There were now far stronger reasons than any which could be drawn from the circumstances of his birth for excluding him from the throne.

A child, brought to the royal couch in a warming pan, might possibly prove a good King of England.

But there could be no such hope for a child educated by a father who was the most stupid and obstinate of tyrants, in a foreign country, the seat of despotism and superstition; in a country where the last traces of liberty had disappeared; where the States General had ceased to meet; where parliaments had long registered without one remonstrance the most oppressive edicts of the sovereign; where valour, genius, learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandising a single man; where adulation was the main business of the press, the pulpit, and the stage; and where one chief subject of adulation was the barbarous persecution of the Reformed Church.

Was the boy likely to learn, under such tuition and in such a situation, respect for the institutions of his native land?
Could it be doubted that he would be brought up to be the slave of the Jesuits and the Bourbons, and that he would be, if possible, more bitterly prejudiced than any preceding Stuart against the laws of England?
Nor did the Whigs think that, situated as the country then was, a departure from the ordinary rule of succession was in itself an evil.
They were of opinion that, till that rule had been broken, the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right and passive obedience would be pleasing to the court, would be inculcated by the clergy, and would retain a strong hold on the public mind.

The notion would still prevail that the kingly office is the ordinance of God in a sense different from that in which all government is his ordinance.