of James many persons who were believed to have been deeply
implicated in his unlawful acts, or to be engaged in plots for
his restoration, had been arrested and confined. During the
vacancy of the throne, these men could derive no benefit from the
Habeas Corpus Act. For the machinery by which alone that Act
could be carried into execution had ceased to exist; and, through
the whole of Hilary term, all the courts in Westminster Hall had
remained closed. Now that the ordinary tribunals were about to
resume their functions, it was apprehended that all those
prisoners whom it was not convenient to bring instantly to trial
would demand and obtain their liberty. A bill was therefore
brought in which empowered the King to detain in custody during a
few weeks such persons as he should suspect of evil designs
against his government. This bill passed the two Houses with
little or no opposition.49 But the malecontents out of doors did
not fail to remark that, in the late reign, the Habeas Corpus Act
had not been one day suspended. It was the fashion to call James
a tyrant, and William a deliverer. Yet, before the deliverer had
been a month on the throne, he had deprived Englishmen of a
precious right which the tyrant had respected.50 This is a kind
of reproach which a government sprung from a popular revolution
almost inevitably incurs. From such a government men naturally
think themselves entitled to demand a more gentle and liberal
administration than is expected from old and deeply rooted power.
Yet such a government, having, as it always has, many active
enemies, and not having the strength derived from legitimacy and
prescription, can at first maintain itself only by a vigilance
and a severity of which old and deeply rooted power stands in no
need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty
are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost