294

DISTORT OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XVIII.

11192 .

by the advice of a responsible ministry; and this ministry must• be taken from the party which predominates in the two Houses,or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to con-ceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuseto assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches ofthe legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one oftwo things, that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the adviceof the ministry, or that the ministry was at issue, on a questionof vital importance, with a majority both of the Commons andof the Lords. On either supposition the country would be in amost critical state, in a state which, if long continued, mustend in a revolution. But in the earlier part of the reign of Wil-liam there was no ministry. The heads of the executive depart-ments had not been appointed exclusively from either party.Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The mostenlightened statesmen did not hold it to bo unconstitutionalthat the King should exercise his highest prerogatives on themost important occasions without any other guidance than thatof his own judgment. His refusal, therefore, to assent to abill which had passed both Houses indicated, not, as a similarrefusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery of go-vernment was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely thatthere was a difference of opinion between him and the two otherbranches of the legislature as to the expediency of a particularlaw. Such a difference of opinion might exist, and, as v'eshall hereafter see, actually did exist, at a time when he was,not merely on friendly, but on most affectionate terms with theEstates of the Realm.

The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the firsttime have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant butunskilful attempt had been made to complete a reform whichthe Bill of Rights had left imperfect. That great law had de-prived the Crown of the pow’er of arbitrarily removing the