A convention was assembled in each kingdom, to manage their respective concerns, and settle their future government. In England the revolution was accomplished by a coalition of whig and tory; but in Scotland, where the same distinctions prevailed under different names, the parties kept separate and opposed to each other; the episcopalians siding with James, and the presbyterians with William. The latter, however, in the end prevailed, and the convention adopted a plan, prepared by a committee, for the settlement of the crown. The deliberations had degenerated in the English convention into verbal disputes between the two houses, whether the late king had deserted or abdicated the vacant throne. In Scotland there was neither the same necessity to gratify the tories, nor the same propriety in declaring that the king had abdicated the government, by the desertion of a country wherein he did not reside. But the opposite genius of the two nations was never more conspicuous than in the result of their deliberations on that important event. The _English_ convention declared that James II. having endeavoured to subvert the constitution, by breaking the original contract between the king and people, and having violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn from the kingdom, had _abdicated_ {857} the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant. The _Scots_, on the other hand, instead of attempting by an ambiguous fiction to reconcile hereditary right with a change in the succession, placed the vacancy of the throne on its true basis, the religion and mal-administration of James. The same oppression which the English apprehended while yet distant, they had long endured. Their loyal attachment to the Stewarts, which survived the civil wars, had been effaced by their sufferings since the restoration. From the same national ardour which rendered the reformation so complete, or destructive in Scotland, they proposed and passed a bold and decisive vote, that James had forfaulted [_forfeited_] the crown by his misconduct and crimes.