Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 2.djvu/531

 their native King by serving with loyalty the new master whom Providence had set over them. The three confessors, who had been marvellously preserved in the furnace, held high office in the province of Babylon. Daniel was minister successively of the Assyrian who subjugated Judah, and of the Persian who subjugated Assyria. Nay, Jesus himself, who was, according to the flesh, a prince of the house of David, had, by commanding his countrymen to pay tribute to Cæsar, pronounced that foreign conquest annuls hereditary right and is a legitimate title to dominion. It was therefore probable that great numbers of Tories, though they could not, with a clear conscience, choose a King for themselves, would accept, without hesitation, a King given to them by the event of war.

On the other side, however, there were reasons which greatly preponderated. The Prince could not claim the crown as won by his sword without a gross violation of faith. In his Declaration he had protested that he had no design of conquering England; that those who imputed to him such a design foully calumniated, not only himself, but the patriotic noblemen and gentlemen who had invited him over; that the force which he brought with him was evidently inadequate to an enterprise so arduous; and that it was his full resolution to refer all the public grievances, and all his own pretensions, to a free Parliament. For no earthly object could it be right or wise that he should forfeit his word so solemnly pledged in the face of all Europe. Nor was it certain that, by calling himself a conqueror, he would have removed the scruples which made rigid Churchmen unwilling to acknowledge him as King. For, call himself what he might, all the world knew that he was not really a conqueror. It was notoriously a mere fiction to say that this great kingdom, with a mighty fleet on the sea, with a regular army of forty thousand men, and with a militia of a hundred and thirty thousand men, had been, without one siege or battle, reduced to the state of a province by fifteen thousand invaders. Such a fiction was not likely to quiet consciences really sensitive, but it could scarcely fail to gall the national