"Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Constitution. This right the nation hath asserted, and recovered out of the hands of those who had dispossessed them of it at several times. There are of this _two famous instances_ in the knowledge of the present age: I mean that of the _Restoration_, and that of the _Revolution_: in both these great events were the _regal power_ and the _rights of the people_ recovered. And it is _hard to say in which the people have the greatest interest; for the Commons are sensible that there it not one legal power belonging to the crown, but they have an interest in it; and I doubt not but they will always be as careful to support the rights of the crown as their own privileges_." * * * * * The other Whig managers regarded (as he did) the overturning of the monarchy by a republican faction with the very same horror and detestation with which they regarded the destruction of the privileges of the people by an arbitrary monarch. * * * * * _Mr. Lechmere_, [Sidenote: Constitution recovered at the Restoration and Revolution.] Speaking of our Constitution, states it as "a Constitution which happily recovered itself, at the Restoration, from the confusions and disorders which _the horrid and detestable proceedings of faction and usurpation had thrown it into_, and which after many convulsions and struggles was providentially saved at the late happy Revolution, and by the many good laws passed since that time stands now upon a firmer foundation, together with the most comfortable prospect of _security to all posterity_ by the settlement of the crown in the Protestant line." * * * * * I mean now to show that the Whigs (if Sir Joseph Jekyl was one, and if he spoke in conformity to the sense of the Whig House of Commons, and the Whig ministry who employed him) did carefully guard against any presumption that might arise from the repeal of the non-resistance oath of Charles the Second, as if at the Revolution the ancient principles of our government were at all changed, or that republican doctrines were countenanced, or any sanction given to seditious proceedings upon general undefined ideas of misconduct, or for changing the form of government, or for resistance upon any other ground than the _necessity_ so often mentioned for the purpose of self-preservation. It will show still more clearly the equal care of the then Whigs to prevent either the regal power from being swallowed up on pretence of popular rights, or the popular rights from being destroyed on pretence of regal prerogatives. * * * * * _Sir Joseph Jekyl_. [Sidenote: Mischief of broaching antimonarchical principles.] [Sidenote: Two cases of resistance: one to preserve the crown, the other the rights of the subject.]