e in the hands
of public enemies, yet no just reason, they thought, could be assigned
why, without any default of his own, he should lose a crown, to which
by birth he was fully entitled. The managers for the commons might have
opposed this reasoning by many specious and even solid arguments. They
might have said, that the great security for allegiance being merely
opinion, any scheme of settlement should be adopted in which it was most
probable the people would acquiesce and persevere: that though, upon the
natural death of a king whose administration had been agreeable to
the laws, many and great inconveniences would be endured, rather than
exclude his lineal successor, yet the case was not the same when the
people had been obliged, by their revolt, to dethrone a prince whose
illegal measures had, in every circumstance, violated the constitution:
that in these extraordinary revolutions, the government reverted, in
some degree, to its first principles, and the community acquired a
right of providing for the public interest by expedients which, on other
occasions, might be deemed violent and irregular: that the recent use of
one extraordinary remedy reconciled their minds to such licenses, than
if the government had run the people to the practice of another, and
more familiarized on in its usual tenor: and that King James, having
carried abroad his son, as well as withdrawn himself, had given such
just provocation to the kingdom, had voluntarily involved it in such
difficulties, that the interests of his family were justly sacrificed
to the public settlement and tranquillity. Though these topics seem
reasonable, they were entirely forborne by the whig managers;
both because they implied an acknowledgment of the infant prince's
legitimacy, which it was agreed to keep in obscurity, and because they
contained too express a condemnation of tory principles. They were
content to maintain the vote of the commons by shifts and evasions; and
both sides parted at last without coming to any agreement.

But it was impossible for the public to remain long in the present
situation. The perseverance, therefore, of the lower house obliged the
lords to comply; and, by the desertion of some peers to the whig party,
the vote of the commons, without any alteration, passed by a majority of
fifteen in the upper house, and received the sanction of every part of
the legislature which then subsisted.

It happens unluckily for those who maintai