cure that kind of fucceffion which is to preclude a choice of the people for ever, could the legifla ture have faftidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice which our own country prefented to them, and searched in ftrange lands for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of our future rulers were to derive their title to govern millions of men through a series of ages?

The princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and 13th of King William, for a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and not for her merits as a temporary adminiftratrix of a power, which fhe might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercife. She was adopted for one reason, and for one only, because, fays the act, "the most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress "and Dutchefs Dowager of Hanover, is daughter "of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late fovereign "lord King James the Firft, of happy memory, " and is hereby declared to be the next in fucceffion in the Proteftant line," &c. &c.; " and the

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crown fhall continue to the heirs of her body, "being Proteftants." This limitation was made by parliament, that through the Princefs Sophia an inheritable line, not only was to be continued in future, but (what they thought very material) that through her it was to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in King James the First;

in

in order that the monarchy might preserve an uti broken unity through all ages, and might be preferved (with fafety to our religion) in the old approved mode by descent, in which, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had often, through all ftorms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved. They did well. No experience has taught us, that in any other courfe or method than that of an hereditary crown, our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preferved facred as our hereditary right. An irregu lar, convulfive movement may be neceffary to throw off an irregular, convulfive difeafe. But the course of fucceffion is the healthy habit of the British conftitution. Was it that the legislature wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the female defcendants of James the First, a due fenfe of the inconveniencies of having two or three, or poffibly more foreigners in fucceffion to the British throne? No!--they had a due fenfe of the evils which might happen from fuch foreign rule, and more than a due sense of them. But a more decifive proof cannot be given of the full conviction of the British nation, that the principles of the revolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure and without any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of our government, than their continuing to adopt a plan of heredi

tary

tary Proteftant fucceffion in the old line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniences of its being a foreign line full before their eyes, and operating with the utmost force upon their minds.

A few years ago I fhould be afhamed to overload a matter, so capable of fupporting itself, by the then unneceffary fupport of any argument; but this feditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publickly taught, avowed, and printed. The dif like I feel to revolutions, the fignals for which have fo often been given from pulpits; the fpirit of change that is gone abroad; the total contempt which prevails with you, and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient inftitutions, when fet in op pofition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a prefent inclination: all thefe confiderations make it not unadviseable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of our own domeftick laws; that you, my French friend, fhould begin to know, and that we should continue to cherish them. We ought not, on either fide of the water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by the counterfeit wares which some perfons, by a double fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities of British growth though wholly alien to our foil, in order afterwards to fmuggle them back again into this country, manufactured after the newest Paris fashion of an im proved liberty.

VOL. V.

F

The

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried: nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial. They look upon the legal hereditary fucceffion of their crown as among their rights, not as among their wrongs; as a benefit, not as a grievance; as a fecurity for their liberty, not as a badge of servitude. They look on the frame of their commonwealth, fuch as it stands, to be of ineftimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed fucceffion of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our conftitu. tion.

I fhall beg leave, before I go any further, to take notice of fome paltry artifices, which the abettors of election as the only lawful title to the crown, are ready to employ, in order to render the fupport of the juft principles of our conftitution a task fomewhat invidious. These fophifters substitute a fictitious caufe, and feigned perfonages, in whofe favour they fuppofe you engaged, whenever you defend the inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with fome of thofe exploded fanaticks of flavery, who formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, "that the crown is held by divine, hereditary, " and indefeasible right."-These old fanaticks of fingle arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary

royalty

of

royalty was the only lawful government in the world, just as our new fanaticks of popular arbitrary power, maintain that a popular election is the fole lawful fource of authority. The old prerogative enthufiafts, it is true, did fpeculate foolifhly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy had more of a divine fanction than any other mode government; and as if a right to govern by inheritance were in ftrictnefs indefeasible in every perfon, who should be found in the fucceffion to a throne, and under every circumftance, which no civil or political right can be. But an abfurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary right to the crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon folid principles of law and policy. If all the abfurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are converfant, we should have no law, and no religion, left in the world. But an abfurd theory on one fide of a question forms no juftification for alleging a false fact, or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

The second claim of the revolution fociety is "a right of cashiering their governours for mifcon"duct." Perhaps the apprehenfions our ances tors entertained of forming fuch a precedent as that "of cashiering for misconduct," was the caufe that the declaration of the act which implied the abdication of King James, was, if it had