THE INTERREGNUM.

437

damus should be revised. One gentleman fell on the chim- ciiap.neymen, another on the excisemen; and the House resolved ■ 168Sthat the malpractices of both chimneymen and excisemenshould be restrained. It is a most remarkable circum-stance that, while the whole political, military, judicial,and fiscal system of the kingdom was thus passed in review,not a single representative of the people proposed the repealof the statute which subjected the press to a censorship. Itwas not yet understood, even by the most enlightened men,that the liberty of discussion is the chief safeguard of allother liberties. *

The House was greatly perplexed. Some orators vehe- Disputesmently said that too much time had already been lost, and promise 1 ,that the government ought to be settled without the delay of aday. Society was unquiet: trade was languishing: the Eng-lish colony in Ireland was in imminent danger of perishing: aforeign war was impending: the exiled King might, in a fewweeks, be at Dublin with a French army, and from Dublin hemight soon cross to Chester. Was it not insanity, at such acrisis, to leave the throne unfilled, and, while the very ex-istence of Parliaments was in jeopardy, to waste time in de-bating whether Parliaments should be prorogued by the so-vereign or by themselves? On the other side it was askedwhether the Convention could think that it had fulfilled itsmission by merely pulling down one prince and putting upanother. Surely now or never was the time to secure publicliberty by such fences as might effectually prevent the en-croachments of prerogative.** There was doubtless greatweight in what was urged on both sides. The able chiefs ofthe Whig party, among whom Somers was fast rising to ascen-dency, proposed a middle course. The House had, theysaid, two objects in view, which ought to be kept distinct.

One object was to secure the old polity of the realm againstillegal attacks: the other was to improve that polity by legalreforms. The former object might be attained by solemnlyputting on record, in the resolution which called the new

• Commons’ Journals, Feb. 2. 168J.

** Grey’s Debates; Burnet, i. 822 .