But their attachment to him was of a peculiar kind.

Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen who fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles the Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines of Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire.

The Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and not the people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine in no other sense than that in which the right of a member of parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that, while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates the law, he ought to be withstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically and pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed.

On the truth of these principles depended the justice of William's title to the throne.

It is obvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from the relation which had subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers.