d into the government. Ever
since the beginning of this century, the parliament had, with a laudable
zeal, been acquiring powers and establishing principles favorable to
law and liberty: the authority of the crown had been limited in many
important particulars: and penal statutes were often calculated to
secure the constitution against the attempts of ministers, as well as
to preserve general peace, and repress crimes and immoralities. A
prerogative, however, derived from very ancient and almost uniform
practice, the dispensing power, still remained, or was supposed to
remain, with the crown; sufficient in an instant to overturn this
whole fabric, and to throw down all fences of the constitution. If this
prerogative, which carries on the face of it such strong symptoms of an
absolute authority in the prince, had yet, in ancient times, subsisted
with some degree of liberty in the subject, this fact only proves
that scarcely any human government, much less one erected in rude and
barbarous times, is entirely consistent and uniform in all its parts.
But to expect that the dispensing power could, in any degree, be
rendered compatible with those accurate and regular limitations which
had of late been established, and which the people were determined to
maintain, was a vain hope; and though men knew not upon what principles
they could deny that prerogative, they saw that, if they would preserve
their laws and constitution, there was an absolute necessity for
denying, at least for abolishing it. The revolution alone, which soon
succeeded, happily put an end to all these disputes: by means of it, a
more uniform edifice was at last erected: the monstrous inconsistence,
so visible between the ancient Gothic parts of the fabric and the recent
plans of liberty, was fully corrected; and, to their mutual felicity,
King and people were finally taught to know their proper boundaries.[*]

* It is remarkable, that the convention, summoned by the
prince of Orange, did not, even when they had the making of
their own terms in the declaration of rights, venture to
condemn the dispensing power in general, which had been
uniformly exercised by the former kings of England. They
only condemned it so far, as it had been assumed and
exercised of late, without being able to tell wherein the
difference lay. But in the bill of rights, which passed
about a twelvemonth after the parliament took care to secur