23. =William and Mary to be Joint Sovereigns. 1689.=--A Declaration of Rights was prepared condemning the dispensing power as lately exercised and the other extravagant actions of James II., while both Houses concurred in offering the crown to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. As long as William lived he was to administer the government, Mary only attaining to actual power in the event of her surviving her husband. After the death of both, the crown was to go first to any children which might be born to them, then to Anne and her children, and, lastly, to any children of William by a second wife in case of his surviving Mary and marrying again. As a matter of fact, William had no children by Mary, who died about eight years before him, and he never married again. On February 13 William and Mary accepted the crown on the conditions offered to them. 24. =Character of the Revolution.=--The main characteristic of the revolution thus effected was that it established the supremacy of Parliament by setting up a king and queen who owed their position to a Parliamentary vote. People had been found to believe that James II. was king by a Divine right. Nobody could believe that of William. Parliament, which had set him up, could pull him down, and he would have therefore to conform his government to the will of the nation manifested in Parliament. The political revolution of =1689= succeeded, whilst the Puritan Revolution of =1641= failed, because, in =1641=, the political aim of setting the Parliament above the king was complicated by an ecclesiastical dispute which had split Parliament and the nation into two hostile parties. In =1689= there was practically neither a political nor an ecclesiastical dispute. Tories and Whigs combined to support the change, and Churchmen and Dissenters made common cause against the small Roman Catholic minority which had only been dangerous because it had the Crown at its back, and because the Crown had been supported by Louis and his armies. A Revolution thus effected was, no doubt, far less complete than that which had been aimed at by the more advanced assailants of the throne of Charles I. It did not aim at changing more than a small part of the political constitution of the country, nor at changing any part whatever of its social institutions. Its programme, in short, was one for a single generation, not one, like that of the '_Heads of the Proposals_' (see p. 555) or the '_Agreement of the People_' (see p. 556) for several generations. Consequently it did not rouse the antagonism which had been fatal even to the best conceived plans of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. It is much to be regretted that the moral tone of the men who brought about the Revolution of =1689= was lower than that which had brought about the Revolution of =1641=. That this was the case, however, was mainly the fault of the unwise attempt of the Puritans to enforce morality by law. The individual liberty which