Excerpt from An Historical Essay on the Real Character and Amount of the Precedent of the Revolution of 1688, Vol. 2 of 2: In Which the Opinions of Mackintosh, Price, Hallam, Mr. Fox, Lord John Russell, Blackstone, Burke, and Locke, the Trial of Lord Russell, and the Merits of Sidney, Are Critically Considered If it had not already been accomplished, as we went along, I Should wish to dwell still upon the sources of authority upon which those who assumed to pronounce so mighty a judgment felt themselves empowered to act. I have called the Convention the bastard of a bastard. I still think it was so. I, at least, under all its metamorphoses, its bolstering, its plastering, its visors, its jury masts, see not the real people, or their real representatives in the two assemblies which gave us (nor am I ungrateful) our present excellent constitution. There is an old saying, more true than polished, that no pains will wash a blackamoor white. Ten thousand votes of an after Parliament would not, in my mind, give legitimacy to the Convention as the real people of this land. It is the old story Of the world, the elephant, and the tortoise; what sup ported the tortoise could never be made out. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.