their power, were compelled to sacrifice not a little of that which had entered into the definition of a tory. Yet even this had not a greater effect than that systematic jealousy and dislike of the administration, which made them encroach, according to ancient notions, and certainly their own, on the prerogative of William. They learned in this no unpleasing lesson to popular assemblies, to magnify their own privileges and the rights of the people. This tone was often assumed by the friends of the exiled family, and in them it was without any dereliction of their object. It was natural that a jacobite should use popular topics in order to thwart and subvert an usurping government. His faith was to the crown, but to the crown on a right head. In a tory who voluntarily submitted to the reigning prince, such an opposition to the prerogative was repugnant to the maxims of his creed, and placed him, as I have said, in a false position. This is of course applicable to the reigns of George I. and II., and in a greater degree in proportion as the tory and jacobite were more separated than they had been perhaps under William. The tories gave a striking proof how far they might be brought to abandon their theories, in supporting an address to the queen that she would invite the Princess Sophia to take up her residence in England; a measure so unnatural as well as imprudent that some have ascribed it to a subtlety of politics which I do not comprehend. But we need not, perhaps, look farther than to the blind rage of a party just discarded, who, out of pique towards their sovereign, made her more irreconcilably their enemy, and while they hoped to brand their opponents with inconsistency, forgot that the imputation would redound with tenfold force on themselves. The whigs justly resisted a proposal so little called for at that time; but it led to an act for the security of the succession, designating a regency in the event of the queen's decease, and providing that the actual parliament, or the last, if none were in being, should meet immediately, and continue for six months, unless dissolved by the successor.[294]