The Whigs had that
opportunity,--or to speak more properly, they made it. The impeachment
of Dr. Sacheverell was undertaken by a Whig ministry and a Whig House of
Commons, and carried on before a prevalent and steady majority of Whig
peers. It was carried on for the express purpose of stating the true
grounds and principles of the Revolution,--what the Commons emphatically
called their _foundation_. It was carried on for the purpose of
condemning the principles on which the Revolution was first opposed and
afterwards calumniated, in order, by a juridical sentence of the highest
authority, to confirm and fix Whig principles, as they had operated both
in the resistance to King James and in the subsequent settlement, and to
fix them in the extent and with the limitations with which it was meant
they should be understood by posterity. The ministers and managers for
the Commons were persons who had, many of them, an active share in the
Revolution. Most of them had seen it at an age capable of reflection.
The grand event, and all the discussions which led to it and followed
it, were then alive in the memory and conversation of all men.
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