We once more meet with a Tory combination of no little authority and power. Depressed by the death of Queen Mary, the Tories had risen again afterwards, and specially since the peace; they had an immediate prospect of a government conducted according to their principles, under the Princess Anne–for how much longer was the King likely to live? the Church of England had already recovered that representation which had been formerly refused her: Convocation, after a long interval, had again been called into being. The Tories had turned to their own profit the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative: the reduction of the army, the withdrawal of the Irish grants, were their special work. How strictly they meant to tie up the monarchy, in the matter of personal government, home-administration and foreign relations, is shown by the propositions agreed to respecting the succession to the throne after the death of the Princess Anne. There may have been a few of them who desired the restoration of the Stuarts; but the party in general clung to the Protestant succession, with which all the interests which had grown up since the Revolution were connected. Their ideas would be to maintain the position then gained in Europe, to make an end of the burdensome loans and taxation, and, at the same time to restore, in the counties at any rate, the old patriarchal and aristocratic system of authority, bound up as it was with self-government.