1689. Illustrious of King James abandons Ireland. Success of K. William. Siegé of Athlone raised-and of Limerick. King returns to England. Earl of Marlborough captures Cork and Kinsale. Command devolves on General Ginckel. Athlone taken. Victory of Aghrim. Capitulation of Limerick. Queen constituted Regent Her amiable Character and discreet Conduct. Naval Defeat off Beachy Head. Session of Parliament. Lord Godolphin appointed Frist Commissioner of the TreasuryHis Character. King embarks for the Continent. In Danger of Shipwreck. Congress at the Hague. Conspiracy against the Government. Execution of Ashton. Deprivation of the Non-juring Bishops. Campaign in Flanders, &c. 1691. Character of the Emperor Leopold. Death of Pope Innocent XI. Session of Parliament. Unpopularity of the King. Affairs of the East-India Company. Disgrace of the Earl. of Marlborough. Intrigues carried on with the Court of St. Germaine's. Prince and Princess of Denmark cease to appear at St. James's. BOOK 1. THERE are few princes in ancient or modern times who have acted a more conspicuous or Character important part on the great theatre of the world William. than King WILLIAM. Scarcely had he attained to the age of complete manhood, when he was called upon by the united voice of his countrymen to rescue them from the dangers of an invasion which had nearly subverted the republic. When their apprehensions had reduced them to the lowest ebb of despondency, he awakened the drooping genius of the commonwealth; and Holland, under the auspices of a prince of the house of Orange, quickly reassumed her courage and re-established her power. When these nations were threatened with the dread 1689. ful prospect of popery and slavery, this prince was BOOK I. again invoked for aid and assistance; and accomplishing with unparalleled happiness and success the glorious and immortal work of their deliverance, was rewarded with that crown which fell from the head of the abdicated tyrant. During the concluding years of his life, he was universally considered as the great bulwark of the liberties of Europe, endangered by the pride and the power of Louis XIV., to whose vast and unprincipled projects of ambition he opposed, in that grand alliance of which he was the former and the head, an insurmountable barrier. Though the two great political factions had State of Po litical opiunited in their opposition to the late king James; nions. and though the tories, alarmed at the magnitude and imminence of the danger, seemed for a time to have abandoned their favourite doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance; in the speculative discussions which succeeded at the meeting of the convention, they evidently shewed a strong tendency to revert to their original principles, or at least a fixed reluctance to depart from them farther than the necessity of the case absolutely demanded. Though they acknowledged the king therefore to be incapable of government, they could by no means reconcile their minds to the idea of an actual deposition; but, as in former cases of incapacity arising from nonage or mental 1639. BOOK 1. imbecility, they proposed the appointment of a regent vested with kingly power. To this plan the whigs, who constituted a great majority of the lower house of convention, were determined, for obvious and important reasons, not to accede. But wisely endeavouring to accommodate their more dignified and rational ideas in a certain degree to the prejudices of their new associates, they passed an unanimous vote, "that king James II. having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original compact between king and people, and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." The tories, however, whose influence predominated in the house of lords, rejected the concluding clause, and changed the term abdicated for deserted, a word of very different import, as it seemed to imply that the right of resumption still existed. Not clearly comprehending that emergencies may arise of a nature so transcendent as to supersede all legal forms and positive institutions, and that the essence of the constitution is not to be sacrificed to its external sanctions, they argued, "that, however great might be the misconduct of the government, the law pronounced the king to be in his own person exempt from all responsibility. The authors and advisers of the illegal measures pur- BOOK I sued were indeed deserving of condign punish-1689. ment; but to the king himself could be imputed not criminality but incapacity merely; and for this incapacity a regency was the only proper and constitutional remedy. If, however, the temporary desertion of the government on the part of the king should, by an unprecedented violence of construction, be interpreted into an actual abdication of the regal office, still the right of succession devolved by law upon the infant prince of Wales, of the legitimacy of whose birth, notwithstanding the rumours propagated for malicious and factious purposes, no rational person entertained the slightest doubt." These reasonings must have appeared not only plausible, but unquestionably just and equitable, to very many respectable persons, at a period when the true theory of government had been comparatively little studied, and its general principles not as yet perfectly understood or very generally diffused. It is a fact which needs neither disguise nor palliation, that the revolution, abstractedly considered, was an unquestionable though an illustrious violation of the law; and the established maxims which for the purpose of securing the just and genuine ends of government it was then thought necessary to supersede, are BOOK I. since that æra as sacred and inviolable as before. 1689. It is still a principle of the English constitution, that the king can do no wrong-i. e. to him no criminality can be imputed; that the legislative assemblies can exercise no jurisdiction over the monarch; and that the crown of England is held by hereditary right. But if former times should roll round again, and any future king of England should dare to conspire against the civil and religious liberties of his subjects, and sacrilegiously to attempt the subversion of the government, unless the spirit of liberty were totally extinguished in the land, these feeble barriers, calculated merely to protect the executive power in the just and fearless discharge of its constitutional functions, would be instantly burst asunder. And if the safety of the nation demanded that the trophies of public justice should be "raised (to borrow the language of MILTON) on the neck of crowned Fortune proud," no true patriot would hesitate to applaud the sacrifice: nor would it be any impeachment of consistency to demand, at the same moment, the re-establishment of those wise and salutary and constitutional maxims from which the most urgent necessity alone could justify any departure.* The supposition of law," as sir William Blackstone excellently observes, " is, that neither the king, nor either house |