Chap. XIX.} |
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and who yet were the fittest instruments ‘to
carry the prerogative high.’
One great passion had absorbed his breast—the independence of his native country.
The harsh encroachments of Louis XIV., which, in 1672, had made William of Orange a revolutionary stadtholder, now assisted to constitute him a revolutionary king, transforming the impassive champion of Dutch independence into the defender of the liberties of Europe.
The English statesmen who settled the principles of the revolution, careless of ideal excellence, took experience for their guide.
It is true that Somers, the acknowledged leader of the whig party, of plebeian origin, and unsupported by inherited fortune, was ready, with the new king from a Calvinistic commonwealth, to admit corresponding maxims of government and religion.
Yet, free from fanaticism, even to indifference, by nature, by his profession as a lawyer, and by the tastes which he had cultivated, averse to metaphysical abstractions, he labored to confirm English liberties, not to establish the rights of man; to make an inventory of the privileges of Englishmen, and imbody them in a public law, and not to introduce a new capitulation, or to establish a perfect republic.
Freedom sought its title-deeds, not in the nature of man, but in the experience of the past, in records, charters, and prescription.
The revolution of 1688 was made, not on a theory of absolute justice, but on the facts friendly to freedom which were claimed as the inheritance of the nation.
The bill of rights was regarded as a distinct, written recapitulation of ancient, well-established national possessions; English liberties, questioned by the abdicated king, were now adapted to the spirit of the age, and, with some
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