mons during any parliament of Charles II. (the only parliaments of that time whose elections were regarded as free). They were accordingly invited to meet, and to them were added the mayor, aldermen, and fifty of the common council. This assem bly unanimously adopted the address voted by the peers, requesting the prince to summon a convention to meet the 22d of January. The prince answered, that he would endeavour to secure the peace of the nation, and issue his letters for assembling the convention.

As the French ambassador, Barillon, had been very active in promoting divisions among .the peers, the prince ordered him to depart the kingdom in twenty-four hours. On the 30th of December the prince received the sacrament at St. James's chapel from the bishop of London, to remove any appre hensions of a design to alter the discipline of the established church. The same day he issued a declaration authorising all officers and magistrates, except papists, to continue to act in their respective offices and places, till the meeting of the con

vention.

Ann. 1689.

A declaration is issued by the prince of Orange for the better collection of the public revenue. All the troops receive orders from him to withdraw out of the cities and boroughs of England at the time of electing the members of the intended convention. Another order is published, that none of the prince's forces, of what nation soever, should quarter in any private house, without the owner's consent.

The Scotch nobility and gentry, residing in London, being assembled by the prince, and desired to give their advice for securing their religion and liberties, propose the calling a convention in that

kingdom, and that the prince should take upon him the administration of the government.

The prince applies to the city of London for a loan of two hundred thousand pounds, which is raised in four days.

A declaration is issued for the payment of the seamen's wages, and of the land forces.

A profound tranquillity and submission to the princes' administration prevails throughout the kingdom; the fleet and the army receive his orders without murmur or opposition.

The English convention being assembled at Westminster on the appointed day, they received a letter from the prince of Orange, wherein he recommended to them the settlement of the kingdom, the condition of the protestants in Ireland, a proper assistance to the Dutch in case of necessity, and above all, dispatch and unanimity in their resolutions. In a few days a vote passed by a great majority of the commons," that James II. having endeavoured

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to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by "breaking the original contract 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." This vote met with great opposition in the upper house. They debated whether there was an original contract between king and people? and the affirmative was carried, by fiftythree against forty-six. The next question was, whether king James had broken that original contract? and after a slight opposition the affirmative prevailed; as to the word abdicated, it was carried that deserted was more proper. The concluding question was, whether king James, having broken the original contract and deserted the government, the throne was thereby vacant? This question was

debated with more heat and contention than any other; and it was carried by a majority of eleven to omit the article with regard to the vacancy of the throne; and the vote was sent back to the commons with these amendments. However, after a conference and long controversies between the two houses, the commons still insisted on their own vote; their perseverance obliged the lords to comply.

The tories, though generally determined to oppose the king's return, had resolved not to consent to dethroning him or altering the line of succession; the lords had proposed accordingly to establish a regent with kingly power, as an expedient more consonant with the laws and principles of the constitution, and precedents which had taken place in other countries, and lately in Portugal. The whig party voted for a king, and after a very warm and important debate in the upper house the question was carried by two voices only, fifty-one against forty-nine.

During these transactions the prince kept himself in a total silence, as if their issue, whatsoever it might be, was indifferent to him. He entered into no intrigues with the electors or the members, he even disdained to honour with any particular civility those whose zeal might be useful to him. At length, however, he thought it proper to express, though in a private manner, his sentiments on the debated questions. He called together some of the members of the upper house, and told them, that having been invited over to restore their liberty, he had undertaken the enterprise and happily succeeded in it; that it now belonged to the parliament to concert measures for the public settlement, in which he pretended not to interpose; that he heard of several schemes, either for establishing a regent or bestowing the crown on the princess, upon which

it was their concern alone to choose the plan of administration the most agreeable or advantageous to them; that if they judged it best to appoint a regent, he had no objection, but thought it incumbent. on him to inform them that he was determined not to be a regent, and that as to the regal dignity, though no man could have a deeper sense of the princess's merit than he was impressed with, he would rather remain a private person than enjoy a crown which must depend on the will or life of another; and that they must therefore consider that it would be totally out of his power to assist them in carrying into execution any of these two plans; his affairs abroad were too important to be abandoned for so precarious a dignity, or even to allow him so much leisure as would be requisite to introduce order into their disjointed government.

In the mean time, and during the debates concerning the establishment of the crown, the earl of Danby sent over to the princess of Orange, then in Holland, to know if she desired to sit on the throne alone, which she refused, and sent Danby's letter to the prince. The princess Anne concurred in the same sentiments. The chief parties being thus agreed, the convention passed a bill, in which they settled the crown on the prince and princess of Orange as king and queen of England; the sole regal power to remain in the prince, only in the name of both; the princess of Denmark to succeed after the death of the prince and princess of Orange; her posterity after those of the princess, but before those of the prince by any other wife.

The convention annexed to this settlement of the crown, that important declaration of rights, where all the points lately contested between the king and the people, were finally determined, and the royal prerogative more exactly defined and more precisely circumscribed than in any former period of the English

government. The marquis of Halifax, as speaker of the house of lords, made a solemn tender of the crown, in the name of the peers and commons of England to the prince and princess, who had arrived the day before from Holland, February 23rd. The prince accepted the offer in terms of acknowledgment, and that very day William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen of England to the joyful acclamations of the people.

General Observations on that Period.

The English constitution was at no period so much violated both by the sovereign and the people, as under the dynasty of Stuart; nor was it ever so materially improved as it was by a necessary consequence of those very violations, as by pointing out the fatal extremes to which encroachments might be carried on both sides, they enabled the true friends of their country to discover the best means for preventing for ever their disastrous recur

rence.

The controversial struggle imprudently promoted by James I. on his prerogative, which he wanted to render constitutionally despotic, and against the privilege of the people, was still more imprudently continued by Charles I. who, without having neither the vigour of mind nor the power of argument of his father, had to contend with parliaments composed of men of greater energy, abilities, and particularly more conversant with the true principles of the constitution. He soon found himself in the perilous dilemma of loosing both his throne and his