obey, the law in him, our conftitution has made no fort of provifion towards rendering him, as a férvant, in any degree refponfible. Our conftitution knows nothing of a magiftrate like the Justicia of Arragon; nor of any court legally ap pointed, nor of any procefs legally fettled for fub mitting the king to the refponfibility belonging to all fervants. In this he is not diftinguished from the commons and the lords; who, in their feveral public capacities, can never be called to an account for their conduct; although the Revolu-tion Society chooses to affert, in direct oppofition to one of the wifeft and most beautiful parts of our conftitution, that "a king is no more than the first "fervant of the public, created by it, and refpon- : "fible to it."

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deferved their fame for wisdom, 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 these 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 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 consti

tution.

tution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongst 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 just. 66 Jufta "bella quibus neceffaria." The queftion of dethroning, or, if thefe gentlemen like the phrase better," cafhiering 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 queftions of ftate) of difpofitions, and of means, and of probable confequences, rather than of pofitive rights. As it was not made for common abufes, fo it is not to be agitated by common minds. The fuperlative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and refiftance muft begin, is faint, obscure, and not eafily definable. It is not a fingle act, or a fingle event, which determines it. Governments must be abufed 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 diftempered 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 difdain

and

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 last resource 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 least, 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 antient indifputable laws and liberties, and that antient 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, look for both in our hiftories, in our pray 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.

forefathers. Upon that body and ftock of inheri tance 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 perfuaded, 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 antient 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 re-affirmance of the ftill more antient standing 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 mistake in fome particulars, it proves my position still 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 kingdom in confidering their most facred rights and franchises as an inheritance.

* See Blackftone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.

In

In the famous law of the 3d of Charles I. called the Petition of Right, the parliament fays to the king, "Your fubjects have inherited this freedom," claiming their franchises not on abstract principles "as the rights of men," but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly learned men, who drew this petition of right, were as well acquainted, at leaft, with all the general theories concerning the

rights of men," as any of the difcourfers in our pulpits, or on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé Seyes. But, for reafons worthy of that practical wifdom which fuperfeded their theoretic fcience, they preferred this pofitive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague fpeculative right, which exposed their fure inheritance to be fcrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild litigious fpirit.

The fame policy pervades all the laws which have fince been made for the preservation of our liberties. In the 1ft of William and Mary, in the famous ftatute, called the Declaration of Right, the two houfes utter not a fyllable of "a

right to frame a government for themfelves." You will fee, that their whole care was to fecure the religion, laws, and liberties, that had been long poffeffed, and had been lately endangered. * Taking into their moft ferious confideration "the best means for making fuch an establishment,

* 1 W. and M.

"that