And thus both parties, while they warped their principles from regard to their antagonists, and from prudential considerations, lost the praise of consistence and uniformity.
The managers for the lords next insisted, that even allowing the king's abuse of power to be equivalent to an abdication, or, in other words, to a civil death, it could operate no other-*wise than his voluntary resignation, or his natural death; and could only make way for the next successor.

It was a maxim of English law, that the throne was never vacant; but instantly, upon the demise of one king, was filled with his legal heir, who was entitled to all the authority of his predecessor.
And however young or unfit for government the successor, however unfortunate in his situation, though he were even a captive in the hands of public enemies, yet no just reason, they thought, could be assigned why, without any default of his own, he should lose a crown, to which by birth he was fully entitled.

The managers for the commons might have opposed this reasoning by many specious and even solid arguments.

They might have said, that the great security for allegiance being merely opinion, any scheme of settlement should be adopted in which it was most probable the people would acquiesce and persevere: that though, upon the natural death of a king whose administration had been agreeable to the laws, many and great inconveniences would be endured, rather than exclude his lineal successor, yet the case was not the same when the people had been obliged, by their revolt, to dethrone a prince whose illegal measures had, in every circumstance, violated the constitution: that in these extraordinary revolutions, the government reverted, in some degree, to its first principles, and the community acquired a right of providing for the public interest by expedients which, on other occasions, might be deemed violent and irregular: that the recent use of one extraordinary remedy reconciled their minds to such licenses, than if the government had run the people to the practice of another, and more familiarized on in its usual tenor: and that King James, having carried abroad his son, as well as withdrawn himself, had given such just provocation to the kingdom, had voluntarily involved it in such difficulties, that the interests of his family were justly sacrificed to the public settlement and tranquillity.

Though these topics seem reasonable, they were entirely forborne by the whig managers; both because they implied an acknowledgment of the infant prince's legitimacy, which it was agreed to keep in obscurity, and because they contained too express a condemnation of tory principles.