narchy cannot long exist in a society which regards
monarchy as something divine, and the limitations as mere human
inventions. Royalty, in order that it might exist in perfect harmony
with our liberties, must be unable to show any higher or more venerable
title than that by which we hold our liberties. The King must be
henceforth regarded as a magistrate, a great magistrate indeed and
highly to be honoured, but subject, like all other magistrates, to the
law, and deriving his power from heaven in no other sense than that in
which the Lords and the Commons may be said to derive their power from
heaven. The best way of effecting this salutary change would be to
interrupt the course of descent. Under sovereigns who would consider
it as little short of high treason to preach nonresistance and the
patriarchal theory of government, under sovereigns whose authority,
springing from resolutions of the two Houses, could never rise higher
than its source, there would be little risk of oppression such as had
compelled two generations of Englishmen to rise in arms against two
generations of Stuarts. On these grounds the Whigs were prepared to
declare the throne vacant, to fill it by election, and to impose on
the prince of their choice such conditions as might secure the country
against misgovernment.

The time for the decision of these great questions had now arrived. At
break of day, on the twenty-second of January, the House of Commons was
crowded with knights and burgesses. On the benches appeared many faces
which had been well known in that place during the reign of Charles the
Second, but had not been seen there under his successor. Most of those
Tory squires, and of those needy retainers of the court, who had been
returned in multitudes to the Parliament of 1685, had given place to
the men of the old country party, the men who had driven the Cabal from
power, who had carried the Habeas Corpus Act, and who had sent up the
Exclusion Bill to the Lords. Among them was Powle, deeply read in the
history and law of Parliament, and distinguished by the species of
eloquence which is required when grave questions are to be solemnly
brought under the notice of senates; and Sir Thomas Littleton, versed in
European politics, and gifted with a vehement and piercing logic which
had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted,
roused the languishing House, and decided the event of the debate.
There, too, was William Sach