Chapter 45
History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 by David Hume, Volume 1f, Section 45, Chapter 71, Part 4. The Prince seemed still unwilling to act upon an authority which might be deemed so imperfect. He was desirous of obtaining a more expressed declaration of the public consent.
A judicious expedient was fallen on for that purpose. All the members who had sitting in the House of Commons during any parliament of Charles II, the only parliaments whose election was regarded as free, were invited to meet, and to them were added the mayor, aldermen, and fifty of the common council. This was regarded as the most proper representative of the people that could be summoned during
the present emergence. They unanimously voted the same address with the lords, and the prince, being thus supported by all the legal authority which could possibly be obtained in this critical juncture, wrote circular letters to the counties and corporations of England, and his orders were universally complied with. A profound tranquility prevailed throughout the kingdom, and the prince's
administration was submitted to, as if he had succeeded in the most regular manner to the vacant throne. The fleet received his orders, the army, without murmur or opposition, allowed him to new model them, and the city supplied him with a loan of 200,000 pounds. The conduct of the prince with regard to Scotland was founded on the same prudent and moderate maxims. Finding that there were many Scotsmen of rank at that time in London, he summoned
them together, laid before them his intentions, and asked their advice in the present emergency. This assembly, consisting of thirty noblemen and about fourscore gentlemen, chose Duke Hamilton president, a man who, being of a temporizing character, was determined to pay court to the present authority. His eldest son, the Earl of Arran, professed an adherence to King James, a usual policy
in Scotland, where the father and son, during civil commotions, were often observed to take opposite sides, in order to secure in all events the family from attainder. Aran proposed to invite back the King upon conditions, but as he was vehemently opposed in this motion by Sir Patrick Hume and seconded by nobody, the Assembly made an offer to the Prince of the present administration, which he willingly accepted.
To anticipate a little in our narration, a convention by circular letters from the Prince was summoned at Edinburgh on the 22nd of March, where it was soon visible that the interest of the malcontents would entirely prevail. The more zealous Royalists, regarding this assembly as illegal, had forborne to appear at elections, and the other party were returned for most places.
The Revolution was not in Scotland as in England effected by a coalition of Whig and Tory. The former party alone had overpowered the government and were too much enraged by the past injuries which they had suffered to admit of any composition with their former masters. As soon as the purpose of the convention was discovered, the Earl of Balcaras and Viscount Dundee, leaders of the Tories, withdrew from Edinburgh, and the Convention, having passed
a bold and decisive vote that King James, by his maladministration and his abuse of power, had forfeited all title to the Crown, they made a tender of the Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange. The English Convention was assembled, and it immediately appeared that the House of Commons, both from the prevailing humor of the people and from the influence of present
authority, were mostly chosen from among the Whig party. After thanks were unanimously given by both houses to the Prince of Orange for the deliverance which he had brought them, a less decisive vote than that of the Scottish Convention was in a few days passed by a great majority of the Commons, and sent up to the peers for their concurrence. It was contained in these words, that King James II, having endeavored to subvert the constitution of
the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby by vacant. This vote, when carried to the upper house, met with great opposition, of which it is here necessary for us to explain the causes. The Tories and the High Church
Party, finding themselves at once menaced with a subversion of the laws and of their religion, had zealously promoted the national revolt, and had on this occasion departed from those principles of non-resistance, of which, while the King favored them, they had formerly made such loud professions. Their present apprehensions had prevailed over their political tenets, and the unfortunate
James, who had too much trusted to those general declarations, which never will be reduced to practice, found in the issue that both parties were secretly united against him. But no sooner was the danger passed, and the general fear somewhat allayed, than party prejudices resumed, in some degree, their former authority, and the Tories were abashed at that victory which their antagonists, during the late transactions, had obtained over them.
They were inclined, therefore, to steer a middle course, and though generally determined to oppose the king's return, they resolved not to consent to dethroning him or altering the line of succession. A regent with kingly power was the expedient which they proposed, and a late instance in Portugal seemed to give some authority and precedent to that plan of government. In favor of this scheme, the Tories urged that, by the uniform tenor of the English laws,
the title to the crown was ever regarded as sacred, and could on no account, and by no maladministration be forfeited by the sovereign. That to dethrone a king and to elect his successor was a practice quite unknown to the constitution and had a tendency to render kingly power entirely dependent and precarious. That where the sovereign, from his tender years, from lunacy or from other natural infirmity, was incapacitated to hold the reins of government, both the laws
and former practice agreed in appointing a regent, who, during the interval, was invested with the whole power of the administration. That the inveterate and dangerous prejudices of King James had rendered him as unfit to sway the English scepter as if he had fallen into lunacy, and it was therefore natural for the people to have recourse to the same enmity, that the election of one king was a precedent for the election of another, and
the government by that means would either degenerate into a republic, or, what was worse, into a turbulent and seditious monarchy, that the case was still more dangerous if there remained a prince who claimed the crown by right of succession and disputed, on so plausible aground the title of the present sovereign. That though the doctrine of non-resistance might not in every possible circumstance be absolutely true, yet was the belief of it very expedient,
and to establish a government which should have the contrary principle for its basis was to lay a foundation for perpetual revolutions and convulsions. That the appointment of a regent was indeed exposed to many inconveniences. But so long as the line of succession was preserved entire, there was still a prospect of putting an end, some time or other, to the public disorders. And that scarcely an instance occurred in history, especially in the English history,
where a disputed title had not, in the issue, been attended with much greater ills than all those which the people had sought to shun by departing from the linear successor. The leaders of the Whig party, on the other hand, asserted that if there were any ill in the president, that ill would result as much from establishing a regent as from dethroning one king and appointing his successor. Nor would the one expedient, if wantingly and
rashly embraced by the people, be less the source of public convulsions than the other, that the laws gave no express permission to depose the sovereign neither did they authorize resisting his authority or separating the power from the title that a regent was unknown except where the king by reason of his tender age or his infirmities was incapable of a will and in that case his will was supposed to be involved in that of the regent that it would be the height of
absurdity to try a man for acting upon a commission received from a prince whom we ourselves acknowledge to be the lawful sovereign, and no jury would decide so contrary both to law and common sense as to condemn such a pretended criminal, that even the prospect of being delivered from this monstrous inconvenience was, in the present situation of affairs, more distant than that of putting an end to a disputed succession, that allowing the young
prince to be the legitimate heir, he had been carried abroad. He would be educated in principles destructive of the constitution and established religion, and he would probably leave a son liable to the same insuperable objection, that if the whole line were cut off by law, the people would in time forget or neglect their claim, an advantage which could not be hoped for while the administration was conducted in their name, and while they were still acknowledged to
possessed the legal title, and that a nation thus perpetually governed by regents or protectors approached much nearer to a republic than one subject to monarchs whose hereditary regular succession, as well as present authority, was fixed and appointed by the people. This question was agitated with great zeal by the opposite parties in the House of Peers. The chief speakers Among the Tories were Claringdon, Rochester, and Nottingham.
Among the Whigs, Halifax and Danby. The question was carried for a king by two voices only, fifty-one against forty-nine. All the prelates, except two, the bishops of London and Bristol, voted for a regent. The primate, a disinterested but pusillanimous man, kept at a distance both from the prince's court and from Parliament.
The House of Peers proceeded next to examine piecemeal the votes sent up to them by the Commons. They debated whether there was an original contract between King and people, and the affirmative was carried by 53 against 46, a proof that the Tories were already losing ground. The next question was whether King James had broken that original contract, and after a slight opposition the affirmative prevailed. The lords proceeded to take into
consideration the word abdicated and it was carried that deserted was more proper. The concluding question was whether King James having broken the original contract and deserted the government the throne was thereby vacant. This question was debated with more heat and contention than any of the former, and upon a division the Tories prevailed by eleven voices, and it was carried to omit the last article with regard to the vacancy of the throne.
The vote was sent back to the Commons with these amendments. The Earl of Danby had entertained the project of bestowing the crown solely upon the Princess of Orange, and of admitting her as hereditary legal successor to King James, passing by the infant prince as illegitimate or as supposititious. His change of party in the last question gave the Tories so considerable a majority in the number of voices. The Commons still insisted
on their own vote and sent up reasons why the Lords should depart from their amendments. The Lords were not convinced, and it was necessary to have a free conference in order to settle this controversy. Never surely was national debate more important or managed by more able speakers, yet is one surprised to find the topics insisted on by both sides so frivolous, more resembling the verbal disputes of the schools than the solid reasonings of statesmen
and legislators. In public transactions of such consequence, the true motives which produce any measure are seldom avowed. The Whigs, now the ruling party, having united with the Tories in order to bring about the revolution, had so much deference for their new allies as not to insist that the crown should be declared forfeited on account of the King's maladministration. Such a declaration, they thought, would imply to express a censure
of the old Tory principles, and to open a preference of their own. They agreed, therefore, to confound together the king's abusing his power, and his withdrawing from the kingdom. And they called the whole an abdication, as if he had given a virtual, though not a verbal, consent to dethroning himself. The Tories took advantage of this obvious impropriety, which had been occasioned merely by the complacence or prudence of the Whigs, and they insisted
upon the word desertion as more significant and intelligible. It was retorted on them that, however that expression might be justly applied to the king's withdrawing himself, it could not with any propriety be extended to his violation of the fundamental laws. And thus both parties, while they warped their principles from regard to their antagonist and from prudential considerations, lost the praise of consistence and uniformity.
The managers for the lords next insisted that even allowing the king's abuse of power to be equivalent to an abdication, or in other words, to a civil death, it could operate no otherwise than his voluntary resignation or his natural death, and could only make way for the next successor. It was a maxim of English law that the throne was never vacant, but instantly upon the demise of one king was filled with his legal heir, who was entitled
to all the authority of his predecessor. And however young or unfit for government the successor, however unfortunate in his situation, though he were even a captive in the hands of public enemies, yet no just reason, they thought, could be a sign why, without any default of his own, he should lose a crown, to which by birth he was fully entitled. The managers for the commons might have opposed this reasoning by many specious and even solid
arguments. They might have said that the great security for allegiance being merely opinion, any scheme of settlement should be adopted in which it was most probable the people would acquiesce and persevere, that though upon the natural death of a king whose administration had been agreeable to the laws, many and great inconveniences would be endured, rather than exclude his lineal successor, yet the case was not the same when the people had been obliged
by their revolt to dethrone a prince whose illegal measures had, in every circumstance, violated the Constitution. That in these extraordinary revolutions, the government reverted in some degree to its first principles, and the community acquired a right of providing for the public interest by expedients which, on other occasions, might be deemed violent and irregular. That the recent use of one extraordinary remedy reconciled their minds
to such licenses, than if the government had run the people to the practice of another, and more familiarized on in its usual tenor. And that King James, having carried abroad his son, as well as withdrawn himself, had given such just provocation to the kingdom, had voluntarily involved it in such difficulties, that the interests of his family were justly sacrificed to the public settlement and tranquillity.
these topics seemed reasonable, they were entirely forborne by the Whig managers, both because they implied an acknowledgment of the infant prince's legitimacy, which it was agreed to keep in obscurity, and because they contained to express a condemnation of Tory principles. They were content to maintain the vote of the Commons by shifts and evasions, and both sides parted at last without coming to any agreement.
But it was impossible for the public to remain long in the present situation. The perseverance, therefore, of the lower house obliged the Lords to comply, and by the desertion of some peers to the Whig party, the vote of the Commons, without any alteration, passed by a majority of fifteen in the upper house, and received the sanction of every part of the legislature which then subsisted.
It happens unluckily for those who maintain an original contract between magistrate and people that great revolutions of government and new settlements of civil constitutions are commonly conducted with such violence, tumult, and disorder that the public voice can scarcely ever be heard, and the opinions of the citizens are at that time less attended to than even in the common course of administration. The present transactions in England, it must
be confessed, are a singular exception to this observation. The new elections had been carried on with great tranquility and freedom. The Prince had ordered the troops to depart from all the towns where the voters assembled. A tumultuary petition to the two houses having been promoted, he took care, though the petition was calculated for his advantage, effectually to suppress it. He entered into no intrigues, either with the electors or the members. He
kept himself in a total silence, as if he had been nowise concerned in these transactions. And so far from forming cobbles with the leaders of parties, he disdained even to bestow caresses on those whose assistance might be useful to him. This conduct was highly meritorious, and discovered great moderation and magnanimity, even though the prince unfortunately through the whole course of his life and on every occasion was noted for an address so cold,
dry, and distant that it was very difficult for him on account of any interest to soften or familiarize it. At length the Prince deigned to break silence, and to express, though in a private manner, his sentiments on the present situation of affairs. He called together Halifax, Shrewsbury, Danby, and a few more, and he told them that, having been invited over to restore their liberty, he had engaged in this enterprise and had at last happily effected
his purpose. That it belonged to the Parliament, now chosen and assembled with freedom, to concert measures for the public settlement, and he pretended not to interpose in their determinations. That he heard of several schemes proposed for establishing the government, some insisted on a regent, others were desirous of bestowing the crown on the princess. It It was their concern alone to choose the plan of administration most agreeable or advantageous
to them, that if they judged it proper to settle a regent, he had no objection. He only thought it incumbent on him to inform them that he was determined not to be the regent, nor ever to engage in a scheme which he knew would be exposed to such insuperable difficulties, that no man could have a juster and deeper sense of the princess's merit than he was impressed with, but he would rather remain a private person than enjoy a crown which must
depend on the will or life of another, and that they must therefore make account, if they were inclined to either of these two plans of settlement, that it would be totally out of his power to assist them in carrying it into execution. His affairs abroad were too important to be abandoned for so precarious a dignity, or even to allow him so much leisure as would be requisite to introduce order into their disjointed government. End of section 45 chapter 71 part 4
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