ce was practically done.

[Sidenote: The Sovereignty of the Commons.]

Its final triumph however was in great measure brought about by a change
which now passed over the face of English politics. In outer seeming the
Revolution of 1688 had only transferred the sovereignty over England
from James to William and Mary. In actual fact it had given a powerful
and decisive impulse to the great constitutional progress which was
transferring the sovereignty from the king to the House of Commons. From
the moment when its sole right to tax the nation was established by the
Bill of Rights, and when its own resolve settled the practice of
granting none but annual supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons
became the supreme power in the State. It was impossible permanently to
suspend its sittings or in the long run to oppose its will when either
course must end in leaving the Government penniless, in breaking up the
army and navy, and in suspending the public service. But though the
constitutional change was complete the machinery of government was far
from having adapted itself to the new conditions of political life which
such a change brought about. However powerful the will of the House of
Commons might be it had no means of bringing its will directly to bear
upon the conduct of public affairs. The Ministers who had charge of them
were not its servants, but the servants of the Crown; it was from the
king that they looked for direction, and to the king that they held
themselves responsible. By impeachment or more indirect means the
Commons could force a king to remove a Minister who contradicted their
will; but they had no constitutional power to replace the fallen
statesman by a Minister who would carry out their will.

[Sidenote: Lord Sunderland.]

The result was the growth of a temper in the Lower House which drove
William and his Ministers to despair. It became as corrupt, as jealous
of power, as fickle in its resolves and factious in spirit as bodies
always become whose consciousness of the possession of power is
untempered by a corresponding consciousness of the practical
difficulties or the moral responsibilities of the power which they
possess. It grumbled at the ill-success of the war, at the suffering of
the merchants, at the discontent of the Churchmen; and it blamed the
Crown and its Ministers for all at which it grumbled. But it was hard to
find out what policy or measures it would have preferred. Its mood
chan