That this was the most logical and self-consistent view of the situation appears to me undeniable; but it is a singular illustration of the manner in which events may transpose the relative proportions of principles that this Whig corollary from the abdication of James appeared to the statesmen of the time, and even it should seem to Macaulay, a century and a half after them, to be a more pregnant assertion of democratic doctrine, and a bolder step in its application, than that expressed in the earlier proposition that James had ceased to reign. Nowadays the difference between the Tories who contended that the crown had been demised, and the Whigs who insisted that the throne was vacant, hardly arrests the student for an instant. He is disposed to brush the Tory fiction aside as alike irrational and unnecessary. The real passage of the Rubicon took place in his view of the matter when it was declared that James had ceased to be _de jure_ king, and no subsequent assertion of popular rights in the choice of a successor could possibly be stronger or more important than that declaration itself. Yet whereas the Convention accepted the first of these propositions _nemine contradicente_, the second was only adopted after having been once actually rejected, and was in fact the subject of so sharp a conflict of opinion as to threaten irreconcilable deadlock between the two branches of the constituent body.[7] The Convention met on the 22d of January, when Halifax was chosen president in the Lords; Powle, Speaker of the Commons. A letter from William, read in both Houses, informed their members that he had endeavoured to the best of his power to discharge the trust reposed in him, and that it now rested with the Convention to lay the foundation of a firm security for their religion, laws, and liberties. The Prince then went on to refer to the dangerous condition of the Protestants in Ireland and the present state of things abroad, which obliged him to tell them that next to the danger of unreasonable divisions among themselves, nothing could be so fatal as too great a delay in their consultations. And he further intimated that as England was already bound by treaty to help the Dutch in such exigencies as, deprived of the troops which he had brought over, and threatened with war by Louis XIV., they might easily be reduced to, so he felt confident that the cheerful concurrence of the Dutch in preserving this kingdom would meet with all the returns of friendship from Protestants and Englishmen whenever their own condition should require assistance. To this the two Houses replied with an address thanking the Prince for his great care in the administration of the affairs of the kingdom to this time, and formally continuing to him the same commission,[8] recommending to his particular care the present state of Ireland. William's answer to this address was characteristic both of his temperament and his preoccupation. "My lords