Volume IV Part 7 (1/2)
”'Tis plain that the Doctor is not impeached for preaching a general doctrine, and enforcing the general duty of obedience, but for preaching against an _excepted case after he has stated the exception_. He is not impeached for preaching the general doctrine of obedience, and the utter illegality of resistance upon any pretence whatsoever, but because, having first laid down the general doctrine as true, without any exception, _he states the excepted case_, the Revolution, in express terms, as an objection, and then a.s.sumes the consideration of that excepted case, denies there was any resistance in the Revolution, and a.s.serts that to impute resistance to the Revolution would cast black and odious colors upon it. This, my Lords, is not preaching the doctrine of non-resistance in the _general_ terms used by the Homilies and the fathers of the Church, where cases of necessity may be _understood to be excepted by a tacit implication, as the counsel have allowed_,--but is preaching directly against the resistance at the Revolution, which, in the course of this debate, has been all along admitted to _be necessary and just_, and can have no other meaning than to bring a dishonor upon the Revolution, and an odium upon those great and ill.u.s.trious persons, _those friends to the monarchy and the Church, that a.s.sisted in bringing it about_. For had the Doctor intended anything else, he would have treated the case of the Revolution in a different manner, and have given _it the true and fair answer_: he would have said that the resistance at the Revolution was _of absolute necessity, and the only means left to revive the Const.i.tution, and must be therefore taken as an excepted case_, and could never come within the reach or intention of the general doctrine of the Church.”
”Your Lords.h.i.+ps take notice on what grounds the Doctor continues to a.s.sert the same position in his answer. But is it not most evident that the general exhortations to be met with in the Homilies of the Church of England, and such like declarations in the statutes of the kingdom, are meant only as rules for the civil obedience of the subject to the legal administration of the supreme power in _ordinary cases_? And it is equally absurd to construe any words in a positive law to authorize the destruction of the whole, as to expect that King, Lords, and Commons should, in express terms of law, declare _such an ultimate resort as the right of resistance, at a time when the case supposes that the force of all law is ceased_.”[18]
[Sidenote: Commons abhor whatever shakes the submission of posterity to the settlement of the crown.]
”The Commons must always resent, with the utmost detestation and abhorrence, every position that may shake the authority of that act of Parliament whereby the crown is settled upon her Majesty, _and whereby the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do, in the name of all the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, to her Majesty_, which this general principle of absolute non-resistance must certainly shake.
”For, if the resistance at the Revolution was illegal, the Revolution settled in usurpation, and this act can have no greater force and authority than an act pa.s.sed under a usurper.
”And the Commons take leave to observe, that the authority of this Parliamentary settlement is a matter of the greatest consequence to maintain, in a case where the hereditary right to the crown is contested.”
”It appears by the several instances mentioned in the act declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown, that at the time of the Revolution there was _a total subversion of the const.i.tution of government both in Church and State, which is a case that the laws of England could never suppose, provide for, or have in view._”
Sir Joseph Jekyl, so often quoted, considered the preservation of the monarchy, and of the rights and prerogatives of the crown, as essential objects with all sound Whigs, and that they were bound not only to maintain them, when injured or invaded, but to exert themselves as much for their reestablishment, if they should happen to be overthrown by popular fury, as any of their own more immediate and popular rights and privileges, if the latter should be at any time subverted by the crown.
For this reason he puts the cases of the _Revolution_, and the _Restoration_ exactly upon the same footing. He plainly marks, that it was the object of all honest men not to sacrifice one part of the Const.i.tution to another, and much more, not to sacrifice any of them to visionary theories of the rights of man, but to preserve our whole inheritance in the Const.i.tution, in all its members and all its relations, entire and unimpaired, from generation to generation. In this Mr. Burke exactly agrees with him.
_Sir Joseph Jekyl._
[Sidenote: What are the rights of the people.]
[Sidenote: Restoration and Revolution.]
[Sidenote: People have an equal interest in the legal rights of the crown and of their own.]
”Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Const.i.tution. This right the nation hath a.s.serted, 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: Const.i.tution recovered at the Restoration and Revolution.]
Speaking of our Const.i.tution, states it as ”a Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed 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_.