*

_Extract from the Prince of Oranges Additional Declaration_.

[Sidenote: Principal nobility and gentry well affected to the Church and
crown, security against the design of innovation.]

"We are confident that no persons can have _such hard thoughts of us_ as
to imagine that we have any other design in this undertaking than to
procure a settlement of the _religion and of the liberties and
properties of the subjects upon so sure a foundation that there may be
no danger of the nation's relapsing into the like miseries at any time
hereafter_. And as the forces that we have brought along with us are
utterly disproportioned to that wicked design of conquering the nation,
if we were capable of intending it, _so the great numbers of the
principal nobility and gentry, that are men of eminent quality and
estates, and persons of known integrity and zeal, both for the religion
and government of England, many of them, also being distinguished by
their constant fidelity to the crown_, who do both accompany us in this
expedition and have earnestly solicited us to it, will cover us from all
such malicious insinuations."

* * * * *

In the spirit, and, upon one occasion, in the words,[19] of this
Declaration, the statutes passed in that reign made such provisions for
preventing these dangers, that scarcely anything short of combination of
King, Lords, and Commons, for the destruction of the liberties of the
nation, can in any probability make us liable to similar perils. In that
dreadful, and, I hope, not to be looked-for case, any opinion of a right
to make revolutions, grounded on this precedent, would be but a poor
resource. Dreadful, indeed, would be our situation!

* * * * *

These are the doctrines held by _the Whigs of the Revolution_, delivered
with as much solemnity, and as authentically at least, as any political
dogmas were ever promulgated from the beginning of the world. If there
be any difference between their tenets and those of Mr. Burke, it is,
that the old Whigs oppose themselves still more strongly than he does
against the doctrines which are now propagated with so much industry by
those who would be thought their successors.

It will be said, perhaps, that the old Whigs, in order to guard
themselves against popular odium, pretended to assert tenets contrary
to those which they secretly held. This, if true, would prove, what Mr.
Burke has