Note 7 — Chapter V

The fact that the practical cause of this sharp conflict was the rivalry between the partisans of William and those of Mary is only a partial explanation of the phenomenon referred to in the text. It is a reason for the Convention having debated the Whig corollary so much, but not for their debating the Whig-Tory original proposition so little. Of course the practical explanation is the simple one, that James had made himself impossible. Both parties concurred so readily in that opinion that they applied it without either of them pausing to consider its scope as a precedent, and that, quite apart from all controversies as to regency, demise of the crown, vacancy of the throne, or what not, the first instance in which a people pronounced any king impossible—such king being of sound mind, and still asserting his sovereignty—let in the whole modern democratic theory.