The Revolution is not to be considered as a mere effort of the nation on a pressing emergency to rescue itself from the violence of a particular monarch; much less as grounded upon the danger of the Anglican church, its emoluments, and dignities, from the bigotry of a hostile religion. It was rather the triumph of those principles which, in the language of the present day, are denominated liberal or constitutional, over those of absolute monarchy, or of monarchy not effectually controlled by stated boundaries. It was the termination of a contest between the regal power and that of parliament, which could not have been brought to so favourable an issue by any other means. But, while the chief renovation in the spirit of our government was likely to spring from breaking the line of succession, while no positive enactments would have sufficed to give security to freedom with the legitimate race of Stuart on the throne, it would have been most culpable, and even preposterous, to permit this occasion to pass by, without asserting and defining those rights and liberties, which the very indeterminate nature of the king's prerogative at common law, as well as the unequivocal extension it had lately received, must continually place in jeopardy. The House of Lords indeed, as I have observed in the last chapter, would have conferred the Crown on William and Mary, leaving the redress of grievances to future arrangement; and some eminent lawyers in the Commons, Maynard and Pollexfen, seem to have had apprehensions of keeping the nation too long in a state of anarchy.[152] But the great majority of the Commons wisely resolved to go at once to the root of the nation's grievances, and show their new sovereign that he was raised to the throne for the sake of those liberties, by violating which his predecessor had forfeited it. _Declaration of rights._--The declaration of rights presented to the Prince of Orange by the Marquis of Halifax, as speaker of the Lords, in the presence of both houses, on the 18th of February, consists of three parts: a recital of the illegal and arbitrary acts committed by the late king, and of their consequent vote of abdication; a declaration, nearly following the words of the former part, that such enumerated acts are illegal; and a resolution, that the throne shall be filled by the Prince and Princess of Orange, according to the limitations mentioned in the last chapter. Thus the declaration of rights was indissolubly connected with the revolution-settlement, as its motive and its condition.