ghts of the
crown and of their own.]

"Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and
the Constitution. This right the nation hath asserted, and recovered out
of the hands of those who had dispossessed them of it at several times.
There are of this _two famous instances_ in the knowledge of the present
age: I mean that of the _Restoration_, and that of the _Revolution_: in
both these great events were the _regal power_ and the _rights of the
people_ recovered. And it is _hard to say in which the people have the
greatest interest; for the Commons are sensible that there it not one
legal power belonging to the crown, but they have an interest in it; and
I doubt not but they will always be as careful to support the rights of
the crown as their own privileges_."

* * * * *

The other Whig managers regarded (as he did) the overturning of the
monarchy by a republican faction with the very same horror and
detestation with which they regarded the destruction of the privileges
of the people by an arbitrary monarch.

* * * * *

_Mr. Lechmere_,

[Sidenote: Constitution recovered at the Restoration and Revolution.]

Speaking of our Constitution, states it as "a Constitution which happily
recovered itself, at the Restoration, from the confusions and disorders
which _the horrid and detestable proceedings of faction and usurpation
had thrown it into_, and which after many convulsions and struggles was
providentially saved at the late happy Revolution, and by the many good
laws passed since that time stands now upon a firmer foundation,
together with the most comfortable prospect of _security to all
posterity_ by the settlement of the crown in the Protestant line."

* * * * *

I mean now to show that the Whigs (if Sir Joseph Jekyl was one, and if
he spoke in conformity to the sense of the Whig House of Commons, and
the Whig ministry who employed him) did carefully guard against any
presumption that might arise from the repeal of the non-resistance oath
of Charles the Second, as if at the Revolution the ancient principles of
our government were at all changed, or that republican doctrines were
countenanced, or any sanction given to seditious proceedings upon
general undefined ideas of misconduct, or for changing the form of
government, or for resistance upon any other ground than the _necessity_
so often mentione