greatly diminished. Still more serious
will the evil be, if we not only fill the throne by election, but fill
it with a prince who has doubtless the qualities of a great and good
ruler, and who has wrought a wonderful deliverance for us, but who is
not first nor even second in the order of succession. If we once say
that, merit, however eminent, shall be a title to the crown, we disturb
the very foundations of our polity, and furnish a precedent of which
every ambitious warrior or statesman who may have rendered any great
service to the public will be tempted to avail himself. This danger we
avoid if we logically follow out the principles of the constitution to
their consequences. There has been a demise of the crown. At the instant
of the demise the next heir became our lawful sovereign. We consider the
Princess of Orange as next heir; and we hold that she ought, without any
delay, to be proclaimed, what she already is, our Queen.

The Whigs replied that it was idle to apply ordinary rules to a country
in a state of revolution, that the great question now depending was not
to be decided by the saws of pedantic Templars, and that, if it were
to be so decided, such saws might be quoted on one side as well as the
other. If it were a legal maxim that the throne could never be vacant,
it was also a legal maxim that a living man could have no heir. James
was still living. How then could the Princess of Orange be his heir?
The truth was that the laws of England had made full provision for the
succession when the power of a sovereign and his natural life terminated
together, but had made no provision for the very rare cases in which his
power terminated before the close of his natural life; and with one
of those very rare cases the Convention had now to deal. That James no
longer filled the throne both Houses had pronounced. Neither common law
nor statute law designated any person as entitled to fill the throne
between his demise and his decease. It followed that the throne was
vacant, and that the Houses might invite the Prince of Orange to fill
it. That he was not next in order of birth was true: but this was
no disadvantage: on the contrary, it was a positive recommendation.
Hereditary monarchy was a good political institution, but was by no
means more sacred than other good political institutions. Unfortunately,
bigoted and servile theologians had turned it into a religious mystery,
almost as awful and as incomprehensible