heir judgment rather than his
own. [674] These words were received with a shout of joy which was heard
in the streets below, and was instantly answered by huzzas from many
thousands of voices. The Lords and Commons then reverently retired
from the Banqueting House and went in procession to the great gate
of Whitehall, where the heralds and pursuivants were waiting in their
gorgeous tabards. All the space as far as Charing Cross was one sea of
heads. The kettle drums struck up; the trumpets pealed: and Garter King
at arms, in a loud voice, proclaimed the Prince and Princess of Orange
King and Queen of England, charged all Englishmen to pay, from that
moment, faith and true allegiance to the new sovereigns, and besought
God, who had already wrought so signal a deliverance for our Church and
nation, to bless William and Mary with a long and happy reign. [675]

Thus was consummated the English Revolution. When we compare it with
those revolutions which have, during the last sixty years, overthrown
so many ancient governments, we cannot but be struck by its peculiar
character. Why that character was so peculiar is sufficiently obvious,
and yet seems not to have been always understood either by eulogists or
by censors.

The continental revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
took place in countries where all trace of the limited monarchy of the
middle ages had long been effaced. The right of the prince to make laws
and to levy money had, during many generations, been undisputed. His
throne was guarded by a great regular army. His administration could
not, without extreme peril, be blamed even in the mildest terms.
His subjects held their personal liberty by no other tenure than his
pleasure. Not a single institution was left which had, within the memory
of the oldest man, afforded efficient protection to the subject against
the utmost excess of tyranny. Those great councils which had once curbed
the regal power had sunk into oblivion. Their composition and their
privileges were known only to antiquaries. We cannot wonder, therefore,
that, when men who had been thus ruled succeeded in wresting supreme
power from a government which they had long in secret hated, they should
have been impatient to demolish and unable to construct, that they
should have been fascinated by every specious novelty, that they should
have proscribed every title, ceremony, and phrase associated with the
old system, and that, turning awa