and unusual."[*]

* Franklyn, p. 70. The pulpit was at that time much more
dangerous than the press. Few people could read, and still
fewer were in the practice of reading.

The lovers of liberty throughout the nation reasoned after a different
manner. It is in vain, said they, that the king traces up the English
government to its first origin, in order to represent the privileges of
parliament as dependent and precarious: prescription, and the practice
of so many ages, must, long ere this time, have given a sanction to
these assemblies, even though they had been derived from an origin no
more dignified than that which he assigns them. If the written records
of the English nation, as asserted, represent parliaments to have arisen
from the consent of monarchs, the principles of human nature, when we
trace government a step higher, must show us, that monarchs themselves
owe all their authority to the voluntary submission of the people. But,
in fact, no age can be shown, when the English government was altogether
an unmixed monarchy; and, if the privileges of the nation have, at
any period, been overpowered by violent irruptions of foreign force or
domestic usurpation, the generous spirit of the people has ever seized
the first opportunity of reestablishing the ancient government and
constitution. Though in the style of the laws, and in the usual forms
of administration, royal authority may be represented as sacred
and supreme, whatever is essential to the exercise of sovereign
and legislative power must still be regarded as equally divine and
inviolable. Or, if any distinction be made in this respect, the
preference is surely due to those national councils, by whose
interposition the exorbitancies of tyrannical power are restrained, and
that sacred liberty is preserved, which heroic spirits, in all ages,
have deemed more precious than life itself. Nor is it sufficient to
say, that the mild and equitable administration of James affords little
occasion, or no occasion, of complaint. How moderate soever the exercise
of his prerogative, how exact soever his observance of the laws and
constitution, "If he founds his authority on arbitrary and dangerous
principles, it is requisite to watch him with the same care, and to
oppose him with the same vigor, as if he had indulged himself in all the
excesses of cruelty and tyranny."

Amidst these disputes, the wise and moderate in the nation endeavored
to preserve, as