2.  Parliament now established the salutory rule that no money should
be voted to the King except for specific purposes, and it also limited the royal revenue to a few years’ supply instead of granting it for life, as had been done in the case of Charles II and James.  Later the supply was limited to an annual grant.  As the Mutiny Act (S496) made the army dependent for its existence on the annual meeting and action of the House of Commons, these two measures practically gave the people full control of the two great powers,—­the purse and the sword,—­which they have ever since retained.
  3.  Parliament next enacted that judges should hold office not as
heretofore, at his Majesty’s pleasure, but during good behavior (or until the death of the reigning sovereign vacated their commissions).  This took away that dangerous authority of the King over the courts of justice, which had caused so much oppression and cruelty.
  4.  But, as Macaulay remarks, of all the reforms produced by the
change of government, perhaps none proved more extensively useful than the establishment of the liberty of the press.  Up to this time no book or newspaper could be published in England without a license.[2] In the period of the Commonwealth John Milton, the great Puritan poet, had earnestly labored to get this severe law repealed, declaring that “while he who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,...he who destroys a good book [by refusing to let it appear in print] kills reason itself."[3] But under James II, Chief Justice Scroggs had declared it a crime to publish anything whatever concerning the government, whether true or false, without a license.  During that reign there were only four places in England—­namely, London, Oxford, Cambridge, and York—­where any book, pamphlet, or newspaper could be legally issued, and then only with the sanction of a rigid inspector.

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxiii, S26. [3] Milton’s “Areopagitica,” or “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.”

Under William and Mary this restriction was removed.  Henceforth men were free not only to think, but to print and circulate their thought (subject, of course, to the law of libel and sedition).  They could thus bring the government more directly before that bar of public opinion which judges all men and all institutions.

499.  James II lands in Ireland (1689); Act of Attainder; Siege of Londonderry.

But though William was King of England, and had been accepted as King of Scotland, yet the Irish, like the Scotch Highlanders, refused to recognize him as their lawful sovereign.  The great body of Irish population was then, as now, Roman Catholic.  But they had been gradually dispossessed of their hold on the land (SS159, 402, 453), and the larger part of the most desirable portion of the island was owned by a few hundred thousand Protestant colonists.