They kept
these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be
suited to them. They acted by the ancient organized states in the
shape of their old organization, and not by the organic moleculae of a
disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature
manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental principle of British
constitutional policy than at the time of the Revolution, when it
deviated from the direct line of hereditary succession. The crown
was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had before moved, but
the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still a line of
hereditary descent, still an hereditary descent in the same blood,
though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism. When the
legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed
that they held it inviolable.
On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some
amendment in the old time, and long before the era of the
Revolution. Some time after the Conquest, great questions arose upon
the legal principles of hereditary descent. It became a matter of
doubt whether the heir per capita or the heir per stirpes was to
succeed; but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per
stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was
preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort of
immortality through all transmigrations- multosque per annos stat
fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum.
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