to quash obstacles from common people, they had to
contend with additional constraints because of the rule of
law. Their law violated the rights that the Glorious
Revolution and the changes in political institutions that
followed from it had already established for everybody by
tearing down the “divine” rights of kings and the privileges
of elites. The rule of law then implied that both elites and
nonelites alike would resist its implementation.
The rule of law is a very strange concept when you think
about it in historical perspective. Why should laws be
applied equally to all? If the king and the aristocracy have
political power and the rest don’t, it’s only natural that
whatever is fair game for the king and the aristocracy
should be banned and punishable for the rest. Indeed, the
rule of law is not imaginable under absolutist political
institutions. It is a creation of pluralist political institutions
and of the broad coalitions that support such pluralism. It’s
only when many individuals and groups have a say in
decisions, and the political power to have a seat at the
table, that the idea that they should all be treated fairly
starts making sense. By the early eighteenth century,
Britain was becoming sufficiently pluralistic, and the Whig
elites would discover that, as enshrined in the notion of the
rule of law, laws and institutions would constrain them, too.
But why did the Whigs and parliamentarians abide by
such restraints? Why didn’t they use their control over
Parliament and the state to force an uncompromising
implementation of the Black Act and overturn the courts
when the decisions didn’t go their way? The answer reveals
much about the nature of the Glorious Revolution—why it
didn’t just replace an old absolutism with a new version—
the link between pluralism and the rule of law, and the
dynamics of virtuous circles. As we saw in chapter 7, the
Glorious Revolution was not the overthrow of one elite by
another, but a revolution against absolutism by a broad
coalition made up of the gentry, merchants, and
manufacturers as well as groupings of Whigs and Tories.
The emergence of pluralist political institutions was a
consequence of this revolution. The rule of law also
emerged as a by-product of this process. With many
parties at the table sharing power, it was natural to have
laws and constraints apply to all of them, lest one party start