and regarding an individual person. _Privilegium non transit in
exemplum_. If ever there was a time favorable for establishing the
principle that a king of popular choice was the only legal king, without
all doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not being done at that time is
a proof that the nation was of opinion it ought not to be done at any
time. There is no person so completely ignorant of our history as not to
know that the majority in Parliament, of both parties, were so little
disposed to anything resembling that principle, that at first they were
determined to place the vacant crown, not on the head of the Prince of
Orange, but on that of his wife, Mary, daughter of King James, the
eldest born of the issue of that king, which they acknowledged as
undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to recall to
your memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that their
accepting King William was not properly a _choice_; but to all those who
did not wish in effect to recall King James, or to deluge their country
in blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into
the peril they had just escaped, it was an act of _necessity_, in the
strictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken.

In the very act in which, for a time, and in a single case, Parliament
departed from the strict order of inheritance, in favor of a prince who,
though not next, was, however, very near in the line of succession, it
is curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the bill called the
Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion.
It is curious to observe with what address this temporary solution of
continuity is kept from the eye; whilst all that could be found in this
act of necessity to countenance the idea of an hereditary succession is
brought forward, and fostered, and made the most of, by this great man,
and by the legislature who followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative
style of an act of Parliament, he makes the Lords and Commons fall to a
pious legislative ejaculation, and declare that they consider it "as a
marvellous providence, and merciful goodness of God to this nation, to
preserve their said Majesties' _royal_ persons most happily to reign
over us _on the throne of their ancestors_, for which, from the bottom
of their hearts, they return their humblest thanks and praises." The
legislature plainly had in view the Act of Recognition of the first of
Queen Elizabeth