and it was equally evident that hasty and crude legislation on subjects so grave could not but produce new grievances, worse than those which it might remove. If the committee meant to give a list of the reforms which ought to be accomplished before the throne was filled, the list was absurdly long. If, on the other hand, the committee meant to give a list of all the reforms which the legislature would do well to make in proper season, the list was strangely imperfect. Indeed, as soon as the report had been read, member after member rose to suggest some addition. It was moved and carried that the selling of offices should be prohibited, that the Habeas Corpus Act should be made more efficient, and that the law of Mandamus should be revised. One gentleman fell on the chimneymen; another on the excisemen; and the House resolved that the malpractices of both chimneymen and excisemen should be restrained. It is a most remarkable circumstance that, while the whole political, military, judicial, and fiscal system of the kingdom was thus passed in review, not a single representative of the people proposed the repeal of the statute which subjected the press to a censorship. It was not yet understood, even by the most enlightened men, that the liberty of discussion is the great safeguard of all other liberties.* The House was greatly perplexed. Some orators vehemently said that too much time had already been lost, and that the government ought to be settled without the delay of a day. Society was unquiet; trade was languishing; the English colony in Ireland was in imminent danger of perishing; a foreign war was impending; the exiled tyrant might, in a few weeks, be at Dublin with a French army, and from Dublin he might soon cross to Chester. Was it not insanity, at such a crisis, to leave the throne unfilled, and, while the very existence of parliaments was in jeopardy, to waste time in debating whether parliaments *Commons' Journals, Feb. 2, 1688. On should be prorogued by the sovereign or by themselves? the other side it was asked whether the Convention could think that it had fulfilled its mission by merely pulling down one prince and putting up another. Surely now or never was the time to secure public liberty by such fences as might effectually prevent the encroachments of prerogative.* There was doubtless great weight in what was urged on both sides. The able chiefs of the Whig party, among whom Somers was fast rising to ascendency, proposed a middle course. The House had, they said, two objects in view, which ought to be kept distinct. One object was to secure the old polity of the realm against illegal attacks; the other was to improve that polity by legal reforms. The former object might be attained by solemnly putting on record, in the resolution which called the new sovereigns to the throne, the claim of the English nation to its ancient franchises, so that the king might hold his crown, and the people their privileges, by one and the same title deed. The latter object would require a whole volume of elaborate statutes. The former object might be attained in a day; the latter, scarcely in five years. As to the former object, all parties were agreed; as to the latter, there were innumerable varieties of opinion. No member of either House would hesitate for a moment to vote that the king could not levy taxes without the consent of parliament; but it would be hardly possible to frame any new law of procedure in cases of high treason which would not give rise to long debate, and be condemned by some persons as unjust to the prisoner, and by others as unjust to the crown. The business of an extraordinary convention of the Estates of the Realm was not to do the ordinary work of parliaments, to regulate the fees of masters in Chancery, and to provide against the exactions of gaugers, but to put right the great machine of government. When this had been done, it would be time to inquire what improvement our institutions needed; nor would any thing be risked by delay; for no sovereign who reigned merely by the choice of the nation could long refuse his assent to any improvement which the nation, speaking through its representatives, demanded. On these grounds the Commons wisely determined to postpone all reforms till the ancient constitution of the kingdom should have been restored in all its parts, and forthwith to fill the throne without imposing on William and Mary any other * Grey's Debates; Burnet, i. 822. |