第26章 Letter VII(5)

Thus were these invasions,in the very beginning of his reign,favourable in some respects to the designs of King James.They fortified,in the minds of men,and jealousies and fears,which had a few years before formed the Tory party,and disposed them by consequence,at least,to keep measures and not break with the King.They gave him the pretence,which he seized very readily,of raising and keeping up a standing army.But,in the event,they forwarded our deliverance from all the dangers to which we were exposed under his government,by precipitating his attempts against our religion and liberty.The same day that the news of the invasion in Scotland was communicated to the Parliament here,the Commons voted that great revenue,which they gave him,and gave him for life.After these invasions were over,they voted a supply,which was intended for the charge of maintaining the additional forces.They offered to pass a law for indemnifying his popish officers from the penalty they had incurred,and to capacitate such others as he should name in a list to be given to the House.In short,they suffered themselves to be drawn to the brink of the precipice:but there they stopped.They would neither give him the whole supply of one million two hundred thousand pounds,which he asked,nor sanctify,by the authority of Parliament,the practice of keeping up a standing army in time of peace;but rejected the words moved for that purpose.They would neither repeal the Test and Penal laws,nor submit to his dispensing,or suspending,which was in effect a repealing power:that is,they would not cast themselves headlong down the precipice.

And because they would not,he quarrelled with them,lost the seven hundred thousand pounds they had voted,rather than suffer them to sit any longer;and never met them more.

Things hastened now to a decision.The King's designs were openly avowed,and desperately pushed.The Church of England opposed them with the utmost vigour.The Dissenters were cajoled by the court;and they,who had been ready to take arms against King Charles,because he was unwilling to exclude his brother,and who had taken arms against this prince,since he was on the throne,became abetters of his usurpations.It were safe to prove this,even by bishop Burnet's account,as much as that is softened;and if the excuses,which have been made for their silence against popery in this critical moment,or for their approving and encouraging the exercise of a dispensing power,are to be received,one may undertake to excuse,on the same principles of reasoning,all those instances of misconduct in the Church party,which I have presumed to censure so freely.But the truth is,these excuses are frivolous.I could quote some that are even burlesque.Let us reverence truth therefore,and condemn the Dissenters as frankly,on this occasion,as we have condemned the members of the Church of England on others.

The Revolution soon followed.Many of the most distinguished Tories,some of those who carried highest the doctrines of passive obedience and non resistance,were engaged in it,and the whole nation was ripe for it.The Whigs were zealous in the same cause;but their zeal was not such as,I think,it had been some years before,a zeal without knowledge:I mean,that it was better tempered,and more prudently conducted.Though the King was not the better for his experience,parties were.Both saw their errors.The Tories stopped short in the pursuit of a bad principle.The Whigs reformed the abuse of a good one.Both had sacrificed their country to their party.Both sacrificed,on this occasion,their party to their country.When the Tories and the Whigs were thus coalited,the latter stood no longer in need of any adventitious help.If they did not refuse the assistance of those,who had weakened their cause more by the jealousies and fears to which they gave both occasion and pretence,than they had strengthened it by their number,yet they suffered them to have no influence in their councils,no direction of their conduct.

The cause of liberty was no longer made the cause of a party,by being set on such a bottom,and pushed in such a manner,as one party alone approved.

The Revolution was plainly designed to restore and secure our government,ecclesiastical and civil,on true foundations;and whatever might happen to the King,there was no room to suspect any change in the constitution.

There were some,indeed,concerned in this great and glorious undertaking,who had obstinately preserved or lightly taken up the republican and other whimsies that reigned in the days of usurpation and confusion.If they could have prevailed,and it was no fault of theirs they did not,the coalition of parties had been broken;and,instead of a Revolution,we might have had a civil war,perhaps,not even that sad chance for our religion and liberty.

But this leaven was so near worn out,that it could neither corrupt,nor seem any longer to corrupt the mass of the Whig party.The party never had been Presbyterians,nor republicans,any more than they had been Quakers;any more than the Tory party had been papists,when,notwithstanding their aversion to popery,they were undeniably under the accidental influence of popish counsels.But even the appearances were now rectified.The Revolution was a fire,which purged off the dross of both parties;and the dross being purged off,they appeared to be the same metal,and answered the same standard.

I shall deliver my thoughts,on some other occasion,concerning the disputes that arose about the settlements of the crown after the Revolution;and show,if I do not very much deceive myself,that no argument can be drawn from thence against any thing I have advanced.

I am,sir,etc.