principal ministers told the ambassador, would be to establish the necessity of convoking parliament from time to time, and thus to change the form of government by rendering the king dependent upon it; rather than which it would be better to come at once to the extremity of a dissolution, and maintain the possession of the late king's revenues by open force.[77] But the extraordinary conduct of this House of Commons, so unlike any that had met in England for the last century, rendered any exertion of violence on this score quite unnecessary. _Parliament of 1685._--The behaviour of that unhonoured parliament, which held its two short sessions in 1685, though in a great measure owing to the fickleness of the public mind and rapid ascendancy of tory principles during the late years, as well as to a knowledge of the king's severe and vindictive temper, seems to confirm the assertion strongly made at the time within its walls, that many of the members had been unduly returned.[78] The notorious facts indeed, as to the forfeiture of corporations throughout the kingdom, and their regrant under such restrictions as might serve the purpose of the Crown, stand in need of no confirmation. Those who look at the debates and votes of this assembly, their large grant of a permanent revenue to the annual amount of two millions, rendering a frugal prince, in time of peace, entirely out of all dependence on his people, their timid departure from a resolution taken to address the king on the only matter for which they were really solicitous, the enforcement of the penal laws, on a suggestion of his displeasure,[79] their bill entitled, for the preservation of his majesty's person, full of dangerous innovations in the law of treason, especially one most unconstitutional clause, that any one moving in either house of parliament to change the descent of the Crown should incur the penalties of that offence,[80] their supply of £700,000, after the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, for the support of a standing army,[81] will be inclined to believe that, had James been as zealous for the church of England as his father, he would have succeeded in establishing a power so nearly despotic that neither the privileges of parliament, nor much less those of private men, would have stood in his way. The prejudice which the two last Stuarts had acquired in favour of the Roman religion, so often deplored by thoughtless or insidious writers as one of the worst consequences of their father's ill fortune, is to be accounted rather among the most signal links in the chain of causes through which a gracious Providence has favoured the consolidation of our liberties and welfare. Nothing less than a motive more universally operating than the interests of civil freedom would have stayed the compliant spirit of this unworthy parliament, or rallied, for a time at least, the supporters of indefinite prerogative under a banner they abhorred.