treatise or the votes. One writer maintained that by a thoroughly
settled government must have been meant a government of which the
title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the government of the
United Provinces became a settled government when it was
recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never
have been a settled government to the end of time. Another
casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a government,
wrongful in its origin, might become a settled government after
the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789,
therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty
to swear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution.
The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents.
Was Eglon's a settled government when Ehud stabbed him? Was
Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him? But the leading
case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which furnished
the malecontents with many happy and pungent allusions; a kingdom
treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne;
the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal
order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a
counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the
head of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the
heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not
the government of Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the
Prince of Orange?

Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash
and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient
bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus
fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left unmolested
by his old enemies. Some vehement Whigs, among whom Julian