wronged, not by the nation, but by those whose strange conduct at the time of his birth had justified the nation in demanding investigation, and who had then avoided investigation by flight. He might, therefore, with perfect equity, be considered as a pretender. And thus the crown had legally devolved on the Princess of Orange. She was actually Queen Regnant. The houses had nothing to do but to proclaim her. She might, if such were her pleasure, make her husband her first minister, and might even, with the consent of Parliament, bestow on him the title of king.

The persons who preferred this scheme to any other were few, and it was certain to be opposed both by all who still bore any good will to James and by all the adherents of William; yet Danby, confident in his own knowledge of parliamentary tactics, and well aware how much, when great parties are nearly balanced, a small flying squadron can effect, did not despair of being able to keep the event of the contest in suspense till both Whigs and Tories, despairing of complete victory, and afraid of the consequences of delay, should suffer him to act as umpire. Nor is it impossible that he might have succeeded if his efforts had been seconded, nay, if they had not been counteracted, by her whom he wished to raise to the height of human greatness. Quick-sighted as he was and versed in affairs, he was altogether ignorant of the character of Mary, and of the feeling with which she regarded her husband; nor was her old preceptor, Compton, better informed. William's manners were dry and cold; his constitution was infirm, and his temper by no means bland; he was not a man who would commonly be thought likely to inspire a fine young woman of twentysix with a violent passion. It was known that he had not always been strictly constant to his wife; and talebearers had reported that she did not live happily with him. The most acute politicians, therefore, never suspected that, with all his faults, he had obtained such an empire over her heart as princes the most renowned for their success in gallantry, Francis the First and Henry

the Fourth, Louis the Fourteenth and Charles the Second, had never obtained over the heart of any woman, and that the three kingdoms of her forefathers were val uable in her estimation chiefly because, by bestowing them on him, she could prove to him the intensity and disinterestedness of her affection. Danby, in profound ignorance of her sentiments, assured her that he would defend her rights, and that, if she would support him, he hoped to place her alone on the throne.*

The course of the Whigs, meanwhile, was simple and consistent. Their doctrine was that the foundation of our government was a contract expressed on one side by the oath of allegiance, and on the other by the coronation oath, and that the duties imposed by this contract were mutual. They held that a sovereign who grossly abused his power might lawfully be withstood and dethroned by his people. That James had abused his power was not disputed; and the whole Whig party was ready to pronounce that he had forfeited it. Whether the Prince of Wales was supposititious was a point not worth discussing. There were now far stronger reasons than any which could be drawn from the circumstances of his birth for excluding him from the throne. A child, brought to the royal couch in a warming-pan, might possibly prove a good king of England. But there could be no such hope for a child educated by a father who was the most stupid and obstinate of tyrants, in a foreign country, the seat of despotism and superstition; in a country where the last traces of liberty had disappeared; where the States-General had ceased to meet; where Parliaments had long registered, without one remonstrance, the most oppressive edicts of the sovereign; where valor, genius, learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandizing a single man; where adulation was the main business of the press, the pulpit, and the stage; and where one chief subject of adulation was the barbarous persecution of the

* Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 24, 1688; Burnet, i., 819; Proposals humbly offered in behalf of the Princess of Orange, Jan. 28, 1688.

Reformed Church. Was the boy likely to learn, under such tuition and in such a situation, respect for the institutions of his native land? Could it be doubted that he would be brought up to be the slave of the Jesuits and the Bourbons, and that he would be, if possible, more bitterly prejudiced than any preceding Stuart against the laws of England?

Nor did the Whigs think that, situated as the country then was, a departure from the ordinary rule of succession was in itself an evil. They were of opinion that, till that rule had been broken, the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right and passive obedience would be pleasing to the court, would be inculcated by the clergy, and would retain a strong hold on the public mind. The notion would still prevail that the kingly office is the ordinance of God in a sense different from that in which all government is his ordinance. It was plain that, till this superstition was extinct, the Constitution could never be secure; for a really limited monarchy can not long exist in a society which regards monarchy as something divine, and the limitations as mere human inventions. Royalty, in order that it might exist in perfect harmony with our liberties, must be unable to show any higher or more venerable title than that by which we hold our liberties. The king must be henceforth regarded as a magistrate, a great magistrate indeed, and highly to be honored, but subject, like all other magistrates, to the law, and deriving his power from heaven in no other sense than that in which the Lords and the Commons may be said to derive their

power from heaven. The best way of effecting this salutary change would be to interrupt the course of descent. Under sovereigns who would consider it as little short of high treason to preach non-resistance and the patriarchal theory of government, under sovereigns whose authority, springing from resolutions of the two houses, could never rise higher than its source, there would be little risk of oppression such as had compelled two generations of Englishmen to rise in arms against two generations of Stu

arts. On these grounds the Whigs were prepared to declare the throne vacant, to fill it by election, and to impose on the prince of their choice such conditions as might secure the country against misgovernment.

The time for the decision of these great questions had now arrived. At break of day, on the twenty-second of January, the House of Commons was crowded with knights and burgesses. On the benches appeared many faces which had been well known in that place during the reign of Charles the Second, but had not been seen there under his successor. Most of those Tory squires, and of those needy retainers of the court, who had been returned in multitudes to the Parliament of 1685, had given place to the men of the old country party, the men who had driven the Cabal from power, who had carried the Habeas Corpus Act, and who had sent up the Exclusion Bill to the Lords. Among them was Powle, deeply read in the history and law of Parliament, and distinguished by the species of eloquence which is required when grave questions are to be solemnly brought under the notice of senates; and Sir Thomas Littleton, versed in European politics, and gifted with a vehement and piercing logic, which had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted, roused the languishing house, and decided the event of the debate. There, too, was William Sacheverell, an orator whose great parliamentary abilities were, many years later, a favorite theme of old men who lived to see the conflicts of Walpole and Pulteney.* With these eminent persons was joined Sir Robert Clayton, the wealthiest merchant of London, whose palace in the Old Jewry surpassed in splendor the aristocratical mansions of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, whose villa among the Surrey hills was described as a garden of Eden, whose banquets vied with those of kings, and whose judicious munificence, still attested by numerous public monuments, had obtained for him, in the annals of his city, a place second only to that of Gresham. In the Parliament which met at Ox* Burnet, i., 389, and the notes of Speaker Onslow.

ford in 1681, Clayton had, as member for the capital, and at the request of his constituents, moved for leave to bring in the Bill of Exclusion, and had been seconded by Lord Russell. In 1685, the city, deprived of its franchises and governed by the creatures of the court, had returned four Tory representatives. But the old charter had now been restored, and Clayton had been again chosen by acclamation. Nor must John Birch be passed over. He had begun life as a carter, but had, in the civil wars, left his team, had turned soldier, had risen to the rank of colonel in the army of the Commonwealth, had, in high fiscal offices, shown great talents for business, had sat many years in Parliament, and, though retaining to the last the rough manners and plebeian dialect of his youth, had, by strong sense and mother wit, gained the ear of the Commons, and was regarded as a formidable opponent by the most accomplished debaters of his time. These were the most conspicuous among the veterans who now, after a long seclusion, returned to public life. But they were all speedily thrown into the shade by two younger Whigs, who, on this great day, took their seats for the first time, who soon rose to the highest honors of the state, who weathered together the fiercest storms of faction, and who, having been long and widely renowned as statesmen, as orators, and as munificent patrons of genius and learn ing, died, within a few months of each other, soon after the accession of the house of Brunswick: these were Charles Montague and John Somers.

One other name must be mentioned-a name then known only to a small circle of philosophers, but now pronounced beyond the Ganges and the Mississippi with reverence exceeding that which is paid to the memory

greatest warriors and rulers. Among the crowd of silent members appeared the majestic forehead and pensive face of Isaac Newton. The renowned university on which his genius had already begun to impress a peculiar char

Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 26, 1672, Oct. 12, 1679, July 13, 1700; Seymour's Survey of London. ↑ Burnet, i., 388, and Speaker Onslow's note