Nobody denied that all duties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years might be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire.

But large revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived, be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which opinions were divided.
Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary.

It appears from a very concise and unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this doctrine.

His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired.

This was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturally alive, and that his successors must receive that money because he was politically defunct.