onarch in clemency and
tenderness to his subjects. To these it might appear, that whatever
there was of consolatory in the king's disclaimer of arbitrary power and
professed attachment to the laws, was totally done away, as well by the
consideration of what his majesty's notions of power and law were, as by
his declaration that he would follow the example of a predecessor, whose
government had not only been marked with the violation, in particular
cases, of all the most sacred laws of the realm, but had latterly, by the
disuse of parliaments, in defiance of the statute of the sixteenth year
of his reign, stood upon a foundation radically and fundamentally
illegal. To others it might occur that even the promise to the Church of
England, though express with respect to the condition of it, which was no
other than perfect acquiescence in what the king deemed to be the true
principles of monarchy, was rather vague with regard to the nature or
degree of support to which the royal speaker might conceive himself
engaged. The words, although in any interpretation of them they conveyed
more than he possibly ever intended to perform, did by no means express
the sense which at that time, by his friends, and afterwards by his
enemies, was endeavoured to be fixed on them. There was, indeed, a
promise to support the establishment of the Church, and consequently the
laws upon which that establishment immediately rested; but by no means an
engagement to maintain all the collateral provisions which some of its
more zealous members might judge necessary for its security.

But whatever doubts or difficulties might be felt, few or none were
expressed. The Whigs, as a vanquished party, were either silent or not
listened to, and the Tories were in a temper of mind which does not
easily admit suspicion. They were not more delighted with the victory
they had obtained over their adversaries, than with the additional
stability which, as they vainly imagined, the accession of the new
monarch was likely to give to their system. The truth is that, his
religion excepted (and that objection they were sanguine enough to
consider as done away by a few gracious words in favour of the Church),
James was every way better suited to their purpose than his brother. They
had entertained continual apprehensions, not perhaps wholly unfounded, of
the late king's returning kindness to Monmouth, the consequences of which
could not easily be calculated; where