It would be
to repeat a very trite story, to recall to your memory all those
circumstances which demonstrated that their accepting King William was
not properly a choice; but to all those who did not wish, in effect,
to recall King James or to deluge their country in blood and again
to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had
just escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense
in which necessity can be taken.
In the very act in which for a time, and in a single case,
parliament departed from the strict order of inheritance in favor of a
prince who, though not next, was, however, very near in the line of
succession, it is curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the
bill called the Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that
delicate occasion. It is curious to observe with what address this
temporary solution of continuity is kept from the eye, whilst all that
could be found in this act of necessity to countenance the idea of
an hereditary succession is brought forward, and fostered, and made
the most of, by this great man and by the legislature who followed
him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of an act of parliament, he
makes the Lords and Commons fall to a pious, legislative ejaculation
and declare that they consider it "as a marvellous providence and
merciful goodness of God to this nation to preserve their said
Majesties' royal persons most happily to reign over us on the throne
of their ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts, they
return their humblest thanks and praises".
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