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
grossly 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 valour,
genius, learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandising
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 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 mo