he Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil plight, they
were still a numerous and powerful party; and as they mustered strong in
the large towns, and especially in the capital, they made a noise and
a show more than proportioned to their real force. Animated by the
recollection of past triumphs, and by the sense of present oppression,
they overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not in
their power to make out that clear and overwhelming case which can alone
justify so violent a remedy as resistance to an established government.
Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their sovereign
had entered into a treaty with France against the religion and liberties
of England. What was apparent was not sufficient to warrant an appeal
to the sword. If the Lords had thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they had
thrown it out in the exercise of a right coeval with the constitution.
If the King had dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had done so by
virtue of a prerogative which had never been questioned. If he had,
since the dissolution, done some harsh things, still those things were
in strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent
practice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted his
opponents, he had prosecuted them according to the proper forms, and
before the proper tribunals. The evidence now produced for the crown was
at least as worthy of credit as the evidence on which the noblest blood
of England had lately been shed by the opposition. The treatment which
an accused Whig had now to expect from judges, advocates, sheriffs,
juries and spectators, was no worse than the treatment which had lately
been thought by the Whigs good enough for an accused Papist. If the
privileges of the City of London were attacked, they were attacked, not
by military violence or by any disputable exercise of prerogative,
but according to the regular practice of Westminster Hall. No tax was
imposed by royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas Corpus
Act was respected. Even the Test Act was enforced. The opposition,
therefore, could not bring home to the King that species of
misgovernment which alone could justify insurrection. And, even had his
misgovernment been more flagrant than it was, insurrection would still
have been criminal, because it was almost certain to be unsuccessful.
The situation of the Whigs in 1682 differed widely from that of the
Roundheads forty years before. Those who to