orst manner that he could invent. _For
questioning the right to the crown here in England has procured the
shedding of more blood and caused more slaughter than all the other
matters tending to disturbances in the government put together._ If,
therefore, the doctrine which the Apostles had laid down was only to
continue the peace of the world, as thinking the death of some few
particular persons better to be borne with than a civil war, sure it is
the highest breach of that law to question the first principles of this
government."

"If the Doctor had been contented with the liberty he took of preaching
up the duty of passive obedience in the most extensive manner he had
thought fit, and would have stopped there, your Lordships would not have
had the trouble in relation to him that you now have; but it is plain
that he preached up his absolute and unconditional obedience, not _to
continue the peace and tranquillity of this nation, but to set the
subjects at strife, and to raise a war in the bowels of this nation_:
and it is for _this_ that he is now prosecuted; though he would fain
have it believed that the prosecution was for preaching the peaceable
doctrine of absolute obedience."

* * * * *

_Sir Joseph Jekyl_.

[Sidenote: Whole frame of government restored unhurt, on the
Revolution.]

"The whole tenor of the administration then in being was agreed to by
all to be a _total departure from the Constitution_. The nation was at
that time united in that opinion, all but the criminal part of it. And
as the nation joined in the judgment of their disease, so they did in
the remedy. _They saw there was no remedy left but the last;_ and when
that remedy took place, _the whole frame of the government was restored
entire and unhurt_.[17] This showed the excellent temper the nation was
in at that time, that, after such provocations from an abuse of the
regal power, and such a convulsion, _no one part of the Constitution was
altered, or suffered the least damage; but, on the contrary, the whole
received new life and vigor_."

* * * * *

The Tory counsel for Dr. Sacheverell having insinuated that a great and
essential alteration in the Constitution had been wrought by the
Revolution, Sir Joseph Jekyl is so strong on this point, that he takes
fire even at the insinuation of his being of such an opinion.

* * * * *

_Sir Joseph Jek