es of
Parliament. Only by the Tudor method of using Parliament as the instrument
of the royal will could James II. have accomplished the constitutional
changes he had set his heart upon. In attempting to set up toleration for
the Roman Catholic religion, and in openly appointing Roman Catholics to
positions of importance, James II. set Parliament at defiance and ranged
the forces of the Established Church against himself. The method was doomed
to failure. "None have gone about to break Parliaments but in the end
Parliaments have broken them."[64] In any case the notion of restoring
political liberty to Catholics was a bold endeavour in 1685. Against the
will of Parliament the project was folly. To overthrow the rights of
corporations and of the Universities, and to attempt to bully the Church of
England, after Elizabeth's fashion, at the very beginning of a pro-Catholic
movement, was to provoke defeat.

Parliament decided that James II. had "abdicated," when, deserted by
Churchill, he fled to France, and William and Mary came to the throne at
the express invitation of Parliament. The Revolution completed the work of
the Long Parliament by defining the limits of monarchy, and establishing
constitutional government. It was not--this Revolution, of 1688--the first
time Parliament had sanctioned the deposing of the King of England and the
appointment of his successor,[65] but it was the last. Never again since
the accession of William and Mary have the relations of the Crown and
Parliament been strained to breaking point; never has the supremacy of
Parliament been seriously threatened by the power of the throne.

The full effects of the Revolution of 1688 were seen in the course of the
next fifty years. Aristocracy, then mainly Whig, was triumphant, and under
its rule, while large measures of civil and religious liberty were passed,
the condition of the mass of labouring people was generally wretched in the
extreme. The rule of the aristocracy saw England become a great power among
the nations of the world, and the British Navy supreme over the navies of
Europe; but it saw also an industrial population, untaught and uncared for,
sink deeper and deeper into savagery and misery. For a time in the
eighteenth century the farmer and the peasant were prosperous, but by the
close of that century the small farmer was a ruined man, and with the
labourer was carried by the industrial revolution into the town. The worst
times for the