The dispute was no longer, whether or not the dangers resulting from James’s succession were real, and such as ought to be guarded against by parliamentary provisions, but whether the exclusion or restrictions furnished the most safe and eligible mode of compassing the object which both sides pretended to have in view.  The argument upon this state of the question is clearly, forcibly, and, I think, convincingly, stated by Rapin, who exposes very ably the extreme folly of trusting to measures, without consideration of the men who are to execute them.  Even in Hume’s statement of the question, whatever may have been his intention, the arguments in favour of the exclusion appear to me greatly to preponderate.  Indeed, it is not easy to conceive upon what principles even the Tories could justify their support of the restrictions.  Many among them, no doubt, saw the provisions in the same light in which the Whigs represented them, as an expedient, admirably, indeed, adapted to the real object of upholding the present king’s power, by the defeat of the exclusion, but never likely to take effect for their pretended purpose of controlling that of his successor, and supported them for that very reason.  But such a principle of conduct was too fraudulent to be avowed; nor ought it, perhaps, in candour to be imputed to the majority of the party.  To those who acted with good faith, and meant that the restrictions should really take place and be effectual, surely it ought to have occurred (and to those who most prized the prerogatives of the crown it ought most forcibly to have occurred), that in consenting to curtail the powers of the crown, rather than to alter the succession, they were adopting the greater in order to avoid the lesser evil.  The question of what are to be the powers of the crown, is surely of superior importance to that of who shall wear it?  Those, at least, who consider the royal prerogative as vested in the king, not for his sake but for that of his subjects, must consider the one of these questions as much above the other in dignity as the rights of the public are more valuable than those of an individual.  In this view the prerogatives of the crown are, in substance and effect, the rights of the people; and these rights of the people were not to be sacrificed to the purpose of preserving the succession to the most favoured prince much less to one who, on account of his religious persuasion, was justly feared and suspected.  In truth, the question between the exclusion and restrictions seems peculiarly calculated to ascertain the different views in which the different parties in this country have seen, and perhaps ever will see, the prerogatives of the crown.  The Whigs, who consider them as a trust for the people—­a doctrine which the Tories themselves, when pushed in argument, will sometimes admit—­naturally think it their duty rather to change the manager of the trust than to impair the subject of it; while others, who consider them as the right or property of the