such writs: the original defect could not now be supplied: the
Houses were therefore mere clubs of private men, and ought
instantly to disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and
that to expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious
hazard for the sake of a form would be the most senseless
superstition. Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and
temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by the
constituent bodies of the realm were met together, there was the
essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now in being; and
what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a conjuncture
when every hour was precious, when numerous important subjects
required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be
averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons,
menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to
recognise the Convention as a Parliament. For he held that it had
from the beginning been an unlawful assembly, that all its
resolutions were nullities, and that the Sovereigns whom it had
set up were usurpers. But with what consistency could any man,
who maintained that a new Parliament ought to be immediately
called by writs under the great seal of William and Mary,
question the authority which had placed William and Mary on the
throne? Those who held that William was rightful King must
necessarily hold that the body from which he derived his right
was itself a rightful Great Council of the Realm. Those who,
though not holding him to be rightful King, conceived that they
might lawfully swear allegiance to him as King in fact, might
surely, on the same principle, acknowledge the Convention as a
Parliament in fact. It was plain that the Convention was the