I come now to treat of the brighter and more hopeful side of the picture, and of the means whereby redress of the wrong lately perpetrated is to be obtained. De Lolme, after dwelling on the privileges of a people who live under a just code of laws, speaks as follows : “But all these privileges of the people, considered in themselves, may be but feeble defences against the real strength of those who govern : all these provisions, all these reciprocal rights, necessarily suppose that things remain in their legal and settled course.” And he goes on to suppose a case in which rulers, suddenly throwing themselves, as it were, out of the Constitution, and no longer respecting the person of the subject, should force upon the nation the enactments of an arbitrary will. He asks, “What then would be the people's resource?” He answers, “It would be resistance.”

He observes that the question of the right of the people to resistance, in certain cases, has been established by the laws of England, which look upon it as the “ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of power.” He further adds: “It was resistance that gave birth to the Great Charter, that lasting foundation of English liberty; and the excesses of a power established by force were also restrained by force. It has been by this same resistance that at different times the people have procured the confirmation of the same charter.”