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 henceforth 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.
Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown.
The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of gain and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of class to class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts of millions. Trade has been suspended, and industry paralysed. The rich have become poor; and the poor have become poorer. Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, doctrines which, if carried into effect, would, in thirty years, undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and would make the fairest provinces of France and Germany as savage as Congo or Patagonia, have been avowed from the tribune and defended by the sword.
Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila and Alboin were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of the people have with deep sorrow owned that interests more precious than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save civilisation. Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth.
It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our houses, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.
FN 1 Avaux Neg., Aug. 6/16 1685; Despatch of Citters and his colleagues, enclosing the treaty, Aug. Lewis to Barillon, Aug.
14/24.
FN 2 Instructions headed, "For my son the Prince of Wales, 1692,"in the Stuart Papers.
FN 3 "The Habeas Corpus," said Johnson, the most bigoted of Tories, to Boswell, "is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries;" and T. B. Macaulay is the most bigoted of Whigs in his own country, but left his whiggism at home when he went to India.
FN 4 See the Historical Records of Regiments, published under the supervision of the Adjutant General.
FN 5 Barillon, Dec. 3/13 1685. He had studied the subject much.
"C'est un detail," he says, "dont j'ai connoissance." it appears from the Treasury Warrant Book that the charge of the army for the year 1687 was first of January at 623,104l. 9s. 11d.
FN 6 Burnet, i. 447.
FN 7 Tillotson's Sermon, preached before the House of Commons, Nov. 5. 1678.
FN 8 Locke, First Letter on Toleration.
FN 9 Council Book. The erasure is dated Oct. 21. 1685. Halifax to Chesterfield; Barillon, Oct. 19/29.
FN 10 Barillon, Oct. 26/Nov. 5. 1685; Lewis to Barillon, Oct. 27/ Nov. 6. Nov. 6/16.
FN 11 There is a remarkable account of the first appearance of the symptoms of discontent among the Tories in a letter of Halifax to Chesterfield, written in October, 1685. Burnet, i.
684.
