Happily, however, there proved to be no necessity for the performance of this brave determination; “the projects of that reign,” as the Duchess well observes, “being effectually disappointed as soon as they were openly avowed.”[103] The birth of a son, and the ceremony which declared him to be Prince of Wales, accelerated, in a marked manner, the course of the infatuated King’s destruction. Nonconformists, and the High Church party, Whigs and Tories, now plainly foresaw a total subversion of government in Church and State, all hopes of a Protestant succession to the throne being annihilated. Those who had upheld the doctrine of passive obedience, perceived that they were authorised, by the measures which James adopted, to form schemes for the prevention of his further designs: otherwise there would be no difference between the constitution of Great Britain and that of an absolute monarchy. The doctrines of passive obedience had, it was well understood, been so industriously spread throughout the laity, as well as among the clergy, from a dread of those excesses which the Presbyterians and Conformists had permitted and extenuated in the last revolution, that many conscientious persons for some time doubted whether they ought to refuse an unlimited obedience to the sovereign. But the dangers of a sinking state, and of a tottering church, opened the eyes even of the most scrupulous, and convinced them that much ought to be sacrificed, in order to restrain the royal prerogative, and to save their best interests, and the objects of their veneration, from destruction.[104] Under these threatening clouds, an union of all parties began to be considered as the only safe, the only practicable, the only honourable project to guard the country from anarchy, by protecting the laws. Nor can those be censured, who from considerations of such importance, and from general views, divest themselves, in such an extremity, of private interests, even of private obligations, for the sake of ensuring peace, by obtaining justice, and with it, the protection of a moderate and constitutional ruler. It requires infinite moral courage to give up the long-maintained and often-repeated dogmas of a party; and we are bound to hope, and to believe, that when great evils require so great a sacrifice, the motive which impels the change must proceed from some source higher than mere personal advancement. But unhappily, the world generally judges otherwise.