GEORGE IV. 1820-1830.

WILLIAM IV. 1830-1837.

LIST OF MAPS.

WILLIAM AND MARY.

Secretaries of State.

Before the Crown was absolutely offered to William, the Convention was eager to reform a number of the most prominent abuses of the last reign. It was shown by the wiser leaders among them that such reforms would entail a mass of legislation which, The Declaration of Right. to be done well, must occupy several years. It was therefore determined that, for the present, a solemn declaration of principles only should be drawn up. This is known as the Declaration of Right. In it, after enumerating the evils from which the country had suffered, the Lords and Commons declared that the dispensing power does not exist, that without grant or consent of Parliament no money can be exacted by the sovereign, and no army kept up in time of peace. They also affirmed the right of petition, the right of free choice of representatives, the right of Parliament Crown accepted by William and Mary. to freedom of debate, the right of the nation to a pure administration of justice, and the necessity, in order to secure these things, of frequent Parliaments. This Declaration having been read to William and Mary, the Crown was solemnly offered them by Halifax, and by them accepted. They were immediately proclaimed amid general plaudits.

Thus was consummated, with scarcely any bloodshed, and by what Character of the Revolution. appeared an almost unanimous action on the part of the nation, a complete revolution. It was not the less a revolution because it was held that the whole Constitution of England passed on in its minutest detail unchanged. By it was overthrown for ever the theory which came into existence under the Tudors, and was brought to perfection under the Stuarts; henceforward it was impossible that the King should be regarded either as the proprietor of the country, or as a ruler by divine right, the representative of God upon earth. In the place of this theory was substituted that great Whig theory, which, arising among the Puritans, had enjoyed a brief triumph in the successes of the Great Rebellion, and, violently overthrown at the Restoration, had succeeded in making good its position during the reigns of the two last Stuarts,—the theory which regarded the King as reigning by the will of the people and in virtue of an implied contract with them. As a natural consequence of the position thus taken by the nation as the supreme power in the State, Parliament, its representative, became in its turn supreme, and although the change was not yet fully understood, the representatives of the people were gradually taking to themselves not only the duties of legislation, but also the executive. The ministry, therefore, however much they may have been still regarded as the King's ministers, became by degrees the national ministers, answerable for their conduct in Parliament, and before long became in fact little else than the executive Committee of the majority in Parliament.

The unanimity of parties which had secured the triumph of William Personal unpopularity of William. was of short duration, nor was his personal popularity long-lived. The apparent coldness of his demeanour, his carelessness of the pomps of the Court, his wretched health, which obliged him to withdraw from London and establish his Court at Kensington, speedily rendered him personally unpopular; while, as soon as the general danger which had caused their union was removed, the fundamental differences which divided political parties at once made themselves obvious. Moreover, the tendency to reaction, visible after all political excitements, began to show itself. Two classes were by no means ready to accept kindly the revolution which had been wrought. These were the clergy Discontent of the clergy and the army. The greater part of the clergy had spent their lives in inculcating the duty of passive obedience. Although that theory had broken down in practice when the attacks of the Crown were directed against themselves, they could not bring themselves to submit without difficulty to a complete reversal of their political creed, nor could they help seeing that the success of William implied nothing short of the substitution of the Whig doctrine for that of monarchy by divine right. A very large portion of them were therefore disaffected. The and the army. army, though it had disliked the introduction of Catholics and of Irish among its ranks, and was not prejudiced in favour of any theory of monarchy, felt its professional honour injured by the sorry part it had played in the late events. So deep was the disaffection that one regiment quartered at Ipswich broke out into open mutiny, marched northward in arms, and was only brought to obedience after a skirmish with some Dutch troops under Ginkel, which had been rapidly sent in pursuit. The signs of general disaffection at the same time were so obvious that it was thought necessary to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act.

Before this happened, William had had to form a ministry and to furnish himself with a Parliament. For this latter purpose, in spite of the opposition of many of the old Tories, who regarded a Parliament not summoned by the King's writ as no Parliament at all, the Convention was changed into a Parliament, and proceeded to act in that capacity. It was not indeed reasonable that a freely elected body, whose choice of a king both sides were willing to allow, should still be regarded upon technical grounds as incapable of settling matters of much less importance. The choice of ministers was a matter of more difficulty.