event the encroachments of prerogative. [670] There
was doubtless great weight in what was urged on both sides. The
able chiefs of the Whig party, among whom Somers was fast rising to
ascendency, proposed a middle course. The House had, they said, two
objects in view, which ought to be kept distinct. One object was to
secure the old polity of the realm against illegal attacks: the other
was to improve that polity by legal reforms. The former object might be
attained by solemnly putting on record, in the resolution which called
the new sovereigns to the throne, the claim of the English nation to
its ancient franchises, so that the King might hold his crown, and the
people their privileges, by one and the same title deed. The latter
object would require a whole volume of elaborate statutes. The former
object might be attained in a day; the latter, scarcely in five years.
As to the former object, all parties were agreed: as to the latter,
there were innumerable varieties of opinion. No member of either House
would hesitate for a moment to vote that the King could not levy taxes
without the consent of Parliament: but it would be hardly possible to
frame any new law of procedure in cases of high treason which would not
give rise to long debate, and be condemned by some persons as unjust to
the prisoner, and by others as unjust to the crown. The business of an
extraordinary convention of the Estates of the Realm was not to do
the ordinary work of Parliaments, to regulate the fees of masters in
Chancery, and to provide against the exactions of gaugers, but to put
right the great machine of government. When this had been done, it would
be time to inquire what improvement our institutions needed: nor would
anything be risked by delay; for no sovereign who reigned merely by the
choice of the nation could long refuse his assent to any improvement
which the nation, speaking through its representatives, demanded.

On these grounds the Commons wisely determined to postpone all reforms
till the ancient constitution of the kingdom should have been restored
in all its parts, and forthwith to fill the throne without imposing on
William and Mary any other obligation than that of governing according
to the existing laws of England. In order that the questions which had
been in dispute between the Stuarts and the nation might never again be
stirred, it was determined that the instrument by which the Prince and
Princess of Orange were called