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HISTOKY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XI.

111811 .

might consistently refuse to recognise the Convention as aParliament. For he held that it had from the beginning beenan unlawful assembly, that all its resolutions -were nullities,and that the Sovereigns -whom it had set up were usurpers. Butwith what consistency could any man, who maintained that anew Parliament ought to be immediately called by writs underthe great seal of William and Mary, question the authoritywhich had placed William and Mary on the throne? Thosewho held that William was rightful King must necessarily holdthat the body from which he derived his right was itself a right-ful Great Council of the Realm. Those who, though not holdinghim to be rightful King, conceived that they might lawfullyswear allegiance to him as King in fact, might surely, on thesame principle, acknowledge the Convention as a Parliamentin fact. It was plain that the Convention was the fountainheadfrom which the authority of all future Parliaments must bederived, and that on the validity of the votes of the Conventionmust depend the validity of every future statute. And howcould the stream rise-higher than the source? Was it notabsurd to say that the Convention was supreme in the state,and yet a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes,and yet no legislature for the humblest purposes; competent todeclare the throne vacant, to change the succession, to fix thelandmarks of the constitution, and yet not competent to passthe most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or the building ofa parish church?

These arguments would have had considerable weight, evenif every precedent had been on the other side. But in truth ourhistory afforded only one precedent which was at all in point;and that precedent xvas decisive in favour of the doctrine thatroyal writs are not indispensably necessary to the existence of aParliament. No royal writ had summoned the Conventionwhich recalled Charles the Second. Yet that Convention had,