of circumstances, 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 themfelves to violent and extreme courfes 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 Protefiant church and ftate, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they charged him with having broken the original contract between the King and people. This was more than mifconduct. A grave and over-ruling neceffity obliged them to take the ftep they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all laws. Their truft for the future prefervation of the conftitution 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 thofe violent remedies. They left the crown what, in the eye and estimation 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 tft of King Wilfiam, feff. 2d, called the act for declaring the rights

and liberties of the fubject, and for fettling the fucceffion of the crown," they enacted, that the minifters fhould ferve the crown on the terms of that declaration. They secured foon after the frequent meetings of parliament, bỷ 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 Wil liam, for the further limitation of the crown, and better fecuring the rights and liberties of the fubject, they pro

vided,

vided, 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, the conftant infpection of parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought infinitely a better fecurity not only for their conftitutional liberty, but against the vices of adminiftration, than the refervation of a right fo difficult in the practice, fo uncertain in the iffue, and often fo mifchievous in the confequences, as that of "cafhiering their governors."

Dr. Price, in this fermon,* condemns very properly the practice of grofs, adulatory addreffes to kings. Inftead of this fulfome ftyle, he propofes that his majefty fhould be told, on occafions of congratulation, that he is to "confider himself as more properly the fervant than the

fovereign of his people." For a compliment, this new form of address does not seem to be very foothing. Those who are servants, in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their fituation, their duty, and their obligations. The flave, in the old play, tells his mafter," Hac commemoratio eft quafi exprobratio." Ít is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholfome as inftruction. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new kind of addrefs, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of the People as his royal ftyle, how either he or we fhould be much mended by it, I cannot imagine. I have feen very affuming letters, figned, Your most obedient, humble fervant. The proudest domination that ever was endured on earth took a title of ftill greater humility than that which is now propofed for fovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himfelf "the Servant of Servants;" and mandates for depofing fovereigns were fealed with the fignet of "the Fifherman."

2

I should have confidered all this as no more than a fort of flippant vain difcourfe, in which, as in an unfavoury fume, feveral perfons fuffer the fpirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in fupport of the idea, and

P. 22, 23, 24.

a part

"

a part of the fcheme of cafhiering kings for mifcon "duct." In that light it is worth fome obfervation.

Kings, in one fenfe, are undoubtedly the fervants of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary fenfe (by our conftitution, at leaft) any thing like fervants; the effence of whofe fituation is to obey the commands of fome other, and to be removeable at pleasure. But the king of Great-Britain obeys no other perfon; all other perfons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to infult, calls this high magistrate, not our fervant, as this humble Divine calls him, but our fovereign Lord "the King;" and we, on our parts, have learned to fpeak only the primitive language of the law, and not the confufed jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.

As he is not to obey us, but as we are to obey the law in him, our conftitution has made no fort of provifion towards rendering him, as a fervant, in any degree refponfible. Our conftitution knows nothing of a magiftrate like the Jufticia of Arragon; nor of any court legally appointed, nor of any procefs legally fettled for fubmitting the king to the refponfibility belonging to all fervants. In this he is not diftinguished from the commons and lords; who in their several public capacities, can never be called to an account for their conduct; although the Revolution Society chooses to affert, in direct oppofition to one of the wifest and most beautiful parts of our conftitution, that 66 a king is no more than the first "fervant of the public, created by it, and refponfible to it." Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wifdom, if they had found no fecurity for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations, and precarious in its tenure; if they had been able to contrive no better remedy against arbitrary power than civil confufion. Let thefe gentlemen ftate who that reprefentative public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a fervant, to be refponfible. It will be then time enough for me to produce to them the pofitive ftatute law which affirms that he is not.

The

66

σε

t

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which thefe gentlemen talk fo much at their eafe, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a cafe of war, and not of conftitution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongft arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688, was obtained by a juft war, in the only cafe in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be juft. Jufta bella quibus neceffaria." The queftion of dethroning, or, if thefe gentlemen like the phrafe better, cashiering kings," will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of ftate, and wholly out of the law; a question (like all other questions of ftate) of difpofitions, and of means, and of probable confequences, rather than of pofitive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds. The fpeculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and refiftance must begin, is faint, obfcure, and not cafily definable. It is not a fingle act, or a fingle event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the profpect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the difeafe is to indicate the remedy to thofe whom nature has qualified to adminifter in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter portion to a distempered state. Times and occafions, and provocations, will teach their own leffons. The wife will determine from the gravity of the cafe; the irritable from fenfibility to oppreffion; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abufive power in unworthy hands ; the brave and bold from the love of honourable danger in a generous caufe: but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very laft refource of the thinking and the good.

The third head of right, afferted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government

for ourselves," has, at leaft, as little countenance from any thing done at the Revolution, either in precedent or principle, as the two firft of their claims. The Revolution was made to preferve our ancient indifputable laws

and

and liberties, and that ancient conftitution of government which is our only fecurity for law and liberty. If you are defirous of knowing the fpirit of our conftitution, and the policy which predominated in that great period which has fecured it to this hour, pray look for both in our hiftories, in our records, in our acts of parliament, and journals of parliament, and not in the fermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toafts of the Revolution Society.-In the former you will find other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as ill-fuited to our temper and wishes as it is unfupported by any appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with difguft and horror. We wifhed at the period of the Revolution, and do now with, to derive all we poffefs as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all thofe which poffibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will fee that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are induftrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove, that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected with another pofitive charter from Henry I. and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a reaffirmance of the still more ancient ftanding law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, thefe authors appear to be in the right; perhaps not always but if the lawyers miftake in fome particulars, it proves my pofition ftill the more ftrongly; because it demonftrates the powerful prepoffeffion towards antiquity, with which the minds of all our lawyers and legiflators, and of all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled; and the stationary policy of this king

E

See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.

dom