W. will be the first to applaud, found
us with any such stock of political principles or feelings as could make a
beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, would have been the
willingness of some Tories to construe the flight of James II. into a
virtual act of abdication, or to consider even the most formal act of
abdication binding against the king,-had not the great struggle of
Charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a
rational veneration of the king's _office_ for the old superstition
in behalf of the king's _person_, which would have protected him from
the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected
injuriously either his own interests or the liberties of his people.
Tempora mutantur: _nos et mutamur in illis_. Those whom we find in
fierce opposition to the popular party about 1640 we find still in the
same personal opposition fifty years after, but an opposition resting on
far different principles: insensibly the principles of their antagonists
had reached even them: and a courtier of 1689 was willing to concede more
than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured to ask. Let me not be
understood to mean that true patriotism is at all more shown in supporting
the rights of the people than those of the king: as soon as both are
defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to the integrity of the
constitution--as the first: and popular freedom itself would suffer as
much, though indirectly, from an invasion of Caesar's rights--as by a more
direct attack on itself.
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