attack was made,
not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific approaches. The
Commons at first held out hopes that they would give support to the
king's foreign policy, but insisted that he should purchase that support
by abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their chief object
was to obtain the revocation of the Declaration of Indulgence. Of all
the many unpopular steps taken by the government the most unpopular was
the publishing of this Declaration. The most opposite sentiments had
been shocked by an act so liberal, done in a manner so despotic. All
the enemies of religious freedom, and all the friends of civil freedom,
found themselves on the same side; and these two classes made up
nineteen twentieths of the nation. The zealous churchman exclaimed
against the favour which had been shown both to the Papist and to the
Puritan. The Puritan, though he might rejoice in the suspension of the
persecution by which he had been harassed, felt little gratitude for a
toleration which he was to share with Antichrist. And all Englishmen who
valued liberty and law, saw with uneasiness the deep inroad which the
prerogative had made into the province of the legislature.

It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional question was then
not quite free from obscurity. Our ancient Kings had undoubtedly claimed
and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws. The
tribunals had recognised that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass
unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the crown, few even
of the Country Party ventured, in the face of precedent and authority,
to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this prerogative were without limit,
the English government could scarcely be distinguished from a pure
despotism. That there was a limit was fully admitted by the King and his
ministers. Whether the Declaration of Indulgence lay within or without
the limit was the question; and neither party could succeed in tracing
any line which would bear examination. Some opponents of the government
complained that the Declaration suspended not less than forty statutes.
But why not forty as well as one? There was an orator who gave it as his
opinion that the King might constitutionally dispense with bad laws, but
not with good laws. The absurdity of such a distinction it is needless
to expose. The doctrine which seems to have been generally received
in the House of Commons was, that the dispensing power