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 antient fundamental principles of our government, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditary Proteftant fucceffion in the old line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniencies of its being a foreign line full before their eyes, and operating with the utmost force upon their minds.

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter, fo capable of fupporting itself, by the then unneceffary fupport of any argument; but this feditious, unconftitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed. The diflike 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 antient inftitutions, when fet in oppofition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a prefent inclination all these confiderations make it not unadviseable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of our own domeftic laws; that you, my French friend, fhould begin to know, and that we fhould continue to cherifh them. We ought not, on either fide of the water, to fuffer ourselves to be impofed upon by the counterfeit wares which fome 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 fafhion of an improved liberty.

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried; nor go back to those which they have found mifchievous 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 fervitude. They look on the frame of their commonwealth, fuch as it stands, to be of ineftimable value; and they conceive the undif turbed fucceffion of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our constitution.

I shall 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 tafk fomewhat invidious. These fophifters fubftitute a fictious cause, 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 difpute as if they were in a conflict with fome of thofe exploded fanatics of flavery, who formerly maintained, what I believe no creature

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now maintains, "that the crown is held by di"vine, hereditary, and indefeafible right."-These old fanatics of fingle arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary royalty was the only lawful government in the world, juft as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power, maintain that a popular election is the fole lawful fource of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is true, did fpeculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy had more of a divine fanction than any other mode of government; and as if a right to govern by inheritance were in ftrictness indefeafible in every perfon, who fhould 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 justification for alledging a false fact, or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.

The fecond claim of the Revolution Society is " a right of cashiering their governors for "misconduct." Perhaps the apprehenfions our ancestors entertained of forming fuch a precedent as that "of cashiering for mifconduct," was the cause that the declaration of the act which implied the abdication of king James,

D 3

was,

1

was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded, and too circumftantial*. But all this guard, and all this accumulation of circumftances, ferves to fhew the fpirit of caution which predominated in the national councils, in a fituation in which men irritated by oppreffion, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent and extreme courses: it fhews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of fettlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

No government could ftand a moment, if it could be blown down with any thing fo loofe and indefinite as an opinion of "misconduct.” They who led at the Revolution, grounded the virtual abdication of King James upon no fuch light and uncertain principle. They charged him with nothing lefs than a defign, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to fubvert the Proteftant church and state, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they charged him with having broken the original contract between king and people. This was

* That King James the second, having endeavoured to fubvert the conftitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the "advice of jefuits, and other wicked perfons, having violated "the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of "the kingdom, hath abdicated the government, and the throne "is thereby vacant.”

more

more than misconduct. A grave and over-ruling neceffity obliged them to take the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all laws. Their truft for the future preservation of the constitution was not in future revolutions. The grand policy of all their regulations was to render it almost impracticable for any future fovereign to compel the ftates of the kingdom to have again recourse to those violent remedies. They left the crown what, in the eye and eftimation of law, it had ever been, perfectly irrefponfible. In order to lighten the crown ftill further, they aggravated refponfibility on minifters of ftate. By the ftatute of the 1ft of king Willlam, feff. 2d, called "the act for declaring the rights and liberties of the Subject, and for fettling the fucceffion of the "crown," they enacted, that the minifters fhould ferve the crown on the terms of that declaration. They fecured foon after the frequent meetings of parliament, by which the whole government would be under the conftant infpection and active controul of the popular representative and of the magnates of the kingdom. In the next great constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King William, for the further limitation of the crown, and better fecuring the rights and liberties of the fubject, they provided," that no pardon under the great feal of England "fhould be pleadable to an impeachment by the "commons in parliament." The rule laid down for government in the Declaration of Right,