Sir Joseph Jekyl, in his reply to Harcourt, and the other great men who conducted the cause for the Tory side, spoke in the following memorable terms, distinctly stating the whole of what the Whig House of Commons contended for, in the name of all their constituents.

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Sir Joseph Jekyl.

[Sidenote:  Necessity creates an exception, and the Revolution a case of necessity, the utmost extent of the demand of the Commons.]

“My Lords, the concessions” (the concessions of Sacheverell’s counsel) “are these:  That necessity creates an exception to the general rule of submission to the prince; that such exception is understood or implied in the laws that require such submission; and that the case of the Revolution was a case of necessity.

“These are concessions so ample, and do so fully answer the drift of the Commons in this article, and are to the utmost extent of their meaning in it, that I can’t forbear congratulating them upon this success of their impeachment,—­that in full Parliament, this erroneous doctrine of unlimited non-resistance is given up and disclaimed.  And may it not, in after ages, be an addition to the glories of this bright reign, that so many of those who are honored with being in her Majesty’s service have been at your Lordships’ bar thus successfully contending for the national rights of her people, and proving they are not precarious or remediless?

“But to return to these concessions:  I must appeal to your Lordships, whether they are not a total departure from the Doctor’s answer.”

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I now proceed to show that the Whig managers for the Commons meant to preserve the government on a firm foundation, by asserting the perpetual validity of the settlement then made, and its coercive power upon posterity.  I mean to show that they gave no sort of countenance to any doctrine tending to impress the people (taken separately from the legislature, which includes the crown) with an idea that they had acquired a moral or civil competence to alter, without breach of the original compact on the part of the king, the succession to the crown, at their pleasure,—­much less that they had acquired any right, in the case of such an event as caused the Revolution, to set up any new form of government.  The author of the Reflections, I believe, thought that no man of common understanding could oppose to this doctrine the ordinary sovereign power as declared in the act of Queen Anne:  that is, that the kings or queens of the realm, with the consent of Parliament, are competent to regulate and to settle the succession of the crown.  This power is and ever was inherent in the supreme sovereignty, and was not, as the political divines vainly talk, acquired by the Revolution.  It is declared in the old statute of Queen Elizabeth.