The one was to be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neither case was the order of the state to be changed, lest government might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalized.  With us we got rid of the man, and preserved the constituent parts of the state.  There they get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and keep the man.  What we did was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a revolution, not made, but prevented.  We took solid securities; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law.  In the stable, fundamental parts of our Constitution we made no revolution,—­no, nor any alteration at all.  We did not impair the monarchy.  Perhaps it might be shown that we strengthened it very considerably.  The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy,—­the same lords, the same commons, the same corporations, the same electors.

The Church was not impaired.  Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, her orders and gradations, continued the same.  She was preserved in her full efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which was her weakness and disgrace.  The Church and the State were the same after the Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part.

Was little done because a revolution was not made in the Constitution?  No!  Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not with ruin.  Accordingly, the state flourished.  Instead of lying as dead, in a sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the pity or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains against the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard even of her former self.  An era of a more improved domestic prosperity then commenced, and still continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, under the wasting hand of time.  All the energies of the country were awakened.  England never preserved a firmer countenance or a more vigorous arm to all her enemies and to all her rivals.  Europe under her respired and revived.  Everywhere she appeared as the protector, assertor, or avenger of liberty.  A war was made and supported against fortune itself.  The treaty of Ryswick, which first limited the power of France, was soon after made; the grand alliance very shortly followed, which shook to the foundations the dreadful power which menaced the independence of mankind.  The states of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great and free monarchy, which knew how to be great without endangering its own peace at home or the internal or external peace of any of its neighbors.