evoted to James, that he declared there were not forty in it whom he
would not himself have named. But although this may have been true, and
though from the new modelling of the corporations, and the interference
of the court in elections, this parliament, as far as regards the manner
of its being chosen, was by no means a fair representative of the legal
electors of England, yet there is reason to think that it afforded a
tolerably correct sample of the disposition of the nation, and especially
of the Church party, which was then uppermost.

The general character of the party at this time appears to have been a
high notion of the king's constitutional power, to which was superadded a
kind of religious abhorrence of all resistance to the monarch, not only
in cases where such resistance was directed against the lawful
prerogative, but even in opposition to encroachments which the monarch
might make beyond the extended limits which they assigned to his
prerogative. But these tenets, and still more the principle of conduct
naturally resulting from them, were confined to the civil, as
contra-distinguished from the ecclesiastical polity of the country. In
Church matters they neither acknowledged any very high authority in the
crown, nor were they willing to submit to any royal encroachment on that
side; and a steady attachment to the Church of England, with a
proportionable aversion to all dissenters from it, whether Catholic or
Protestant, was almost universally prevalent among them. A due
consideration of these distinct features in the character of a party so
powerful in Charles's and in James's time, and even when it was lowest
(that is, during the reigns of the two first princes of the House of
Brunswick), by no means inconsiderable, is exceedingly necessary to the
right understanding of English history. It affords a clue to many
passages otherwise unintelligible. For want of a proper attention to
this circumstance, some historians have considered the conduct of the
Tories in promoting the revolution as an instance of great inconsistency.
Some have supposed, contrary to the clearest evidence, that their notions
of passive obedience, even in civil matters, were limited, and that their
support of the government of Charles and James was founded upon a belief
that those princes would never abuse their prerogative for the purpose of
introducing arbitrary sway. But this hypothesis is contrary to the
evidence both of thei