composed of persons
hostile to the government. In the days of Charles and James, the
Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of
employing all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious
to the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice which was
above all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon
Aaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been
the legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who
had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a
man of decided opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this
appointment. His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, who
hated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtained
his place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by
threatening that, if his just claims were disregarded, he would be the
death of Hampden. [31]

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned
were publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had taken
place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was
necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could the
Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had
a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative.
The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had
undergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general election
would add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintained
that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably
necessary. The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the
original defect could not now be supplied: the Houses were therefore
mere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to
expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for the
sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever the
Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives
freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together,
there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now
in being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a
conjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous important
subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers,