tzwalter and De Montfort, been found in the English polity, should be
destroyed by the monarchical element, or should be suffered to develope
itself freely, and to become dominant. The strife between the two
principles had been long, fierce, and doubtful. It had lasted through
four reigns. It had produced seditions, impeachments, rebellions,
battles, sieges, proscriptions, judicial massacres. Sometimes liberty,
sometimes royalty, had seemed to be on the point of perishing. During
many years one half of the energy of England had been employed in
counteracting the other half. The executive power and the legislative
power had so effectually impeded each other that the state had been of
no account in Europe. The King at Arms, who proclaimed William and Mary
before Whitehall Gate, did in truth announce that this great struggle
was over; that there was entire union between the throne and the
Parliament; that England, long dependent and degraded, was again a power
of the first rank; that the ancient laws by which the prerogative was
bounded would henceforth be held as sacred as the prerogative itself,
and would be followed out to all their consequences; that the executive
administration would be conducted in conformity with the sense of the
representatives of the nation; and that no reform, which the two
Houses should, after mature deliberation, propose, would be obstinately
withstood by the sovereign. The Declaration of Right, though it made
nothing law which had not been law before, contained the germ of the law
which gave religious freedom to the Dissenter, of the law which secured
the independence of the judges, of the law which limited the duration of
Parliaments, of the law which placed the liberty of the press under the
protection of juries, of the law which prohibited the slave trade, of
the law which abolished the sacramental test, of the law which relieved
the Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, of the law which reformed
the representative system, of every good law which has been passed
during a hundred and sixty years, of every good law which may hereafter,
in the course of ages, be found necessary to promote the public weal,
and to satisfy the demands of public opinion.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revolution of 1688
is this, that it was our last revolution. Several generations have
now passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman has meditated
resistance to the established governme