in the fame blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with proteftantifm. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they fhewed that they held it inviolable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted fome amendment in the old time, and long before the æra of the Revolution. Some time after the conqueft great queftions arose upon the legal principles of hereditary defcent. It became a matter of doubt, whether the heir per capita or the heir per ftirpes was to fucceed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom_per ftirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Proteftant was preferred, the inheritable principle furvived with a fort of immortality through all tranfmigrations-multofque per annos ftat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum. This is the fpirit of our conftitution, not only in its fettled course, but in all its revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether he obtained the crown by law, or by force, the hereditary fucceffion was either continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions fee nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the conftitution; and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle. They have little regard to the obvious confequences of their doctrine, though they muft fee, that it leaves pofitive authority in very few of the pofitive inftitutions of this country. When fuch an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one at of the princes who preceded their æra of fictitious election can be valid. Do these theorifts mean to imitate fome of their predeceffors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient fovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and difable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the revolution, and confequently to ftain the throne of England with the blot of a continual ufurpation? Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles of the whole line of our kings, that great body of our statute law which paffed under thofe whom they treat as ufurpers? to annul laws of ineftimable value to our liberties of as great value at least as any which have paffed at or fince

the

the period of the Revolution? If kings, who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people, had no title to make laws, what will become of the ftatute de tallagio non concedendo ?of the petition of right of the act of habeas corpus? Do these new doctors of the rights of men prefume to affert, that King James the Second, who came to the crown as next of blood, according to the rules of a then unqualified fucceffion, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts which were juftly conftrued into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much trouble in parliament might have been faved at the period thefe gentlemen commemorate. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an ufurper. The princes who fucceeded according to the act of parliament which fettled the crown on the electress Sophia and on her defcendants, being Proteftants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as King James did. He came in according to the law, as it flood at his acceffion to the crown; and the princes of the house of Brunfwick came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it ftood at their feveral acceffions of Proteftant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have fhewn fufficiently.

The law by which this royal family is fpecifically deftined to the fucceffion, is the act of the 12th and 13th of King William. The terms of this act bind us and our heirs,

and our pofterity, to them, their heirs, and their pofterity," being Proteftants, to the end of time, in the fame words as the declaration of right had bound us to the heirs of King William and Queen Mary. It therefore fecures both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except the conftitutional policy. of forming an establishment to secure that kind of fucceffion which is to preclude a choice of the people for ever, could the legislature have faftidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice which our own country prefented to them, and searched in strange lands for a foreign princefs, from whofe 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 fettlement
D

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of the 12th and 13th of King William, for a flock 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 Princefs Sophia, Electress "and Dutchefs Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of "the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of "Bohemia, daughter of our late,overeign lord King James the First, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be the next in fucceffion in the Proteftant "line," &c. &c.; " and the crown fhall continue to "the beirs of her body, being Proteftants." This limitation was made by parliament, that through the Princess 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 Firft; in order that the monarchy might preferve an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preferved (with fafety to our religion) in the old approved mode by defcent, in which, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had often, through all storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved. They did well. No experience has taught us, that in any other course or method than that of an bereditary crown, our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preferved facred as our bereditary right. An irregular, convulfivemovement 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 Firit, a due fenfe of the inconveniences 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 fenfe 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 authorise them to elect kings at their pleafure, and without any attention to the ancient fundainental principles of our government, than their continuing to adopt a plan

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 fhould 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 ancient inftitutions, when fet in oppofition to a present fenfe of convenience, or to the bent of a prefent inclination all these confiderations make it not unadvifcable, 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 cherish 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 finuggle them back again into this country, manufactured after the newe Paris fashion 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 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 fervitude. They look on the frame of their commonwealth, fuch as it ftands, to be of inestimable 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 conftitution.

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 support of the just principles of our conftitution

conftitution a task fomewhat invidious. Thefe fophifters fubftitute 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 difpute as if they were in a conflict with fome of thofe exploded fanatics of flavery, who formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, "that "the crown is held by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible "right."-Thefe 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 enthufiafts, it is true, did fpeculate foolishly, and perhaps impioufly 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 ftrictnefs indefeasible in every perfon, who fhould be found in the fucceffion to a throne, and under every circumftance, which nò 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 rarional, 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 fhould have no law, and no religion left in the world. But an abfurd theory on one fide of a queftion forms no juftification for alledging a falfe fact, or promulgating mifchievous 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 caufe that the declaration of the act which implied the abdication of king James, was, if it had any fault, rather too guarded, and too circumftantial. But all this guard, and all this accumulation

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"That King James the fecond, having er deavoured 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 bim elf out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant."