of fortune, learn moderation in prosperity.  How little we thought, when we saw this man a favourite courtier at Whitehall, a general surrounded with military pomp at Hounslow, that we should live to see him standing at our bar, and awaiting his doom from our lips!  And how far is it from certain that we may not one day, in the bitterness of our souls, vainly invoke the protection of those mild laws which we now treat so lightly!  God forbid that we should ever again be subject to tyranny!  But God forbid, above all, that our tyrants should ever be able to plead, in justification of the worst that they can inflict upon us, precedents furnished by ourselves!”

These topics, skilfully handled, produced a great effect on many moderate Whigs.  Montague did his best to rally his followers.  We still possess the rude outline of what must have been a most effective peroration.  “Gentlemen warn us”—­this, or very nearly this, seems to have been what he said—­“not to furnish King James with a precedent which, if ever he should be restored, he may use against ourselves.  Do they really believe that, if that evil day shall ever come, this just and necessary law will be the pattern which he will imitate?  No, Sir, his model will be, not our bill of attainder, but his own; not our bill, which, on full proof, and after a most fair hearing, inflicts deserved retribution on a single guilty head; but his own bill, which, without a defence, without an investigation, without an accusation, doomed near three thousand people, whose only crimes were their English blood and their Protestant faith, the men to the gallows and the women to the stake.  That is the precedent which he has set, and which he will follow.  In order that he never may be able to follow it, in order that the fear of a righteous punishment may restrain those enemies of our country who wish to see him ruling in London as he ruled at Dublin, I give my vote for this bill.”

In spite of all the eloquence and influence of the ministry, the minority grew stronger and stronger as the debates proceeded.  The question that leave should be given to bring in the bill had been carried by nearly three to one.  On the question that the bill should be committed, the Ayes were a hundred and eighty-six, the Noes a hundred and twenty-eight.  On the question that the bill should pass, the Ayes were a hundred and eighty-nine, the Noes a hundred and fifty-six.

On the twenty-sixth of November the bill was carried up to the Lords.  Before it arrived, the Lords had made preparations to receive it.  Every peer who was absent from town had been summoned up:  every peer who disobeyed the summons and was unable to give a satisfactory explanation of his disobedience was taken into custody by Black Rod.  On the day fixed for the first reading, the crowd on the benches was unprecedented.  The whole number of temporal Lords, exclusive of minors, Roman Catholics and nonjurors, was about a hundred and forty.  Of these a hundred