I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in
grateful acknowledgment to the AUTHOR OF ALL GOOD for the consequent
blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no
less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise
indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features of whose
administration have ever been mildness to the subject, and tenderness of
his rights.
Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and
common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made
my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend
gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too
much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our
deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of
those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the
authors of those evils; and we may bless GOD for all His goodness to us
as a nation, without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined, powerless
exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that most of us
would have done, had we been in their situation.
"The bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart" may be said with propriety
and justice, when compared with the present Royal Family, and the
sentiments of our days; but is there no allowance to be made for the
manners of the times? Were the royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more
attentive to their subjects' rights? Might not the epithets of "bloody
and tyrannical" be, with at least equal justice, applied to the House of
Tudor, of York, or any other of their predecessors?
The simple state of the case, Sir, seems to be this:--At that period,
the science of government, the knowledge of the true relation between
king and subject, was, like other sciences and other knowledge, just in
its infancy, emerging from dark ages of ignorance and barbarity.
The Stuarts only contended for prerogatives which they knew their
predecessors enjoyed, and which they saw their contemporaries enjoying;
but these prerogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation and
the rights of subjects.
In this contest between prince and people, the consequence of that light
of science which had lately dawned over Europe, the monarch of France,
for example, was victorious over the struggling liberties of his people:
with us, luckily, the monarch failed, and his unwarrantable pretensions
fell a sacrifice to our rights and happiness. Whether it was owing to
the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the justling of parties, I
cannot pretend to determine; but, likewise, happily for us, the kingly
power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed
the throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim nothing
inconsistent with the covenanted terms which placed them there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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