Few neuters were found in the nation: but among such as could maintain a calm indifference, there prevailed sentiments wide of those which were adopted by either party.

Such persons thought, that all general speculative declarations of the legislature, either for or against resistance, were equally impolitic and could serve to no other purpose than to signalize in their turn the triumph of one faction over another: that the simplicity retained in the ancient laws of England, as well as in the laws of every other country, ought still to be preserved, and was best calculated to prevent the extremes on either side: that the absolute exclusion of resistance, in all possible cases, was founded on false principles; its express admission might be attended with dangerous consequences; and there was no necessity for exposing the public to either inconvenience: that if a choice must necessarily be made in the case, the preference of utility to truth in public institutions was apparent; nor could the supposition of resistance, beforehand and in general terms, be safely admitted in any government: that even in mixed monarchies, where that supposition seemed most requisite, it was yet entirely superfluous; since no man, on the approach of extraordinary necessity, could be at a loss, though not directed by legal declarations, to find the proper remedy: that even those who might at a distance, and by scholastic reasoning, exclude all resistance, would yet hearken to the voice of nature, when evident ruin, both to themselves and to the public, must attend a strict adherence to their pretended principles: that the question, as it ought thus to be entirely excluded from all determinations of the legislature, was, even among private reasoners, somewhat frivolous, and little better than a dispute of words: that the one party could not pretend that resistance ought ever to become a familiar practice; the other would surely have recourse to it in great extremities; and thus the difference could only turn on the degrees of danger or oppression which would warrant this irregular remedy; a difference which, in a general question, it was impossible by any language precisely to fix or determine.
There were many other absurdities in this test, particularly that of binding men by oath not to alter the government either in church or state; since all human institutions are liable to abuse, and require continual amendments, which are in reality so many alterations.

It is not indeed possible to make a law which does not innovate, more or less, in the government.

These difficulties produced such obstructions to the bill, that it was carried only by two voices in the house of peers.

All the Popish lords, headed by the earl cf Bristol, voted against it.