The populace might, on occasion, be strong enough to force the elder Pitt upon an unwilling king, or to shout for Wilkes and liberty against the unconstitutional usurpation of the monarch-ridden House of Commons.

Such outbursts are yet the exception to the prevailing temper.

The deliberations of Parliament were still, at least technically, a secret; and membership therein, save for one or two anomalies like Westminster and Bristol, was still the private possession of a privileged class.

The Revolution, in fact, meant less an abstract and general freedom, than a special release from the arbitrary will of a stupid monarch who aroused against himself every deep-seated prejudice of his generation.

The England which sent James II upon his travels may be, as Hume pointed out, reduced to a pathetic fragment even of its electorate.