CHAPTEE XIIL

The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned
TheReroiution ^ thc degTce of thc maladministration
£Stiand**thJ? which has produced them. It is there-
insugiand. ^qj,q ^^^ straugo that the government of

Scotland, having been during many years far more
oppressive and corrupt than the government of Eng-
land, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin.
The movement against the last king of the House
of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland
destructive. The English complained, not of the
law, but of the violation of the law. They rose up
against the first magistrate merely in order to assert
the supremacy of the law. They were for the most
part strongly attached to the Church established by
law. Even in applying that extraordinary remedy
to which an extraordinary emergency compelled them
to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible
from the ordinary methods prescribed by the law.
The Convention which met at Westminster, though
summoned by irregular writs, was constituted on the
exact model of a regular Grreat Council of the Eealm.
No man was invited to the Upper House whose right
to sit there was not clear. The knights and bur-
gesses of the Lower House were chosen by those
electors who would have been entitled to send mem-
bers to a Parliament called under the great seal.
