should expire. But large revenues had been settled by Parliament
on James for life; and whether what had been settled on James for
life could, while he lived, be claimed by William and Mary, was a
question about which opinions were divided.

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers,
Somers excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the
late King, in his political capacity, but for his natural life,
and ought therefore, as long as he continued to drag on his
existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary. It
appears from a very concise and unconnected report of the debate
that Somers dissented from this doctrine. His opinion was that,
if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in question
was to be construed according to the spirit, the word life must
be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for
which the grant had been made had expired. This was surely the
sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the
interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his
person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath
that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because
he was naturally alive, and that his successors must receive
that money because he was politically defunct. The House was
decidedly with Somers. The members generally were bent on
effecting a great reform, without which it was felt that the
Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee for
public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen successive
Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the
chief weapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and
never had the representatives of the people been induced to
surrender that weapon without having speedy cause to repent of